Chapter 47: Kaitian Spaceship
Normally, from the appearance of a spaceship prototype to its finalization and mass production, the speed would not be this fast.
In the human world, it would take a decade or more if it were a bit slower.
During this process, spaceships would be repeatedly tested, refined, and optimized until the accident rate was reduced to the lowest possible level before mass production and market launch.
But for Tom, the entire process took only about half a month.
Everything was incredibly fast.
After the first batch of 100 Feal-1 Series near-earth spaceships was delivered, the second and third batches quickly followed.
Within just one year, the number of Feal-1 Series spaceships flying over Loshen Star exceeded 1,000.
Although they were all Feal-1 Series, their specific size, tonnage, appearance, engine power, and purpose varied.
Some spaceships were specifically for transporting people, falling into the category of passenger ships.
Others were designed for carrying heavier cargo, classified as heavy-lift spaceships, while some were characterized by their small size, speed, and agility, falling into the high-end fast spaceship category.
Under the Feal-1 Series, various types of spaceships were abundant.
However, good times did not last, and soon after, the first spaceship crash occurred.
A heavy-lift spaceship, while in flight, suddenly experienced power loss, and a large amount of liquid oxygen and methane mixed together, turning it into a large bomb that exploded with a roar in the dim sky of Loshen Star.
Not only was all the cargo in the spaceship lost, but several Clones were also killed.
Tom, however, reacted without surprise.
A spaceship exploding, how normal is that? Is it worth making a fuss over?
There was no time for Tom to spend years or even a decade refining a spaceship design, as was done in the human world, until it was truly mature before launching it to market.
Given this, spaceship malfunctions and even explosions were inevitable.
But this matter should be viewed from two perspectives.
Hasty mass production and large-scale use would inevitably lead to frequent outbreaks of various hidden dangers and design flaws.
While this would certainly cause some losses, it would also expose these hidden dangers and flaws with the highest efficiency, allowing for their concentrated resolution.
Various hidden dangers that would originally require years of repeated refinement to find and eliminate could now be fully exposed in less than a year of mass production and use, increasing efficiency by more than a dozen times.
The drawbacks were merely some exploding spaceships, some lost cargo, and some dead Clones; for Tom, it was irrelevant.
Thus, on one hand, there were frequent spaceship malfunctions and even explosions; on the other hand, spaceship engineer Clones worked tirelessly day and night; and on yet another hand, the spaceship production line was continuously iterating and optimizing.
The more spaceships exploded, the more spaceships Tom put into use.
In the first month, Tom lost over 50 spaceships due to explosions.
In the second month, that number sharply dropped to only 20.
By the seventh month, there wasn’t even a single exploding spaceship.
After this first year, at the cost of over 300 exploded and scrapped spaceships, the overall performance of the spaceships manufactured in Tom’s spaceship factory more than doubled, and at this point, the first truly meaningful spaceship was built.
Powered by the newly developed high-efficiency methane-oxygen engine, its speed could be unprecedentedly increased to 900 meters per second, directly exceeding Loshen Star’s first cosmic velocity and entering its orbital trajectory!
"Ignition!"
Following Tom’s command, an unprecedentedly fierce and hot flame erupted from the tail of this massive spaceship, which still had a hemispherical structure, stood about 5 meters tall, and had a diameter of approximately 16 meters.
It roared as it took off, and after ascending to a certain height, it began to change its heading, flying violently upwards at an angle.
The numbers on the speedometer rapidly jumped, finally reaching 900 meters per second, which is approximately 3240 kilometers per hour.
At this point, it was already 50,000 meters above the surface of Loshen Star.
The engines shut down, and the gravity in the cabin suddenly disappeared, causing the bodies of the Clones to float upwards as if in water.
However, due to their seatbelts, they remained restrained in their seats.
At this moment, this spaceship, named "Kaitian-1" by Tom, orbited Loshen Star at a speed of approximately 110 minutes per revolution.
Spaceships that could only fly in Loshen Star’s near-earth space and could not enter orbital trajectories were Feal-1 Series spaceships.
Those that could enter orbital trajectories were Kaitian-1 Series spaceships.
After several hours, this Kaitian-1, designated 01, finally caught up with the Deep Space Spaceship and docked with it.
Consequently, the Clones and some supplies were transferred to the Deep Space Spaceship, completing the first space cargo delivery operation.
Tom had performed this kind of work many times before using landing spaceships.
But none of the previous times excited Tom as much as this one.
Because this time, he used a spaceship he manufactured himself!
From this moment on, he finally truly possessed the capability for space travel!
With spaceships that could enter orbital trajectories, he could build space stations, construct zero-gravity factories, and deploy a large number of satellites, probes, and telescopes in space.
His scope of activity would be greatly extended, and he would finally no longer be confined to the planet’s surface!
At this moment, it was as if a large door slowly opened before him, as if the world instantly became vast.
After a moment of excitement, Tom immediately made a decision.
"I want to build a large space laboratory!"
At this stage, a large space laboratory held significant meaning for Tom.
The reason was simple: although the gravity on the surface of Loshen Star was low, it was still present.
Some experiments and research could only be conducted in a zero-gravity environment.
For example, biological breeding, high-precision machining of machinery, high-integration chips, and so on.
If he could have a large space laboratory, Tom’s technological development speed would undoubtedly increase further.
At the same time, this massive construction task would inevitably require numerous Kaitian-1 spaceships to make multiple ascents and descents, and multiple round trips to space for cargo missions.
And this would also achieve the same effect as the previous large-scale use of Feal-1 Series spaceships, exposing defects and hidden dangers in a short period.
In this way, Tom could quickly improve the stability and reliability of the spaceships in a short time, ultimately enhancing their performance.
Consequently, in addition to spaceships crisscrossing the planet’s near-earth space, numerous spaceships also rapidly appeared and flew at high speeds in outer space.
Besides the spaceships used to transport construction materials for the space laboratory, Tom also specifically dispatched a large number of spaceships into space for high-speed, long-duration flight tests, trying every method to push them to their limits, and then every method to optimize and improve them.
Time quietly passed under these circumstances.
During a routine space flight test, Tom suddenly discovered something that appeared to be a metal plate near the spaceship.
The object was about one meter in size, slightly curved, resembling a broken remnant from a larger mechanical creation.
"This doesn’t look like something I made?"
With a hint of doubt, Tom maneuvered the spaceship to slowly approach it.