Planetary engines

The mass of ε Eri b is greater than that of Jupiter, and accordingly, its gravitational hold is somewhat greater than that of Jupiter. Hawk observed that among the moons orbiting ε Eri b, there are more than two dozen that have reached hydrostatic equilibrium.

"The new ship will be built after the construction of the Large Particle Collider and the new spaceship in the ε Eri system is over. ε Eri c will also be built as an interstellar fortress, so that ε Eri b and ε Eri c will become two lines of defense in the star system of the ε Eri system. If I encounter any more unseen aliens, even if the technology surpasses mine, I will still have a fighting chance."

Hawk thought darkly.

The material composition of ε Eri b is not much different from Jupiter, which means that ε Eri b will become an inexhaustible source of nuclear fusion fuel for Hawke. After the initial inspection, Hawk sat on the ε Eri and used fifty country-class ships as escort forces, and drove all the remaining three hundred village ships into the atmosphere of ε Eri b, slowly drifting with the atmospheric flow of ε Eri b.

The three hundred village-class ships were busy for a month before they collected enough fusion fuel to fill up all the ships. These fusion fuels, with the current construction progress, were enough to last Hawke three months.

"It's still a little less, my various projects are too big and consume too much energy. Using these combat-type ships to collect fuel is too inefficient. It seems that when I go back, I have to develop a special kind of ship for collecting fuel."

Embarking on the return voyage, Hawke made up his mind.

This time the era of great construction, Hawk's total energy consumption alone is estimated to be comparable to the entire energy consumption of humans in the Earth era, which is an incredible amount.

Fortunately, there is a whole planet as Hawk's energy source base, if it was on Earth, it would have been an energy crisis.

Because of the full load of fuel and the increased mass of the ship, Hawk took ten days to return to ε Eri a. With the arrival of a large amount of fuel replenishment, the construction of various projects in the era of great construction once again accelerated the progress.

Hawk temporarily stopped the construction of combat-type airships and began to build an airship dedicated to the collection of fuel, which was larger than any of Hawk's existing airships, with a total mass of three million tons and a volume of twelve hundred meters by five hundred meters by sixty meters, which, in Hawk's planning, already belonged to a medium-sized city-class airship.

However, this ship is still a certain gap from the real city-class ship, in addition to the necessary laser collision avoidance device, it is not equipped with any weapons, mobility is very poor, the maximum speed can only reach 100 km per second, protection is also very weak, a low-powered energy cannon shells will be enough to put it flat, in general, it basically has no combat power, but used for transport ships, but very suitable.

In Hawk's planning, each of these ships will be equipped with two hundred village and township level ships, after arriving at ε Eri b, the municipal ship will enter the orbit around ε Eri b, and its village and township level ships will enter the ε Eri b atmosphere for mining, and after collecting full, they will transfer the fuel to the municipal ship, and then continue collecting until they are all full and then return.

The first batch of city-class airships were built five in total, counting the respective village and township-class airships equipped with their full loads of fuel once, which can meet the current Hawk various engineering construction for a year. And with the experience of collecting fuel for the first time, Hawke has compiled an automatic collection procedure, so that in the future he will not have to go to ε Eri b to mine fuel personally.

After solving the problem of energy sources, Hawk began to carry out all kinds of space turrets, ground turrets, large planetary engines and large particle collider construction work.

City-class ships were busy shuttling in space, transporting large amounts of fuel for Hawk, thousands of mining bases, hundreds of mechanical foundries were in full swing, and hundreds of village ships served as surface transport on the ε Eri a. The entire ε Eri star system showed a thriving scene.

Three years later, the first large planetary engine was constructed.

This is a hundred meters high, covering an area of 600,000 square meters of giant buildings, the entire building is tilted cylindrical shape, Hawk also installed in the bottom of the building adjustment device, can easily adjust the entire building tilt direction.

Thousands of robots were busy inside the building, carrying out the debugging of various instruments, installed in various parts of the building, up to a million number of sensors constantly transmitting information to the central computer, Hawk played his huge computing power, one to one to respond to it.

"Fuel tank pressure is normal, fusion reactor is normal, cooling system is normal, jet port is normal ..." Hawk looked at the data, to make sure that all normal, and then gave the order to turn on the machine.

