The last human in the universe

Chapter 98 Two Choices
He stared into Zhao Changxing's eyes, and said word by word: "If you don't divide people and subhumans, and don't concentrate resources on people, it will inevitably lead to insufficient driving force for the advancement of civilization."

The only driving force for the progress of civilization is science and technology.If technology stagnates, civilization will inevitably perish.Or, fall into the kind like the earth age, the feudal period, every few hundred years, the world will be in chaos, and the war will continue until the population is reduced to enough resources to bear it.

"In a hundred years at most, the real depletion of resources will surely come. At that time, everyone will be buried with you because of your stupid decision."

Zhao Changxing looked at the colleague who had worked with him for decades, his heart was full of sadness, but his expression was unusually calm.

He shook his head lightly: "No, the depletion of resources will not come. Do you know? A more advanced ion thruster than the one used on the Tinder spacecraft has been successfully developed. We... soon It's time to march into the inner solar system."

This is the decision Zhao Changxing made arbitrarily as early as more than 100 years ago.He put as many genetically modified people as possible, as many resources as possible, as much manpower and material resources as possible into the promotion laboratory continuously.

It has been maintained for more than 100 years.

Now, this long-term investment has finally yielded fruitful results.Now, Zhao Changxing can finally proudly say that, not to mention other technologies, at least in terms of ion propulsion technology, the new human civilization has completely surpassed the original old human civilization.

Zhao Changxing had just discovered those dwarf planets more than 100 years ago. The resources of human civilization are extremely rich. When everyone was rejoicing, he had already seen the difficulties that he might face in 100 or even 200 years, and made advances. Out of layout.

In front of him, the person who used to work with him, but is now a prisoner on death row, widened his eyes in horror.He stared fixedly at Zhao Changxing, and suddenly burst out laughing.

He was smiling, but his eyes were full of anger.

If he knew this news and knew that human beings would soon be able to enter the inner solar system and gain the almost unlimited resource support of the inner solar system, then that fool would risk being purged by Zhao Changxing to promote the division of human and sub-human!

Any large planet in the solar system, no, even a larger satellite, such as the moon, Enceladus, Ganymede, etc., has more resources than a hundred dwarf planets combined.

In a sense, once one has the ability to enter the inner solar system, the depletion of resources can almost be said to be non-existent.

At this moment, he had a feeling of being fooled.

Zhao Changxing sighed again.

"Sorry, I was fishing. But...forget it."

Zhao Changxing shook his head and gave up his intention to explain.

As a man with an almost infinite lifespan, he didn't know how to explain his intentions to a man with a life span of at most 100 years.

The resources in the solar system can indeed be regarded as almost unlimited for the current stage of human civilization.But what about human civilization that has been developed for another 200 or 300 years?
The human population will always increase, requiring more and more resources.With the development of science and technology, both overall and per capita, will skyrocket exponentially.

The resources of the entire solar system will always be exhausted one day.

Of course, this is bound to happen far, far away.The time is so long that it is almost meaningless to ordinary people.But for Zhao Changxing, it was a question that had to be considered and planned in advance.

This is the reason why Zhao Changxing fished out all the people who supported the plan of dividing people and subhumans by "fishing" this time, and then solved them all.

He is trying to make the issue of "humans and subhumans" a taboo of the entire civilization, a part of civilized culture, and a part of tradition through bloody killings every hundreds of years or so.

In this way, even if one day in the future, there is an irresistible crisis of resource depletion, such as the depletion of resources in the entire solar system, but human beings have not mastered the technology of interstellar navigation, or in the interstellar escape one day in the future , Lost any possibility of external supplies, and can only consume the reserve materials, no one dares to divide the mind of people and sub-humans.

Or, even if such thoughts are born, no one agrees with him or supports him, but will be unanimously opposed by the entire civilization from top to bottom.

At this point, even if you lose control of the entire civilization at some point for some reason, you don't have to worry about civilization going astray anymore.

The execution time of this plan may be as long as 1000 or even thousands of years.And what happened after such a long time undoubtedly means nothing to ordinary people.

