Excessive gravity is extremely harmful to the human body. It not only causes mechanical injuries, such as muscle strain, bone injury, and internal organ damage, but also seriously affects the human body's endocrine system, nervous system, etc. The key is that the high gravity on Jupiter does not last only for a moment and then disappear like the acceleration of a spacecraft, but exists forever. As long as you get within a certain range of Jupiter, you cannot escape this influence. If a clone stays in this environment for a long time, he will become disabled in a few years. Therefore, in order to maintain the operation of this energy collection system, Li Qingsong had to let the clones adopt a rotation system, working on Jupiter for a period of time and then withdrawing to recuperate. But even so, on average hundreds of clones die or become disabled due to gravity every day, losing their value and having to be destroyed. The losses in the Jovian system are certainly heavy. But can this be an obstacle? Li Qingsong’s answer was no! Compared with the journey of developing the entire solar system, compared with one's own technological progress, compared with the operation of factories, what are the dead clones and destroyed planes?
I can afford the loss! Even under such circumstances, supported by the endless supply of deuterium gas from Jupiter, Li Qingsong's entire industrial system was operating vigorously and technology was rapidly improving. At this moment, controlled nuclear fusion technology is close to maturity and has entered the stage of large-scale application. The only thing that has not been overcome is miniaturization. With the guidance and information from the Blueprint Man, Li Qingsong already has a specific idea and believes that a breakthrough will come soon. While conducting research on controlled nuclear fusion, Li Qingsong was also simultaneously conducting research on another crucial technology. High-speed ion propulsion technology! Like controlled nuclear fusion, high-speed ion propulsion technology is also one of the essential technologies for interstellar travel. Secondary pressurization propulsion technology still requires a huge amount of chemical fuel as a working fluid, which is unthinkable in interstellar navigation. Because no spacecraft can carry that much fluid, no matter how big it is. At best, it can only be used for navigation within a star system, as it is now. Li Qingsong had also begun researching high-speed ion propulsion technology long before the Blueprint people arrived. But the research at that time could only push a piece of paper at best and was completely impractical. Since defeating the Blueprint civilization decades ago, capturing enough Blueprint people and obtaining a large amount of scientific and technological information, high-speed ion propulsion technology, like controlled nuclear fusion technology, has also made rapid progress. From the initial ion injection speed of only 30 kilometers per second, and the total thrust could only push a piece of paper, the continuous advancement of technology has allowed its thrust and efficiency to increase day by day. Kilogram-level thrust, ton-level thrust, hundred-ton-level thrust, ion jet speed increased from the initial 30 kilometers per second to 100 kilometers per second, 500 kilometers per second, 1000 kilometers per second... After decades of all-out development, Li Qingsong's ion propulsion technology can now eject ions at a speed of 1,500 kilometers per second, thereby obtaining a large amount of reverse thrust. It can even propel a Mercury-class spacecraft with a mass of 300 tons, and its maneuverability is no worse than when it used secondary pressurization propulsion before! But this is still not the end of ion propulsion technology. Compared with the secondary pressurization propulsion technology, which has reached its limit and can hardly be improved due to the laws of physics, it still has a lot of room for improvement. Especially when combined with a small ship-borne nuclear fusion device, high-speed ion propulsion technology is even more powerful. Now, it can be applied on a large scale!
Therefore, Li Qingsong's spacecraft system underwent a comprehensive upgrade. All cargo ships, scientific research ships, exploration ships, passenger ships, etc., which have been replaced with controlled nuclear fusion power, have all had their secondary pressurization propulsion modules removed and replaced with high-speed ion propulsion modules. In addition to warships, Li Qingsong owns tens of thousands of spaceships of various sizes. The nearly one million high-speed ion engines equipped on them are working almost all the time, constantly feeding back huge amounts of work data to Li Qingsong, providing support for subsequent improvements and upgrades. At present, ion propulsion technology has reached a bottleneck stage, just like the miniaturization of nuclear fusion reactors. But it doesn't matter, there are no fundamental obstacles to its subsequent development. As long as the research is carried out step by step, the performance can be continuously improved. In addition to these two most critical technologies, Li Qingsong also digested and absorbed the knowledge that originally belonged to the Blueprint people in the areas of high-speed layered scanning radar, high-speed electromagnetic cannon, high-power laser cannon, materials science, etc., at a speed that shocked the Blueprint people and integrated it into his own system. Time passed by little by little, and in the blink of an eye, another 20 years had passed. At this moment, a small warship with a total full load mass of only 300 tons appeared in the spacecraft assembly plant and appeared in front of Li Qingsong. After ignition, it suddenly climbed into space at an incredibly fast speed and disappeared from the clone's sight. Driven by the bright blue tail flame, it nimbly performed various maneuvers in space, while the high-speed layered scanning radar continuously scanned all movements from the surrounding space. Supported by the high-speed bogie, the electromagnetic cannon fired projectiles at a speed far exceeding that of any previous cannon, reaching a speed of more than 20 kilometers per second, like a torrential rain. The high-power laser cannon released laser beams carrying a breath of destruction, burning everything visible and invisible in its path... Looking at this latest Mercury-class battleship, Li Qingsong's heart was filled with joy. At this moment, all performance indicators of this Mercury-class battleship have fully reached the level of the warships of the original Bluetook civilization, and even slightly exceeded it in some places. The birth of this Mercury-class battleship means that its technological level has fully caught up with the Bluetook civilization! Even if another Bluetook civilization in its heyday arrives, he can destroy it with just one move. Although our technological level is the same, our industrial production efficiency is many times higher than theirs. This means that I now truly have the ability to travel among the stars. In that case... It's time to go. We have already wasted so much time. If we don’t leave now, we may not be able to leave. So, build a fleet. Let's build a truly interstellar fleet that can truly navigate the interstellar distances that are several light years or even dozens of light years away. If converted into kilometers, that's tens of trillions or even hundreds of trillions of kilometers.