Chapter 161: Opening the Route
Lu Yuan pulled his thoughts back and cleared his throat.
“That’s all for the Star Alliance matter for now. Later, there will be employees asking you about the general parameters of Star Alliance warships. Please cooperate then.”
“No problem, you can send people to ask anytime.”
“Hmm, I actually have another matter to discuss today.”
Lu Yuan gave Lao Yu a meaningful look.
“I plan to help you return to New Hope as Cangyuan outsourced personnel as soon as possible to establish a connection between Cangyuan and New Hope. For this, I will help you build a sufficiently comfortable spaceship.”
“This—is that true?!”
This time, not just Lao Yu, but all his subordinates stood up.
Lu Yuan shrugged: “You’ve been here for almost three weeks, haven’t you? When have I ever lied?”
Can you have a little trust?
“Please forgive me, Executive Officer! We are just—exceptionally overjoyed and excited! However, all our belongings were stolen by pirates before, including navigation data. Without a star map, the journey will be difficult.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Jubian said with a smile, “We found the star map in Omar’s power armor computer. That guy was still dreaming of escaping until the last moment, so he didn’t delete the navigation data. There are precise coordinates for all the jump points along the way.”
“The star map shows that it requires 19 wormhole jumps to get from here to New Hope.”
Lu Yuan motioned for Lao Yu to sit down, telling him not to be so jumpy.
“The first 9 star systems are uninhabited areas, without space station defenses, probably because they lack development value; the latter 10 belong to the ‘high seas’ under New Hope’s monitoring, with two checkpoint space stations, but according to the navigation data, they should not make things difficult for passing ships.”
“Yes, New Hope’s stations are just service points.” Lao Yu nodded, “19 wormhole jumps, that would be a journey of 80 to 120 days.”
“No, it won’t take that long.”
Lu Yuan, being a good person, gave them another surprise.
“I plan to build another warp ship. The journey will be about 8 to 10 days. We must establish contact with New Hope as soon as possible.”
This journey will cost Cangyuan one-third of its 【Warp zero element】 reserves, but as long as a trade route can be opened, it will be worth it.
Lao Yu could not refuse such an enticing offer and agreed on the spot.
Of course, Lu Yuan would not let Lao Yu and his group return by themselves. He would have players act as bodyguards to accompany them. Although a 10-day journey is quite long, based on his understanding of the players, some would still enthusiastically sign up.
After discussing this matter, Lu Yuan left Jubian, called Black Smoke and Moto, and immediately headed to the River Valley Great Oilfield.
Cheng Yun stood by an all-terrain vehicle, waiting there early.
Two “hummingbirds” and more than twenty mechanical servant soldiers provided security and vigilance around, preventing ill-intentioned people from approaching.
Not everyone welcomed Cangyuan’s takeover of Oasis City, such as the nobles.
“Good morning, Mr. Cheng Yun, please give us a detailed introduction to this place.”
“Okay! Get in the car!”
Cheng Yun took the Executive Officer and his One line group on another tour of the place where Lu Yuan had fought yesterday.
“Oil is Oasis City’s most important natural resource,” Cheng Yun said, pointing at the towering derricks, “Our extraction conditions are excellent. Let me put it this way, just insert a pipe into the ground, and oil will basically gush out by itself, and the quality is very high!”
“The extraction cost is extremely low,” Lu Yuan interjected.
“Exactly! That’s the meaning. The best 30 wells among them are the City Lord’s private property, and they are now under your name.”
“Very good. What is the oil well output? How much crude oil can be produced in a day?”
“Currently, one well only produces about 30 tons, but this is a production volume artificially set based on demand. In reality, if the capacity is fully unleashed, the theoretical daily production limit is almost 5,000 tons.”
“Good heavens, 5,000 tons! One well? One day?!”
Black Smoke was greatly surprised and gained a whole new understanding of Oasis City’s strategic significance.
As an Engineer for a central state-owned power enterprise, he knew a little about oil and understood that many oil wells in China had a daily output of no more than 10 tons, so large imports were necessary.
Moto next to him chuckled.
“Don’t act like you’ve never seen the world. Some high-quality oil fields in the Middle East in reality also have this capability. What do you think makes them so rich?”
“But no matter what, it’s just incredibly powerful! The entire oil field can produce hundreds of thousands of tons of crude oil a day, providing at least 200,000 tons of carbon raw materials. We wouldn’t be able to use it all up even if we built ships like crazy!”
“Heh heh—don’t speak too soon. A ship the size of a real-life aircraft carrier needs over ten thousand tons of carbon raw materials. If we want to build those 30-kilometer-long Titans in the future, with the length increasing a hundredfold, the volume and weight will increase by at least a millionfold, requiring over ten billion tons of carbon. That would require two centuries of oil, and it might not even be enough to drain this oil field.”
“So what? By then, we will definitely have more carbon resources!”
The two went back and forth, and the focus of their argument quickly shifted from output to how to lay crude oil pipelines, entering work mode.
You two just secretly enjoy yourselves.
Lu Yuan, in the co-pilot seat, had the corners of his mouth turned up.
The hard work of taking down Oasis City was worth it.
It now seems that the output of carbon fiber and carbon-carbon composite materials will not be a concern for a considerable period of time.
Higher-end CNT carbon nanotube fibers are limited by the number of devices, and the industrial ship’s production capacity is limited. Fortunately, there are not many places where this super material is needed.
As for ships with a full CNT structure, although they are the dream top configuration at this stage, they are still a bit too luxurious.
Now, on the contrary, the output of metals is somewhat lagging, especially titanium alloy.
Carbon materials have the advantages of high mechanical strength and lightness, but they are unsatisfactory in energy absorption and heat resistance. Future space warships will also need to be wrapped in a layer of composite armor made of titanium alloy, ceramics, or other durable materials outside the carbon structure, and the consumption of metals will not be low.
After some inspection, Lu Yuan had a rough idea of the scale of future space warships.
More detailed design plans still need to be discussed by “experts” inside and outside the game.
Whoosh!
The sound from the sky interrupted Lu Yuan’s thoughts.
The aerospace plane was carrying workers from Red Iron Town into space, flying to the lunar mine to quickly resume hydrogen-3 nuclear fuel production there.
It has been fully upgraded to the night heron type, equipped with a Mass Effect Zero Element Furnace, and its flight quality has undergone a transformation. Now, it only needs a small rocket engine with 5 tons of thrust to reach second cosmic velocity, making a round trip to the moon in 6 hours.
The fuel, raw materials, equipment, technology, and personnel needed for shipbuilding, although of varying levels, are well prepared.
Now, all that’s left is the plan.
Inside the industrial ship, Jubian, having taken off his uniform, sat comfortably in the central control room and called the Mage.
“I say, Brother Assistant, you should have reached the pyramid by now, right? How is that device? Is it the legendary kinetic shield?”
“Yes!!”
The Mage’s voice was so loud that Jubian rubbed his ears.
“It must have been modified from a kinetic shield. It has been confirmed that it can increase material mass. And there’s a complete user manual in the operating system, and those high-ranking monks even left three hundred years of operation records. In short, the data is very complete, it’s amazing! Heheheheheh—..”
“I say, don’t laugh like a pervert—In short, study it thoroughly as soon as possible. We need to replicate it later.”
After hanging up the phone, Jubian assigned the task of analyzing the plasma cannon to other new Scholars.
He had a more important task, which was to preside over the design of Cangyuan’s first space battleship.
First, he would log into the community to see what good ideas netizens had.