Chapter 657: 375
Since the Korolya incident erupted eight months had passed, and Gu Hang had never returned to Rage Owl Star, let alone visited Heijian Star.
As for the situations on these two worlds, he mostly learned about them through reports from government officials.
Although Korolya had tremendous potential and was a target for focused development, his fundamental concerns still lay with Rage Owl Star.
And he also needed to take back the several dozen Black Boxes that had come out of this round of technological lottery.
The importance of the shipyard was also high in his mind, and he needed to go back and personally keep an eye on it.
Now that Korolya’s situation had generally stabilized and the reforms had entered the right track, and with so many issues accumulated, it was time for him to make a return trip.
…
In Korolya he had bid on ten academies, most of which were placed in Mingyan City, and the remaining three were separately situated in three other Nest Capitals that had begun preliminary stages of reform.
After completing this last task, he embarked on the starship back to Rage Owl Star.
…
Wu Jiarong was numb.
Despite knowing that if the Governor specially sought her out to visit the Secret Research Institute, it must be to show her something big.
After the Governor’s landing and a few days of handling official affairs at the Governor’s mansion in Revival City, meeting with officials from various regions, and then preparing to inspect the Weixing City Industrial Center and explicitly informing her of his visit to the institute, she had already mentally braced herself.
However, after she accompanied the Governor along with the head of the industrial center, Patel, for an inspection that lasted a day, the Governor came to her Secret Research Institute late at night.
A spare underground space had already been cleared out, but after looking around, the Governor remarked,
“Not enough.”
What the hell is not enough?
How many Black Boxes do you have?
Even if there were a hundred, this space could accommodate them!
Of course, she dared not voice these thoughts, only muttering to herself internally before painfully saying to the Governor, “This is currently the largest warehouse we can put into use. Larger ones are still being excavated, and if it really won’t do, we could only employ the few smaller warehouses next door and try to connect them…”
Gu Hang stroked his chin and went with Wu Jiarong to look at the other so-called unopened small warehouses.
He was somewhat disappointed.
They were not enough.
However, he also knew that Wu Jiarong couldn’t be blamed for not giving her all.
Here, situated in the outskirts of Weixing City, appeared to be a research institute on the surface, but the most crucial area was underground, where all the technological rewards of Black Boxes that Gu Hang had redeemed from the very beginning to now were placed.
All these Black Boxes were in use, producing finished products and industrial lines, all working according to the Union’s demands.
This also meant that the utilization rate of the entire space had to be particularly high. The Black Boxes couldn’t simply be stacked up; although they could operate fully autonomously internally, both the input and output required external design guidance and an excellent assembly line design.
Now, the Black Boxes that Gu Hang planned to bring out weren’t indeed as many as a hundred, but there still were about fifty or so—out of the total thirty draws he previously made, removing less than five empty ones, the rest of the technology were mostly finished products and mother machine Black Boxes.
But regardless, although the number wasn’t that exaggerated, some individual Black Boxes were particularly large.
Like the technology for building several starships.
The finished product and mother machine, of course, didn’t mean that inserting materials would instantly produce a complete ship. That was impossible.
The main thing was to produce some modular key components according to design requirements—if one really wanted full production, that was also possible, but for instance, producing armor steel plates with Black Boxes would be rather foolish, completely unnecessary.
Later on, the Black Boxes should output key modular components, or the mother machines should produce production lines for these modular components. These would be completed on the ground and then transported into space; within the space, in the starport’s shipyard, according to the technical requirements, ship hulls would be built, and then these key components would be assembled into the ships in the shipyard.
But no matter how, even if it’s just modular production of core components, as long as they are used on starships, they can’t be small.
And even though the underground space of the institute had already been made as large as possible, when producing components for spacefaring people, it was already getting close to reaching the ceiling, not to mention the much larger starship components.
It was quite normal for Wu Jiarong not to have considered this beforehand.
Moreover, as more and more Black Boxes were placed inside the institute, with growing scales, this problem would become even more severe.
And not to mention the issue of space for placement, such a large space requiring so much raw material daily and outputting so many products, secrecy work would also become increasingly difficult.
It was time to consider other solutions.
The first thought in Gu Hang’s mind was to build a dedicated space city or a Star Fortress in space to house these unspeakable secrets.
There were many advantages in space. There was no need to worry about accidental entry, defenses could be extremely stringent, space was definitely ample, and even transportation would become more convenient than on the ground as the number of Union starships increased over time.
But he quickly dismissed this idea himself.
It was too conspicuous.
Conventional secrecy was manageable, and a Star Fortress could be designed to be difficult to infiltrate; but secrecy would simultaneously become incredibly difficult, especially when there were proper procedures demanding entry for inspection, and then things would become quite tricky.