In order to prevent a large number of airflow eruption will be under their own space dock, satellites and other impact, Hawk in advance of the jets facing the direction of a variety of aircraft orbits are adjusted to avoid away in advance.

With the start-up order, immediately, thousands of nuclear fusion reactors began to operate at full power, a large amount of energy was transported out by the wire, to the pressure chamber here, the pressure chamber was pressurized and heated to an unimaginable degree, a huge amount of propellant under the action of high temperature and pressure, at an incredibly high speed, ejected from the jet port.

Here is the back of ε Eri a, here is the eternal darkness, but suddenly, in ε Eri a equator there, a bright blue light, this light rose to the sky, the length of several tens of thousands of meters, like a blinding lightning, cut through the dark sky, will be nearby dozens of kilometers around the blue.

It was as if ε Eri a had suddenly grown a long, thin tail.

A satellite running three hundred kilometers from the ground was blown by this airflow, and immediately, the extreme heat burned and melted away its outstretched wings, and then, like a mosquito in a gale, the satellite was blown to ε Eri a's second cosmic speed, tumbling and rolling and not knowing where to run.

"I ... rubbed." Hawk dumbfounded at all this, a rare burst of foul language.

"The airflow jet height, its generated thrust, etc., have exceeded my original estimate ah, it seems, the various aircraft orbits in space, need to redo a little adjustment."

After the satellite was blown away, Hawk pre-built seismic wave monitoring instruments detected a faint shock wave, Hawk knew that this is the crust of the earth under great pressure, resulting from deformation.

At the same time, installed in the ground tens of meters to tens of thousands of meters ranging from tens of thousands of detectors will also be a steady stream of data transmitted to the Hawk brain. These data, will help Hawke for the crustal force to make analysis.

Hawke's brain spun rapidly, thinking about these issues while nervously watching the data coming from the pressure sensors, carefully manipulating the planetary engine, thousands of robots and tens of thousands of controllers, constantly making minor adjustments.

"According to the current data, planet engine number one will be able to produce a huge amount of counter-thrust to ε Eri a. This is shown by the fact that planet engine number one can produce a deceleration of zero point one millimeter per minute for ε Eri a ... ε Eri a's current orbital speed is fifty-nine kilometers per second. That is, it would take only a hundred years or so for the Planet One engine to bring ε Eri a's velocity to zero, if the rest of the factors are not taken into account."

"But taking into account the crust pressure, the direction of deceleration and later acceleration, only one planetary engine is far from enough, at least ten thousand would be sufficient." Hawk silently calculated, "10,000 planetary engines, eh, five years is enough time to finish building."

Building a planetary engine is a complex process, in the construction process, in addition to consider the construction process, but also must consider the geological situation of ε Eri a. The reason is simple, if the planetary engine is built in a place where the crust is not hard enough, when the planetary engine is launched, under the enormous pressure, it may directly drill through the crust and run into the ground.

Moreover, because the planetary engine power is too large, Hawk must also consider the material tolerance, heat dissipation system and other aspects of the problem. But even in the face of all the difficulties, Hawke is also confident that within five years, the planetary engine all built.

Labor is not a problem for Hawk, as long as there are enough raw materials and energy, several major robotics factories will produce thousands of robots every day if they are in full production, these tireless, precise, error-free quality workers, is a strong guarantee for Hawk to carry out all kinds of construction.

Now, the total number of robots busy in the ε Eri a ground, as well as transport brigades, combat brigades and other kinds of ships, as well as space docks, batteries, etc., has exceeded a million, and is still increasing rapidly.

This is only the initial stage of construction. When Hawk will ε Eri a push to the right orbit, the construction of the ring ε Eri galaxy large particle collider is the real challenge of Hawk technology.

The Large Particle Collider will rotate around the ε Eri galaxy at a distance of 38 million kilometers, relying on the centrifugal force of its own rotation to counteract the gravitational force of the ε Eri galaxy. This would bring the total length of this collider to more than 200 million kilometers, and with a diameter of twenty meters, its total mass would reach more than 700 billion tons.

This, not counting the mass of the necessary backup maintenance force fleet, and the mass of the various anti-meteorite impact turrets.

This would be a great project.

The extent of Hawk's technology will take a great leap forward with the completion of the Large Particle Collider in the ring ε Eri galaxy.