Chapter 181: Li Star, Rise!

Home at last!

One day later, Lu Yuan arrived in the Li Star System.

Affected by the planet's gravitational field, the transport ship had to exit warp flight near the moon's orbit, then continued to glide unpowered towards Li Star.

As soon as he docked in Li Star's orbit, a flurry of communications came in like snowflakes.

"Welcome home, Executive Officer!"

"Executive Officer~ We have results to report to you!"

"Where is that jungle planet you went to? Can new players go too? It looks so exciting!"

"A new factory has been established outside Red Iron Town, would you like to cut the ribbon?"

Whew!

Lu Yuan felt a surge of joy watching them.

It seems everyone is very busy, not slacking off just because the boss isn't around!

"Executive Officer, I just received a communication from Xian Yu." Jubian, sitting at the communicator's station, turned around.

"He said we're just in time; the fourth launch of the reusable nuclear rocket is about to happen on the ground. If we wait half an hour longer in orbit, we can see it!"

"Good, we have to see that."

Hearing that the nuclear rocket was already on its fourth launch, Lu Yuan knew that the shipbuilding plan had not been delayed, and had even advanced by two or three days.

At 2 AM Li Star local time, the rocket launch mission began.

Lu Yuan immediately saw signs of ignition in space. The entire Desert was currently in its night hemisphere, and the sudden blue-white flame of the nuclear rocket's ignition was like a small-scale nuclear explosion, clearly visible in the darkness.

It ejected pure and stable plasma, with a tail flame more than ten times longer and brighter than traditional rockets, both violent and elegant.

"It's so beautiful—"

Jubian was livestreaming, and from the first second the rocket ascended, he never moved his camera away.

Recording the entire nuclear rocket launch in the game was a "mission" assigned to him by his department head.

As long as the filming quality was high enough, Jubian could even receive a bonus in reality!

Using national scientific research funds to play games, he was arguably the first person in history.

The bonus might even include military funds from back then!

Of course, his superior's arrangement was only made under the command of an even higher authority.

At this moment, Jubian knew that thousands of eyes, from various universities, research institutes, ministries, and even that scenic area west of the Forbidden City, were watching the nuclear-powered rocket on his screen, just like him.

After all, aside from using Hydrogen-3 fuel instead of Xenon gas and being slightly smaller, the Cangyuan rocket's structure was almost identical to the nuclear rocket currently being intensively developed in reality.

At the same time, it was also the least technically difficult nuclear-powered spacecraft in the entire "Star Sea" worldview.

The rocket successfully entered orbit, and at its closest, it was less than 1 kilometer from Lu Yuan, who was waiting in the optimal viewing position.

The nuclear rocket's propellant volume was small, with most of it used for the working fluid to increase the engine's total impulse, resulting in the front two-thirds of the entire rocket body being payload compartments.

Its cargo capacity was quite impressive.

A moment later, the engine shut down, the payload compartment separated, and the stainless steel outer shell split into four large pieces like a nut's husk,

opening outwards to reveal the "fruit" inside.

Inside were large quantities of prefabricated parts and supply boxes already produced in the industrial ship, as well as workers wearing industrial exoskeleton-style space suits.

In addition, there were several unfamiliar space drones, each as large as an all-terrain vehicle, with three robotic arms mounted at the front and numerous attitude control thrusters around the fuselage.

"Those are byproducts separated from the SCV blueprint, new industrial drones!"

Xian Yu's voice came through the communicator.

"Their programming is very advanced, with large and small models, and each has two selectable modes: atmospheric and vacuum environments.

"What you're seeing now are large industrial drones, capable of performing metal welding, riveting, and carbon material hot melting with their robotic arms; smaller drones are more agile and used for installing various pipelines and equipment, but they're not needed yet.

"Our workers now only need to exercise creativity to complete large-scale block construction, with little need to worry about details, greatly reducing their workload."

Jubian: "So it's almost like building Lego?"

"Haha, it's still quite a bit more difficult than Lego, but also more fulfilling!" Xian Yu said.

No sooner had he spoken than Lu Yuan saw tiny engines ignite one after another, and the workers and drones, pushing prefabricated parts and supply boxes, flew forward.

Following their direction, he saw a hollow hexagonal prism structure about 100 meters in diameter and 250 meters long. "Is that our space dock? It's already built?" Jubian also saw it. "Future warships will be assembled in there?"

"Only the main framework has been built for now. Later, power reactors, warehouses, drone supply stations, and worker dormitories will be installed on the framework," Xian Yu explained.

"In addition, there's a bunch of equipment for secondary processing of carbon fiber and alloys. I don't really understand the specifics; the Engineers have been handling it these past few days. In short, the goal is to make the battleship assembly speed exceed the industrial ship's full-speed component production rate! Don't let it drag us down in the final stage!"

"Awesome—"

Jubian felt the charm of space industry.

He quickly extended the lens's focal length, aimed at the construction dock, and filmed intensely.

Those watching his livestream must be craving this thing to the point of scratching their hearts out.

The warp transport ship entered its landing procedure, passing by the dock. Seeing this, Lu Yuan in the cockpit activated open communication and waved to the player-workers from behind the Ship window.

"Everyone has worked hard, the work is very good!"

"!!"

A deafening response echoed in the channel.

"Do you want us to land in Red Iron Town, Oasis City, or Devil Mountain?" The captain, Chang Kong, turned and asked.

Lu Yuan thought for a moment.

"Let's go to Devil Mountain first."

After landing, Lu Yuan saw that this earliest rising camp had new developments.

The original buildings in the canyon were now being demolished, and the entire camp area was undergoing extensive construction.

This...

Coffee Cat and Hammer Girl came bouncing up to him.

"Hello, Executive Officer~~~"

"The camp here is—."

"It's the grand renovation plan!"

Coffee Cat, with a proud little cat face, explained to the Executive Officer.

"After being bombed by the nuclear bomb last time, many houses were actually unsafe, so we decided to just demolish them and rebuild!"

That's a good idea.

Demolishing and rebuilding houses means new land finance GDP. Good thing, ahem—

"This is the new planning atlas, please take a look."

Hammer Girl shared the meticulously rendered color floor plans and renderings with Lu Yuan.

"Our preliminary plan is to move all industry from the main camp to the outskirts, then move the research base underground, and turn the canyon into a multi-story commercial street, with shops connected by skywalks and escalators."

The design was very appealing.

The commercial street was six or seven stories high at its tallest, with shops and buildings densely packed, all with modern architectural structures, plus detailed architectural design language with Li Star's local characteristics.

It was no worse than the commercial plazas in those wealthy Middle Eastern countries in reality.

The night view was even more dazzling.

The two female players were, after all, from the top eight architecture schools. Now that the construction industry's capacity was up, they could finally show their full potential. "It's very beautiful, but won't it be too luxurious? I mean, employees probably don't have such a great need for shopping and consumption, right? The vacancy rate of storefronts might be very high."

Lu Yuan reminded him.

So far, the total number of closed beta players was 909, which had surged by 200% in the past two weeks, but it was still less than a typical small town.

"If we only consider players, we certainly don't need that much commercial space," Hammer Girl replied. "But there's something else we'd like to discuss with you."

"What is it?"

"Now, over in Red Iron Town, the nuclear-powered rocket launches at least once a day," Coffee Cat continued.

"The launch is still quite loud. Although the residents haven't complained, we think it must be a bit noisy at the aerospace base. And from what we understand, recently many people from Red Iron Town and Oasis City do want to come to the camp here to learn scientific technology.

"So we were thinking, could we build a brand new city around Devil Mountain, to serve as the capital of Cangyuan Future Technology!"