CHAPTER 1085: CHAPTER 94: VAST REGIONS

To humanity today, the Solar System is still overwhelmingly vast.

The information transmission links within the Solar System aren’t just about lining up the eight planets and building a fiber-optic cable running through them. That’s far from sufficient.

The planets in the Solar System orbit, each with its own cycle, and the distances between the closest and farthest points are vastly different. When two planets are at their most distant, there’s even a sun and each of their orbital radii in between.

No signal station can bridge such distances.

With today’s human capabilities, to transmit signals, space cities must be built around planetary orbits as relay stations.

This is also why Protector’s control decreases significantly beyond Mars’s orbit.

"Building infrastructure around Mars’s orbit" and "building infrastructure around Jupiter’s orbit" are not of the same difficulty.

On the inner side of Mars’s orbit, sunlight is still sufficient, and people can live on solar energy. For many civilians, moving to space to deploy solar panels for energy is an option when they have no work. But in the Asteroid Belt, this approach doesn’t work. Solar energy becomes insufficient. On Earth, a high-performance solar panel the size of a hat can satisfy one person’s daily consumption. But in space cities, this number needs to be an order of magnitude higher. Moreover, given the density of residents in a space city, there’s simply no room for everyone to deploy solar panels.

In such places, residents become heavily reliant on the reactors within the city.

That’s why, previously, when Jeanne mentioned potential issues near the reactor, Chaldea’s defense forces became highly alert.

Indeed, this is the source of life for Chaldea.

And in Jupiter’s orbit, the infrastructure requirement for space cities increases further.

Due to resource scarcity, Hero hasn’t established a thriving space city cluster beyond Jupiter’s orbit.

Although Hero’s controlled region relies on Prosthetic Bodies, whenever Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune drift farther apart, the Heroes face a forced separation situation. Sometimes, they can’t even connect signals.

They need to periodically exchange information using sub-light speed ships amongst themselves. A ship carries large storage devices, then slowly accelerates to a percentage of the speed of light, and then decelerates steadily near a target location to transmit signals to satellites or space cities.

It’s truly too far.

Because of this, the Heroes have had to build numerous observation agencies to monitor Protector’s fleet. The White Fleet Prosthetics Followers and Black Ship Righteous Followers remain in the Asteroid Belt long-term, also out of necessity. Only by discovering Protector’s Deep Space Fleet early and intercepting it in the Asteroid Belt can they halt Protector’s forces.

Otherwise, Hero’s already weakened group force would have to split up to defend against two planets separated by a great distance, in addition to a few space cities.

"Developing the outer reaches of the Solar System is still too difficult." Listening to Li Liang’s narration, Jeanne sighed.

Tumor Xiang Shan nodded: [Humanity is still too small compared to the universe. Beyond Jupiter’s orbit, perhaps only Saturn truly holds significant development value. As for Uranus and Neptune, while development costs are substantial, however...]

What is the main development value of Uranus and Neptune?

Mines? Those are Ice Giants. The "minerals" mined on Uranus would probably sublimate directly into gas on Earth.

Methane for fuel? It has its uses in this era. Tactical missiles and micro missiles are still needed. But methane as high-speed navigation fuel is not sufficient nowadays.

Given the vast quantities of transformative fuel extracted from Jupiter and Saturn, methane somewhat falls short. Spending large amounts of nuclear fuel to transport methane across several astronomical units... even the thought seems brainless. Even if local natural methane doesn’t exist, the energy consumed by directly reacting carbon dioxide and hydrogen is definitely more economical than interstellar transportation of methane.

Currently, the only thing Ice Giants can offer humans is their ultra-low temperature environment. This cold condition is a natural advantage for high-temperature superconductivity technology. Apart from that, well, there’s only scientific value.

In fact, that’s indeed the case. Initially, Uranus and Neptune only had a few space stations centered around the Scientific Knight Order. However, the Kings assigned there insisted on development for personal interest. The military power obtained at the time of assignment would eventually be exhausted; they needed their own sources of troops and production systems. Otherwise, they would be subject to the Kings of equal rank — those stationed on Terrestrial Planets or Gas Giants.

Frontier Kings had no choice but to transport a batch of population from the inner Solar System to their fiefs for forced development.

Later, the Seventh Martial God slew the Future King controlling Saturn and the Neptune King controlling Neptune. Meanwhile, King of the Firmament (King Uranus) was fortunate; when Uranus was far from Saturn and Neptune, seeing unfavorable trends, he excused himself as "supporting allies," took his principal Deep Space Fleet to the Jupiter Domain with the Planetary Defense Force following afterward with part of the population. Subsequently, the King ruling the Kuiper Belt up to the Oort Cloud was directly slain.

The territory granted to the King of the Kuiper Belt was the largest, being the only king whose fief was measured in light-years. The combined territories of all Monarchs in the Feudal Era fell short by miles (not even covering the Earth’s continent). Even the areas governed by other Kings were much smaller than his. The total mass of substances in the Divine King’s jurisdiction combined equaled dozens of Earth’s mass.

But truth be told, most of this mass was interstellar dust from the Oort Cloud. The small celestial bodies within the Oort Cloud only have five times Earth’s mass and are dispersed within a sphere with a two-light-year diameter. The substance here was sparse enough that the King of Godspeed could drive at low sub-light speeds.

The Kuiper Belt indeed had a mass comparable to the Asteroid Belt (about several Moons), but unlike the Asteroid Belt’s predominant rock and metal, it mainly comprised icy celestial bodies.

Protectors forcibly built cities in such places. These cities were occupied by Heroes. However, they couldn’t afford the resources to transport the entire population and industrial base to Saturn. Cities under the rule of the original King of the Kuiper Belt could only develop while waiting for an opportunity for large-scale migration.

Considering Uranus’s orbital period is 84.02 Earth years and Neptune’s is 164.8 years, and a century ago during the Seventh Martial God era when Heroes first controlled those places, Uranus was on the other side of the Solar System while Neptune was very close... most cities only had two opportunities for large-scale migration.