CHAPTER 166: TWENTY TRILLION TONS

Since it was decided that scientific research would not be abandoned during the voyage, and that 1 billion clones would remain conscious, there was one matter that had to be considered.

Tom had to create an environment suitable for human survival as much as possible. Otherwise, the clones’ work efficiency would not only be affected, but they might also get sick, injured, enter a state of aging prematurely, or even die.

Replenishing clones on a large scale in deep space is not easy.

Regarding the life-support environment, air, temperature, and atmospheric pressure are, of course, self-evident and essential. But there is also one most important aspect: gravity.

Within the solar system, every planet has its own gravity. Although it may be large or small, it is always there. And the human body is more suitable for living in an environment with a certain amount of gravity.

Given this, in addition to Aerospace Carriers, heavy transport ships, and warships, Tom decided to build a type of spacecraft he had never built before.

A life-support spacecraft with artificial gravity\!

Generating or neutralizing gravity out of thin air is beyond Tom’s reach at present.

Tom guessed that it would at least require a technological level far beyond that of the Mechanical Disaster to achieve.

However, Tom had another ingenious method to achieve it.

That is centrifugal force, relying on the outward centrifugal force of rotation to create an effect equivalent to gravity.

Thus, the shape of this spacecraft became obvious.

It must be ring-shaped or drum-shaped. Because only in this way can it maintain rotation to generate gravity.

After comprehensive consideration, Tom finally chose the drum shape. The reason is simple: the drum shape offers the highest utilization rate of space and area.

So, like other types of spacecraft, the first prototype of this drum-shaped spacecraft was quickly produced.

What was presented before Tom at this moment was a huge hollow cylindrical spacecraft.

It has a large main shaft running through the center of the cylinder, and numerous steel structures extend from the main shaft, securing the outer drum-shaped structure.

The drum-shaped structure rotates slowly at a fixed speed, thus creating gravity inside the drum-shaped structure.

Such a drum-shaped spacecraft reached a length of 10 kilometers and a diameter of 600 meters.

Thus, the interior of a drum-shaped spacecraft had an area of approximately 19 square kilometers. After deducting the necessary space for facilities, about 15 square kilometers remained available for use.

Here, Tom did not consider factors like aesthetics or habitability, and completely built living facilities—such as dormitories and canteens—on these usable areas, and all of them had multiple floors.

In this way, under extreme conditions, this 15 square kilometer area could accommodate approximately 10 million clones.

For 1 billion clones, 100 such drum-shaped spacecraft would suffice.

However, considering that a large number of scientific research facilities also needed to be built, and factoring in transportation—after all, these clones also needed to move frequently, and there was even a large demand for inter-ship transportation—Tom obviously could not be so extreme.

Ultimately, the number of these drum-shaped residential spacecraft Tom determined to build was 1,000, which on average meant one drum-shaped spacecraft would support the work and life of approximately 1 million clones.

In addition to the drum-shaped spacecraft for clone habitation, the living and working needs of the Bluetoth also needed to be addressed.

At this moment, after years of development, the number of Bluetoth had increased to about 200 million.

Bluetoth are not like clones. If they were made to live like clones, it would be good if they didn’t go crazy, let alone produce scientific research value for Tom.

There was no other way. To better extract value from them, Tom could only build more drum-shaped spacecraft, and at the same time, reduce the density of Bluetoth per drum-shaped spacecraft. Furthermore, in addition to the necessary industrial, living, and scientific research facilities, he wasted a large amount of area for planting vegetation, raising wild animals, and even building completely useless things like rockeries and rivers.

In this way, a drum-shaped spacecraft accommodating 200,000 Bluetoth was already the limit. For 200 million Bluetoth, another 1,000 drum-shaped spacecraft were needed.

Thus, 2,000 large drum-shaped spacecraft, 650,000 warships, 5 million unmanned warships, 500 Aerospace Carriers, 1,000 heavy transport ships, 10,000 other various spacecraft...

In total, the total number of spacecraft Tom needed to produce reached approximately 5.7 million\!

Adding various consumables during the voyage and backup supplies, the total mass of the entire fleet would reach over 400 billion tons\!

One obvious thing is that for every ton of spacecraft or material mass produced, Tom would need to consume tens of times more resources in the production process.

Calculated this way, the total mass of materials Tom 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, and it were spread across the Earth, it could create over 7 Lake Victorias

Mobilizing a total mass equivalent to over seven Lake Victorias to produce millions of spacecraft, and then propelling them to travel a distant journey of hundreds of trillions of kilometers from one star system to another.

Such a vast project, such a magnificent voyage, just thinking about it would make even the Bluetoth Civilization, even in its heyday, hesitate and feel fear.

But at this moment, Tom, with a maximum consciousness link of only 1 billion, only one percent of the Bluetoth population during their peak, was full of confidence.

Under Tom’s unified deployment, under the unified management and coordination of Hestia AI, and under the direct construction of Demeter, Gaia, and Goku AI, an unprecedented and grand construction project spanning the entire solar system truly began.

In countless mines on numerous planets, numerous giant machines roared all day long, and large quantities of primary minerals entered the constantly humming factories, producing countless metals, either processed on site or transported to other planets via Space Elevators aboard heavy cargo ships.

Space bases appeared in the orbits around many planets, and countless spacecraft came and went, went and came. One after another, giant Aerospace Carriers gradually took shape in space, and then, within the empty "net cages," like fruit growing on a tree, material boxes, life-support pods, and so on quickly appeared.

The preparations for the interstellar voyage were in full swing, occupying over 99 % of Tom’s energy.

A significant portion of his remaining energy was dedicated by Tom to another matter.

"The difficulty of Earth’s ecosystem restoration work has exceeded my previous expectations. It seems I need to find a solution."