章 248: Chapter 248: Exponential Self-Production of Materials, Possibility of Planet-Sized Ships
"Chu is actually willing to offer this?"
Yan Xia is located far from Xingcheng, more than 300 light-years away, but with advanced communication technology, information can be transmitted to Yan Xia within one and a half months.
"It's just a concern."
Ella appears, now as a short-haired, dark-skinned cowgirl, wearing a strapless top, revealing her six-pack abs and deep V-line waist, paired with denim hot pants and leather boots.
Ella's various appearances are not just for Yan Xia's viewing pleasure but also because a part of her consciousness exists in the virtual world. Her appearance in the virtual world reflects her current state.
She has been learning and improving through the virtual world, especially regarding sexuality.
At this point, she is more like a living being than an AI. However, as an artificial intelligence, she holds herself to extremely high standards, aiming for 100% perfection, not settling for 99.99999%.
But achieving 100% is no easy feat.
It's like reaching absolute zero or the speed of light!
"Chu is concerned that Xingcheng itself is not under her control. The life of Xingcheng can be resolved by splitting consciousness to deal with the problem of Gais Rongguang. Xingcheng itself is not a living being but an object, and it will follow the one with the higher authority."
Yan Xia also finds this reasonable.
"Chu hopes that we can find a way to unlock the secret key. She doesn't hide this intention, and she knows that we will try. This guy has become cunning."
The Federation needs Xingcheng, which is an unbeatable advantage for Chu in negotiations.
"Understanding how to share benefits and risks is beneficial for us, isn't it?"
Ella and Yan Xia exchange a smile.
"Then, let's get back to the technology itself. We should have discussed the technology used in Xingcheng before." Yan Xia reviewed the received materials and identified many technical blind spots, which required the expertise of material science scholars.
Of course, Ella could also do it, but the results she produced couldn't be well-applied. It's not that Ella is incapable, but she doesn't allocate computational power to these tasks.
Since federal scholars can solve the problem, let them handle it.
"That's right. The material used in Xingcheng is extremely sturdy and has a modular characteristic at the microscopic scale."
"Under specific conditions, it can even become a superconductor, although most elements can achieve this, but it's not a strict requirement."
"For us, the most crucial aspect is its strength, along with another important feature."
Ease of processing.
The ease of processing an item means that costs can be reduced, and mass production becomes feasible.
You can create an invincible material in the universe, but if you can only produce 1 gram of it, what's the use?
That's not even enough to make armor for a slightly larger bug.
If you say that 1 gram of it can destroy the entire universe, then it's somewhat powerful, but this is a material, not a weapon.
"The Olive Branch civilization can use this material to create a giant like Xingcheng. While the accumulation of time is essential, the primary factor is the characteristics of this material."
Even if the Olive Branch civilization has a history of several million years, it's still terrifying to build a Xingcheng in that time.
The size of Xingcheng is astonishing: 238 astronomical units long, 1.1 astronomical units wide, and 58.58 billion square kilometers in area. These numbers still give Yan Xia a strong sense of the immensity of Xingcheng.
One astronomical unit is 149,597,870 kilometers. How long are the giant ships currently built by the Federation? Not even 1,000 kilometers. The width of Xingcheng can accommodate 165,000 giant ships, not to mention its terrifying length.
Even if the manufacturing cycle of a giant ship is 10 years, it would still take an estimated 100 trillion years to build one Xingcheng.
The time doesn't add up.
"It's incredible that the material itself is a production line."
The data provided by Chu explains the characteristics of this special material. Since it is modular at the microscopic level, the Olive Branch civilization thought, 'What if these produced materials could immediately function as factory tools, thereby increasing manufacturing efficiency?'
And they succeeded.
This means that the material can exponentially produce itself.
With this material, the time required to build a Xingcheng is—
"700 years?!"
Upon seeing this number, even Yan Xia couldn't help but exclaim.
It's too short.
He can't even imagine how fast it would be to produce giant ships with this technology.
Wouldn't it be possible to directly produce several million billion giant ships in a short time?
"It's not calculated like that. This material is still just a material and doesn't have strong versatility. The core structure of Xingcheng is definitely not made from this material."
"The effect of this material is similar to that of a biological battleship, solving the issue of the production cycle for the outer shell."
Yan Xia nodded. He had been too excited when he first saw this number, but after calming down, he realized the drawbacks of this material.
If the Federation were a first-level or first-level-plus civilization, this material could indeed be suitable for most positions. However, advanced civilizations have many requirements for materials, and it's impossible for a single material to meet all needs.
If a truly universal material were to be born, the Olive Branch civilization would not be a second-level civilization but a third-level or even higher-level civilization.
"Can we retire the biological battleships then?" asked Yan Xia.
This is a good question.
Since the problem of the long manufacturing cycle for metal shells has been solved, can biological battleships be replaced?
"No."
"Biological battleships have their own unique characteristics, and the time cycle is just one aspect. Energy consumption is another."
"Although this material technology shortens the cycle, the energy consumption hasn't changed at all. Moreover, to maintain the energy supply for these small things, we need to manufacture special energy supply devices, and the loss rate of these functional devices is as high as 1:14, which is insane."
Even Ella finds this loss rate unacceptable.
It's like trading money for time.
Ella tried to use other computational power to research whether the loss rate of these energy supply devices could be reduced, but it seemed almost impossible in the short term.
If the Olive Branch civilization needs to manufacture at an extremely fast speed, they combine several million of the smallest material units to form a production line. Because the units are so tiny, at the nanoscale, the factories are only a few nanometers in size, which means they are simple and, consequently, rough, leading to the high loss rate.
So, what if we make these factories more precise?
It would require increasing the size of the factories, which would increase the production cycle.
Manufacturing a factory composed of several million material units would undoubtedly take longer than making one with several million units, and the production efficiency of these two factories wouldn't increase much because most of the structure is designed to reduce energy loss rather than increase output.
The production blueprint provided by the Olive Branch civilization already has the best efficiency ratio; there is no better solution.
Therefore, the Federation should be cautious when producing this material, as the enormous loss rate could significantly reduce the Federation's energy reserves, causing it to drop from a 2.3-level to a 2.2-level civilization.
From this perspective, Yan Xia and Ella also realized that if the Olive Branch civilization had abandoned this technology, they might already be a 2.5-level or even 2.6-level civilization. Most of their energy might have been consumed in the construction of Xingcheng.
Although this may be an exaggeration, and the development of a civilization cannot be judged solely on one aspect, it is clear that this material cannot be mass-produced as initially imagined.
"However, it should be enough for us to build a true planet-sized battleship, right?"
Ella replied, "Of course. The structural strength is sufficient, and although the cost is high, it's still acceptable."
That's enough!
週次パワーステータス
-- 推薦
ランキング 
-- 推薦
チケット