He took a deep breath and calmed the excitement and anxiety in his chest. Wang Qiang looked out the window at the fiery red land.
If everything went smoothly, he would spend the rest of his life on this new continent.
"Stop panting, or else we'll all be suffocating with you later." The man sitting across from him laughed and joked.
There was friendly laughter in the colonial cabin, and the tense atmosphere relaxed a lot.
At a distance of more than 80 million kilometers, the blue planet could no longer be seen from here. Although the moment they set foot on the colonial ship, they were ready to dedicate their lives to the aerospace industry. However, when they recalled various things on Earth, the twenty colonists couldn't help but feel nostalgic for their homeland.
No one knew what was waiting for them.
They were not only the pioneers of the first colonization of Mars, but they were also the first people to set foot on this land. Regardless of how many space agencies had observed this planet before, before human footprints were left on this land, no one dared to say that they understood it 100%.
However, thinking that they were expanding the territory for human civilization, it somewhat comforted them.
The colonial ship had entered the synchronous orbit and stopped above the landing site. Next, they only needed to wait for the command center's order for the captain to order an airborne landing.
Wang Qiang relaxed his body on the cushion of the seat, closed his eyes, and prepared to take a nap.
However, when he closed his eyes and opened them again, it was already an hour later.
"Attention all personnel, the command center has issued a landing order. The colonial cabin will separate from the colonial ship in ten seconds and enter the landing stage. Now the countdown begins, 10, 9, 8 … "
"So fast."
As soon as Wang Qiang opened his eyes, he heard the electronic countdown. Before he had time to mentally prepare himself, he couldn't help but panic. However, the colonial ship didn't give him time to panic, and the countdown quickly reached zero.
With a slight tremor, the entire Tiangong was divided into two, and the abdomen of about two hundred meters began to separate from the hull.
From afar, the entire colonial cabin looked like a flat cuboid. Under the traction of six plasma engines, it fell toward the fiery red land.
The orbit of Mars was only 17,000 kilometers, and its gravity was only four-ninths of that of Earth. The density of the atmosphere was thin, and although it was slightly more difficult to land on Mars than on the Moon, it was much easier than on Earth.
When the colony cabin maintained a downward tilt, the moment it came into contact with the atmosphere, the six engines changed direction and ejected more intense arcs. They dragged the colony cabin and steadily stopped the acceleration of the fall in the reverse ejection.
The high-temperature ions ejected downward were tightly wrapped around the colony cabin. From a distance, it looked like a blue meteor.
Drawing an arc in the air, this two-hundred-meter-long flat cuboid descended from the sky like a huge foot and imprinted itself on the ground.
Rumble!
Accompanied by a deafening muffled sound, the red sand was blown in all directions, flying hundreds of meters away.
Steel needles as thick as thighs popped out from the bottom of the colony, nailed into the red sand, and directly penetrated into the rock formation tens of meters below, firmly fixing the colony cabin on the desert as the "foundation" of the entire colony.
After the deployment on the ground was completed, the actions in the sky did not stop.
The colonial ship, which had an inverted "concave" shape due to the loss of the belly cabin, still floated in the synchronous orbit. In the next decade, it would continue to serve as a synchronous orbit satellite, providing communication, weather observation, crisis warning, and other services for the Mars colony.
At this point, the deployment process of the colony cabin was finally completed.
The vibration outside finally stopped, and the lights in the cabin lit up one after another.
When the light returned to the field of vision, Wang Qiang looked around, breathed quickly, and looked at the captain sitting on the left side opposite him. He asked excitedly.
"We succeeded?"
The expression on the captain's face was the same. Even the most rigid person couldn't help but be infected by the excitement and glory from the bottom of his heart.
Not only the captain, but all twenty colonists felt the same at this moment.
They received nearly a year of training and practiced day and night for the same thing. Wasn't it just for this day?
"Yes, we succeeded!" The captain took a deep breath and controlled his overflowing excitement. He ordered with a trembling voice, "All personnel, remove the safety lock. Sacron, check the operation of the oxygen system. Lu Yang, go to the power room and turn on our nuclear fusion generator. There is not much energy in the battery. "
"Yes, sir!"
"Roger!"
After the two men unlocked the safety lock, they gently jumped down from the buffer seats and quickly walked out of the room.
The captain also unlocked the safety lock. He stood in the center of the buffer cabin, moved his sore arms, and looked at the colonists who had lined up waiting for orders.
"Yang Yuhan, release the exploration drone and conduct a detailed survey of the geological situation within a ten-mile radius. Liu Rui, Wang Qiang, you two take the spacesuit and get ready to go. Caris, you and I will go to the main control cabin. The rest of the personnel immediately enter their positions. Time is tight. We must complete the deployment of the plant unit within four hours. This is related to the future food problem of the colony! "
"Yes, sir!"
The colonists responded in unison and immediately took action.
After arranging all this, the captain did not immediately leave the buffer cabin. Instead, he reached out and clicked on the holographic screen. He switched the communication channel to Earth tens of millions of kilometers away with his trembling fingertips and sent back the good news to his former home.
"Calling the ground command center, we succeeded!"
…
"… we succeeded!"
When this voice was transmitted back to Celestial City more than 80 million kilometers away, the entire command center was already filled with cheers. People whistled, raised their arms, hugged each other, and celebrated this great moment.
Looking at the colony in the center of the screen, Jiang Chen's mood at the moment was more excited than anyone present.
If the Moon was an energy base, then Mars was the arsenal of the future "Earth Federation". The whole of Mars was a huge iron mine. The endless desert was not like Earth, which was made of silicon dioxide, but iron oxide!
To put it bluntly, find a dry place on Mars and throw a shovel of sand into a blast furnace, and half a kilogram of iron would be produced.
To build a giant interstellar ship hundreds of times larger than SS Seagull, it would require at least tens of millions of tons of steel. It would be difficult to rely on the minerals on Earth and asteroid mining alone. And if he wanted to build an "invincible fleet" in the era of interstellar navigation, it would be impossible without a Mars colony as a steel industrial base!
As an important part of Jiang Chen's space plan, the future "Mars Industrial Park" would bear more than 80% of the shipbuilding capacity of the Earth Federation.
In this way, in the face of the upcoming invasion, Earth would have the power to fight back.
In order to celebrate this exciting moment, Jiang Chen struck while the iron was hot and announced.
"I announce that all employees involved in the Mars colonization plan, regardless of position, will be rewarded 500,000 Xin New dollars! This money will be paid by me personally! "
Such a generous red envelope pushed the cheers in the command center to a new climax …
Select text and click 'Report' to let us know about any bad translation.
