Chapter 167 166: 20 Trillion

Having decided not to abandon scientific research during the voyage and to keep the one billion Clones awake at all times, there was one thing Li Qingsong had to consider.

Li Qingsong had to create an environment as suitable for human life as possible. Otherwise, not only would the Clones' work efficiency suffer, but they might also fall ill, become injured, and enter a state of premature aging, or even die.

Replenishing the Clone population on a large scale would not be easy in space.

Regarding the life-support environment, things like air, temperature, and atmospheric pressure were, of course, fundamental requirements. But there was another, most crucial aspect: gravity.

Within the Solar System, every planet has its own gravity. It might be stronger or weaker, but it is always present. The human body is better suited for survival in an environment with a certain level of gravity.

Therefore, in addition to Space-Air Carriers, heavy transport ships, and Warships, Li Qingsong decided to build a type of starship he had never constructed before.

A life-support starship with artificial gravity!

Creating or negating gravity out of thin air was something far beyond the current Li Qingsong's capabilities.

Li Qingsong suspected that would require a technological level far surpassing even that of the Intelligent Mechanical Calamity.

However, Li Qingsong had another, more ingenious method to accomplish this.

This method was centrifugal force—relying on the outward pull generated by rotation to simulate the effects of gravity.

The required shape for such a starship was therefore self-evident.

It had to be a ring or a cylinder, as only these shapes could maintain the rotation needed to generate gravity.

After weighing his options, Li Qingsong ultimately chose the cylindrical design. The reason was simple: a cylinder offered the most efficient use of space and surface area.

And so, just like the other types of vessels, the first prototype of this cylindrical starship was quickly produced.

Before him now was a massive starship in the shape of a hollow cylinder.

A huge central axis ran through the cylinder's core. From this axis, numerous steel structures extended outward, securing the outer cylindrical shell.

The cylindrical shell rotated slowly at a constant speed, thus creating gravity on its inner surface.

One such cylindrical starship was 10 kilometers long with a diameter of 600 meters.

This gave the interior of a single cylindrical starship a surface area of approximately 19 square kilometers. After subtracting the space required for essential facilities, about 15 square kilometers of usable area remained.

Here, Li Qingsong disregarded factors like aesthetics or pleasant living conditions. He dedicated the entire usable area to building living facilities like dormitories and cafeterias, all of which were multi-storied structures.

At maximum capacity, this 15-square-kilometer area could support the lives of approximately 10 million Clones.

For one billion Clones, 100 of these cylindrical starships would suffice.

However, he also had to account for the numerous research facilities that needed to be built, as well as transportation. After all, the Clones would need to move around frequently, and there would even be significant traffic between different starships. Clearly, Li Qingsong could not push the capacity to such an extreme.

Ultimately, Li Qingsong settled on a construction total of 1,000 cylindrical residential starships. This averaged out to one starship supporting the work and living needs of about one million Clones.

Beyond the cylindrical starships for the Clones, the living and working needs of the Blutuk People also had to be addressed.

By now, after years of growth, the population of the Blutuk People had increased to around two hundred million.

The Blutuk People were not like the Clones. If they were forced to live in the same conditions, they would be lucky not to go insane, let alone produce any research value for Li Qingsong.

He had no choice. To better extract value from them, Li Qingsong could only build more cylindrical starships. He also had to lower the population density of the Blutuk People on each one. Furthermore, beyond the necessary industrial, residential, and research facilities, he had to "waste" a large amount of surface area on growing plants, raising wildlife, and even building completely useless things like artificial mountains and rivers.

With these changes, one cylindrical starship could support a maximum of 200,000 Blutuk People. For two hundred million Blutuk People, that meant another 1,000 cylindrical starships were needed.

And so, the list grew: 2,000 large cylindrical starships, 650,000 Warships, 5 million Unmanned Warships, 500 Space-Air Carriers, 1,000 heavy transport ships, and 10,000 other assorted vessels…

In total, the number of vessels Li Qingsong needed to produce reached approximately 5.7 million!

Factoring in various consumables for the journey and backup supplies, the total mass of the entire fleet would exceed 400 billion tons!

It was an obvious fact that for every ton of starship or supply mass produced, Li Qingsong would need to consume several dozen times that amount in raw resources during production.

By this calculation, the total mass of materials Li Qingsong needed to mine, smelt, and transport throughout the entire production process would be at least 20 trillion tons.

Over 20 trillion tons of mass!

If all this mass were water, it would be enough to create more than three hundred bodies of water the size of Qinghai Lake on Earth!

To mobilize the mass of over three hundred Qinghai Lakes, produce millions of starships with a combined mass equivalent to six Qinghai Lakes, and then propel them across a vast distance of tens of trillions of kilometers from one Interstellar System to another.

Such a monumental project, such a grand voyage—the mere thought of it would have made even the Blutuk Civilization at its zenith shrink back in awe and fear.

But now, Li Qingsong, with a maximum consciousness link of only one billion—just one percent of the Blutuk People's peak population—was filled with confidence.

Under the unified command of Li Qingsong, the unified management of the Jade Emperor, and the direct oversight of specialized AIs like Divine Craft, Shennong, Dianmu, Lu Ban, and Transportation, an unprecedentedly vast construction project, spanning the entire Solar System, truly began.

Across countless mines on numerous planets, giant machines roared day and night. Vast quantities of raw ore flowed into constantly thrumming factories, where it was smelted into endless streams of metal. The metal was then either processed on-site or sent via space elevators and heavy freight ships to other planets.

One after another, space stations appeared in orbit around the various planets, a ceaseless flow of ships coming and going. The skeletal frames of giant Space-Air Carriers took shape in the void. Then, within their empty, "net-cage" structures, supply crates and life-support pods rapidly materialized, like fruit ripening on a tree.

The construction for the interstellar voyage proceeded at a fever pitch, consuming more than 99% of Li Qingsong's focus.

A considerable portion of his little remaining focus was dedicated to another matter.

'The difficulty of restoring Earth's ecosphere is greater than I anticipated. It looks like I'll have to come up with a new plan.'