Deep Space Wandering Fleet-Chapter 86 - 87: Unease

Chapter 86: Chapter 87: Unease

Zhang Yuan nodded, acknowledging he understood.

Even Li Zhendong, a notoriously lazy person, became hurried in his actions during this period, eager to achieve something.

When they first boarded the spaceship, although there was the pain of departure, there was also a sense of anticipation for the future and a novelty.

But now, that anticipation had slowly faded, the pace of life inside the spaceship had accelerated, and there were visibly fewer people chatting by the roadside.

Because everyone was acutely aware that in the vast and desolate universe, this Mother Ship was all they had.

This sense of security was severely lacking.

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“Earth Era Time” was indeed gigantic and warm and comfortable, yet it still couldn’t compare with Earth, a planet that had stood in the universe for 4.6 billion years.

A meteorite of moderate size, if it were to collide with it, could completely annihilate the spaceship, leaving no survivors.

Humans, tiny and fragile creatures. An average person, without a space suit, exposed to the universe, would not survive more than 90 seconds, their lung’s air would escape their body within a few seconds, and the remaining oxygen in their blood could sustain them for about 15 seconds.

After the next 15 seconds passed, one would fall into a coma, and whether they would survive was simply a matter of fate.

Because everyone was clear about these facts, as they drifted further from their Mother Star, an intense unease was inevitably produced.

Even Zhang Yuan himself felt this unease. He often jerked awake from his dreams, only to find it had been a nightmare before falling back into a deep, heavy sleep.

Hence, little entertainment and gossip like Zhang Yuan’s became a lifesaver, discussed with relish. People wanted to deliberately create a relaxed environment similar to Earth during their tense work, to comfort their fearful subconscious.

Such subconscious changes were normal; some psychologists aboard the spaceship specialized in this field. Large group activities were often organized within each community, not only to foster a sense of community but also with the hint of treating cosmic phobia.

However, even so, several dozen cases of depression had emerged over six months.

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“That’s why, ah, you need to find a life partner, preferably a beautiful girlfriend you can complain with. Alone, one can only struggle on. Unless you have exceptionally strong mental resilience…”

There it was again, the same old tune.

Zhang Yuan quickly turned his head away, pretending he hadn’t heard.

“By the way, after the spaceship completes its maneuver, the nuclear engine will shut down and won’t restart until six months later. If you have any observational experiments, you’ve only got today… Or, you could go visit the lateral engines.”

Zhang Yuan nodded. Senior Brother Zhao was indeed an excellent mentor. Even under the very limited experimental conditions, he always came up with timely and apt suggestions.

In this respect, he was far better than Academician Ding. Up to now, apart from the monthly meetings at the beginning of each month, Zhang Yuan had rarely seen Ding Zhaodong… and even when he did, they hardly exchanged more than a few words.

For the next few minutes, he made his way unhurriedly to the lateral engine observation room, where bright screens displayed a flurry of activity with many workers focused on the changing parameters.

From one of the screens, one could see long streams of plasma flames shooting out from the sides, causing the whole spaceship to slowly rotate.

The angular velocity of the ship’s rotation was very low, completing a 180-degree turn in over twenty hours, so most people barely noticed it.

Looking at the second screen, it showed the plasma turbulence inside the reactor. Despite being specially treated, the extremely bright screen was still somewhat dazzling.

This infrared spectrum was like a complex whirlpool of water, with plasma transport across magnetic fields primarily driven by low-frequency drift wave turbulence.

“Hey, Zhang Yuan!”

“Hello,” he greeted a few colleagues, but no one paid him much attention. Zhang Yuan continued his study in front of the screens.

The high temperatures generated by nuclear fusion vaporized the metallic sodium lining the reactor walls, and these scorching vapors generated electrical energy.

At the same time, the plasma was ejected by the magnetic field as a working fluid, providing kinetic energy to the spaceship.

The principle was simple, but this nuclear engine device was the pinnacle of human intellect. It was so complex that every single part, even including the welding techniques, could be the subject of an entire paper!

It was also the second generation of nuclear fusion engines.

After the fusion of a Helium-3 nucleus and a deuterium nucleus, a Helium-4 atom, a proton, and an enormous amount of energy were produced. Since it didn’t produce neutrons, it was cleaner and more stable than deuterium-tritium fusion, with lower maintenance costs.

However, mining Helium-3 on the Moon was actually a huge bluff in the space engineering field. Helium-3’s abundance in the lunar soil was so low that the cost of extraction was too great. Upon calculation, one would find that using Helium-3 for fusion was not as cost-effective as using the first generation’s deuterium-tritium fusion.

But establishing a space base on the Moon wasn’t without its uses, as the Moon was the most suitable natural base for Space Industry production. Even without considering Helium-3, the Moon still held great development value.

Only after the development of the Jupiter Base did Helium-3 fusion from the second generation of nuclear engineering truly become widespread.

“What you’re seeing now is the fluid motion of the plasma turbulence, how beautiful it is! The control software was designed by your father thirty years ago using a general wavelet transform method, and it’s still the best algorithm mankind has.”

In the observation room, a colleague named John Wilson struck up a conversation.

“Really? The general wavelet transform method…” Hearing his father’s name made Zhang Yuan very proud.

“But essentially, the problem of plasma turbulence has not been completely solved.”

John Wilson was a high-tech talent specializing in plasma physics who often lamented that human technology was too inferior and immature.

However, he was actually a very straightforward person.

“It’s pretty well-contained now, isn’t it? The current method is quite stable, and theoretically, it shouldn’t have any accidents for decades or even a century.” Hearing John question his father’s achievement, Zhang Yuan was slightly defiant.

“Yes, it is quite stable. But as your ancients used to say in Summer language, ‘rough methods bring miracles,’ the way they constrain these plasmas is just too crude and far from elegant!”

John Wilson affirmed with certainty, “If we only use a 10T magnetic field to constrain it, I guarantee that the high-temperature plasmas would still splatter against the reactor walls, causing the entire device to shut down!”

Humans now used a magnetic field intensity of 100T, ten times stronger.

Furthermore, with supercomputers constantly monitoring these plasma turbulences, using immense computing power to maintain the balance of the turbulence, it was no wonder this method was a classic example of achieving miracles through brute force.