Chapter 163: Aerospace Hub
Next to Red Iron Town, an aerospace center began construction.
A new batch of 400 interns joined the construction team.
Two kilometers north of the industrial ship, a 200-meter-tall tower crane was nearing completion, making it the tallest artificial structure in the Desert to date.
Soon, players would use it to erect a skyscraper-like rocket launch tower.
There was also a similar tower crane next to the industrial ship, but unlike the one in the distance, it was responsible for constructing the vertical assembly workshop for carrier rockets.
Inside the industrial ship, Engineers were working tirelessly to accelerate the construction of rocket components.
This stainless steel rocket, powered by a Helium-3 nuclear engine, was reusable.
Although its size was not comparable to the super heavy rockets in the real world, standing only over 90 meters tall, size did not represent everything. Its carrying capacity was dozens of times that of those large ones, with a low-Earth orbit carrying capacity of up to 5,000 tons.
With this nuclear rocket, it was estimated that only five launches would be needed to send all the materials for building the space dock into orbit.
The convenience brought by nuclear energy was finally fully demonstrated.
“Not bad, not bad!”
Black Smoke, wearing the power armor he bought with battle currency, came to the flat ground outside the industrial ship, right next to the tower crane.
Dozens of new Engineers were assembling a giant crawler vehicle here. It was a flatbed truck over 30 meters long and wide, which would be used in the future to move assembled rockets horizontally to the launch site.
You don't know until you do it, but the aerospace industry truly consumes an extreme amount of raw materials and production capacity. It requires more than just clever minds.
Before this first rocket was even assembled, thousands of tons of steel had already been invested, and at least several thousand more tons would be needed subsequently.
To provide sufficient alloys, everyone at the mine was as busy as ants on a hot pan.
The miners’ enthusiasm for construction was very high. In the morning, they would go down the shaft with a pad in hand, followed by at least ten miner robots.
After going down the shaft, they only needed about an hour to plan their daily tasks on the AR enhanced interface of their tactical masks, and then they could leave, letting the robots mine on their own.
They themselves could go to the industrial ship to lend a hand and earn extra money part-time. The robots would automatically report mining progress in real-time and even generate summaries and write records themselves.
All these program optimizations were basically hard-coded by Nan Guo de Xue.
Although her work was not as dazzling as Jubian and Ye Xing's, she silently supported Cangyuan.
Currently, with the complete conquest of the underground dungeon cluster, the underground mining area can be mined however desired. Ore output has increased by nearly 40 times, and combined with scrap metal recycling, it can provide 500 tons of steel, 300 tons of titanium, and 150 tons of aluminum daily.
Even the tunnels had reached the point where they had to be widened.
Old Town Chief stood at the entrance of the mining area, watching the bustling and motivated townspeople come and go, his heart filled with mixed emotions.
On one hand, he was happy about all these changes; on the other hand, thinking of those who had died in mining accidents over the past few decades, he felt very uncomfortable.
Now, if anyone dared to say that humans should not develop technology or that technology would lead to danger, Old Town Chief would definitely be the first to rush forward and argue.
Of course, while promoting the development of heavy industry, Lu Yuan did not forget the civilian industry he had promised earlier.
After the war, a large amount of battle currency was settled.
First-tier players like Guo Li Cheng and Dan Ta, in addition to being able to buy the power armor accessories and weapons allocated to them, also had a considerable surplus of battle currency.
Naturally, the two of them had thoughts of getting rich, so they participated in the auction and bought two Mechanical Hive production lines from Lu Yuan, opening a small factory next to Red Iron Town, mainly producing the best-selling goods at present—prefabricated building materials and home appliances.
To prevent this first private enterprise from encountering financial difficulties, Lu Yuan immediately ordered the butler to make policy adjustments, establish a commercial bank under his name, and issue appropriate loans to players’ individual enterprises and outstanding workers in Red Iron Town to accelerate economic circulation.
These sudden debts would inevitably lead to an increase in circulating cash, which would then cause commodity prices to rise and wage levels to increase, leading to relatively rapid inflation.
But for a rapidly growing economy, all of these are normal, and indeed healthy and necessary.
Red Iron Town, with its population of over three thousand, set a good example. In the future, when the same policy is implemented in Oasis City, with its seventy thousand people, it will be even more effortless.
Moreover, inflation and regular price increases also had an additional benefit for Lu Yuan, the Executive Officer.
That was to prevent certain players from excessive “hoarding” behavior, which means holding onto cash without spending it, not improving their strength for a long time, and then waiting until a certain update released new equipment they liked before spending it all at once.
Although how one spends money is personal freedom, this behavior is truly very detrimental to the development of a faction.
While Red Iron Town was operating at full capacity, in the Great Desert, Soldier players temporarily laid down their arms and returned to farming, helping to build oil pipelines.
However, the pipeline laying speed was not as optimistic as previously imagined; only one-fifth had been built so far, and it was still over 300 kilometers from the oil field.
It’s not a big problem; as the number of players increases, the construction speed will become faster and faster.
In three more days, another 150 new players will come online, which is also the largest number of players to come online so far.
Lord’s Palace, basement floor.
This was originally the dungeon built by Kohl for “city enemies,” but now it had become the place where he himself was imprisoned.
Lu Yuan walked to the deepest cell, where the most “distinguished” guest resided.
“Omar still refuses to say anything?”
He asked Ye Xing, who was in charge of the interrogation.
“No, Boss,” Ye Xing shook his head. “Damn it, he’s incredibly tight-lipped!”
“Alright then, I’ll talk to him.”
Omar was led out of the cell by Cheng Yun’s subordinates and handcuffed to the table and chairs previously used by the Lord for interrogating political prisoners. Lu Yuan sat opposite him.
Omar slouched his shoulders, looking to one side, avoiding eye contact with the Executive Officer, his mouth tightly shut.
“State your demands,”
Lu Yuan spoke first.
“I demand improved treatment as an important prisoner of war.”
Seeing Lu Yuan not respond, Omar continued, “As long as I am treated properly, I will negotiate with the fleet commander when the Punishment Fleet arrives. I will make headquarters acknowledge the outcome of this battle and recognize you as the winners here.”
Lu Yuan remained impassive.
“Let me rephrase it in a way you can understand. Apollo will pay a ransom called ‘Peace’ for me, this branch manager. You can extricate yourselves from the quagmire of war. This is a very worthwhile deal.”
“Manager, are you familiar with Earth’s history?”
Lu Yuan retorted.
“Earth?” Omar was confused. “What exactly do you want to say?”
“Earth is the birthplace of human culture, which, of course, also includes torture culture.”
He stood up.