Of course, to Luo Yuan, the most important thing was that the new battleship could accommodate more people than he had imagined.
Based on the population density of the mothership, it could even accommodate one billion people, let alone five million. Skyscrapers had always been the best way to accommodate a population. Even if it was the size of a town, it would be able to accommodate the population of China before the apocalypse.
However, based on the growth rate of the human population, it would take hundreds of years to fill up the entire spaceship.
All these years, the Glassian mothership's secret laboratory had never stopped cloning humans. The only thing they did was to reduce the number of clones being produced. Within ten years, the human population had increased by two million, reaching a total of eight million people.
It was not because they could not clone more humans, nor was it to avoid being exposed. It was because there was a severe shortage of nurseries and teachers.
The number of people who did not go into hibernation was very small. There were less than 500,000 of them and most of them were researchers. There were only about 30,000 nurseries. After all, clones were not products and they were not as strong as Luo Yuan's clones. There was no need to care about them after they left the nutrient solution.
The newborn cloned babies were relatively weak. They were not much different from ordinary people. At most, they were slightly stronger. Whether it was feeding or urinating, they had to be taken care of.
Until they were half a year old, they began to behave like ordinary people. They walked independently and learned to speak. By then, there was basically no need to take care of them.
These cloned children could not be seen in the virtual world. They stayed in the mothership's welfare home to study and live. They did not move around in the virtual world. Their cognitive and distinguishing abilities were far from mature. If they stayed in the virtual world for a long time, they would easily confuse reality and the virtual world.
In fact, it was not only children. Many adults had this tendency. Every time they left the virtual world, they would feel as if they had been in another world. To them, reality was just a place to satisfy their physiological needs. Most of their time was spent in the virtual world. They lived there, worked there, and played there.
What was reality? What was fake? The definition was blurred as the virtual world became more and more realistic.
This was the inevitable phenomenon of staying in the virtual world for a long time. It was also an unavoidable side effect. However, Luo Yuan did not want to correct it. The greatest value of the researchers was their wisdom. As long as it did not affect their work, they could do whatever they wanted.
…
No matter how powerful and advanced the new battleship was, it was useless to the humans now. The humans could only stay in the old Glassian mothership and could only verify the technology in the virtual world.
This place was in the middle of nowhere. The Dark Domain was completely empty, devoid of any resources. Even if the Goddess of Luck happened to find a small planet, it was impossible to build a giant spaceship of ten billion tons.
This was a huge object that could only be built with a planet as the mining area. It was not something that one or two small planets could satisfy. The construction work could only be carried out after flying to Barnard's Star.
This would require another ten years of flight.
However, after more than ten years, with the advancement of human technology, this kind of spaceship would no longer be useful. This was a spaceship destined to remain in the blueprint. In the future, it could only be seen in the virtual world.
…
After visiting the spaceship, they boarded the aircraft and headed to the next location. The space there had become a testing ground for human military power. Other than spaceships and factories, there were many strange space defense weapons floating in the air.
"This is one of the components of the armed satellite global defense system designed by the Heavenly Shield Weapon Research Institute. It weighs 300 million tons and has 10 sets of giant nuclear fusion furnaces. It also has a gamma ray cannon and 12 rapid-fire electromagnetic cannons for defense. It can capture targets automatically. If it was a complete set, there would be 18,000 of them, covering the entire planet."
The Heavenly Shield Weapon Research Institute was one of the largest research institutes that specialized in space defense weapons. Almost two-thirds of the space defense weapons here were designed by them. It was not easy for Luo Yuan and a group of leaders to inspect the space defense. The director of the design institute immediately introduced the spaceship to Luo Yuan.
However, when Luo Yuan heard the number, he frowned, "300 million tons, more than 10,000 of them. Can we afford the consumption of resources?"
"This …" The director of the design institute was embarrassed, "This was designed by some young people. We will correct it immediately."
"You can be bold when you design, but you have to integrate theory with reality. The real world is not a virtual world. There are not that many resources that can be exploited." Luo Yuan reprimanded in a deep voice.
"Mayor, you are right. This is what I wanted to say as well. All these years, the mechanical and military design departments have become bolder in their mechanical design. Big is beautiful and more is better. The mech that was more than 300 meters tall not long ago really scared me. What is the use of such a tall and big mech? If there is a war, it would be better to use a space fighter. I think we should put a stop to this trend. "Bi Jianping who was next to him immediately added.
The director of the research institute was sweating profusely after being criticized by the two big bosses. He dared not defend himself at all.
"This is still considered good. You will never know the tonnage of the first design version of the battleship that was going to be built. It was 300 billion tons. What do you think these people are thinking?" Tian Jinping chuckled, looking like a good old man. But in fact, he didn't like to smile outside. As a high-ranking official in charge of the Ministry of Industry, he was tough and strict. Ordinary subordinates didn't even dare to breathe loudly in front of him.
Luo Yuan laughed and said, "Their authority in the virtual world is a little too high. It seems like we need to adjust it. Although the unlimited supply of resources has increased the efficiency of research, it could easily lead the development of technology to the wrong direction. The resources in Barnard's Star are barren and it is difficult to exploit them. If this continues, our development will be severely restricted."
This was not a guess but a reality. According to the data from the spaceship, there were only two rocky planets in this star system. The rest were gaseous planets.
Moreover, the star was a red dwarf. The light it emitted was very weak, causing the surface of the planets to be covered with a thick layer of ice. The ice layer was not like the shallow ice layer on Earth. It could be thousands or even tens of thousands of meters thick. Other than water, it was relatively easy to obtain other resources. It was quite troublesome and time-consuming to exploit other resources.
What was more serious was that humans had to consider the possibility that these rocky planets were actually gaseous or water. If this was true, it would undoubtedly be bad news for humans.
In fact, the probability of this happening was not low. The temperature of the star system was too low. If the mass of a normal gaseous planet was not large enough to spontaneously generate heat, there was a possibility that it would be frozen. This was because regardless of whether it was methane or hydrogen, they could not withstand the low temperature that was close to absolute zero.
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