So Zhao Changxing had no way to explain his intentions to the condemned prisoner in front of him.In the end, he just patted the shoulder of the person in front of him, sighed, and then turned and left.

Before he could walk out of the execution ground, he heard a gunshot behind him.

Zhao Changxing finally responded to the recent crisis of resource depletion in civilization with a brand new ion propulsion engine.The follow-up was just as he expected, and all the anxiety and rumors disappeared.

Anyone with basic sense understands the significance of this technology.

Although the engine manufactured by this technology only exists in the laboratory at the moment, it has not been practically applied.But it is equally clear that this is just the beginning of a resource crisis.It may take more than 100 years before the real resource crisis comes.People have plenty of time to wait for this technology to be perfected.

Numerous resources are still pouring into the propulsion laboratory continuously.In the fifth year after this, the first spacecraft equipped with a new type of ion propulsion engine set sail from the central port of Sedna Star to the deep space star with a distance of more than 6000 million kilometers.

In the past, traveling from Sedna Star to Deep Space Star would take almost two years for a one-way journey.But this time, the spaceship only took a month!

When the results of this experiment were finally announced, the entire civilization was almost boiling.

If this kind of spacecraft can cover a distance of more than 6000 million kilometers in one month, wouldn’t it only take about 134 years to fly from Sedna to Jupiter—the distance between the two is about 8 billion kilometers at this moment? time?
Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system and the largest planet in the satellite system.There are almost endless supplies stored there.

However, the 8-year one-way voyage time has already made it feasible to obtain resources from the Jupiter system to supply the development of human civilization on Sedna.

Even if it takes a little longer to reach the earth, it will not be a problem to obtain resources from the earth.

After all, the earth is only less than 7 million kilometers away from Sedna than Jupiter.

However, given the current level of technology and environmental conditions, it is not a good idea to go to Earth now.

At this moment, the process of the miniature black hole devouring the sun has been going on, and it will continue for at least tens of thousands of years.During these tens of thousands of years, the radiation intensity of the sun will always be in a process of slowly increasing.

This intensity of radiation could have driven the old human civilization to the brink hundreds of years ago, and now, hundreds of years later, it can also affect the various spacecraft of the new human civilization, raising its failure rate to an unbearable level. the point of acceptance.

As a result of forcibly approaching, the ship was destroyed and people died.

However, Jupiter is much farther away from the sun than the earth after all, and has a much stronger magnetic field than the earth.This keeps the sun's influence out as much as possible.Of course, the environment there is still not suitable for human reproduction, but it is still possible to build some industrial bases, mining bases, etc., and let adults with a full set of protective equipment work there.

Full of good vision, the new ion thrusters are rapidly iterating, and gradually phase out those old-fashioned chemical fuel engine spacecraft.

People gradually discovered that the travel between planets that were regarded as distant in the past has gradually become more convenient.For example, the farthest dwarf planet that has been developed by people, that is, Star 13, used to take at least 7 years for a one-way voyage, but now, this time has been greatly shortened to even less than 3 months.

Accompanied by more and more large-scale use, the new type of ion propulsion has also matured rapidly.

At this moment, the time to march into the inner solar system has finally arrived.

Thus, a very realistic question was placed in front of Zhao Changxing, and Zhao Changxing was once again required to make a choice.

Should the base camp of human civilization stay here on Sedna and just use the inner solar system as a source of resources and energy, or...relocate the civilization as a whole to the inner solar system?

Obviously, the two options have different advantages and disadvantages.

If you want to relocate, people will choose to relocate to the Kuiper belt where Pluto is located.The level of solar radiation there has been reduced to a level that can be perfectly resisted by the current stage of technology.

If you move to the Kuiper belt, the acquisition of various materials and resources will become very convenient.But the problem is that it is destined to be an extremely troublesome thing to relocate the already huge human civilization at this moment.Just a preliminary estimate will take at least 20 years.

During those 20 years, and the time it takes to prepare for departure and resettle after arrival, all development will come to a standstill.It is not an exaggeration to say that the youth of a generation has been delayed.

Without relocation, resource acquisition is doomed to be very difficult and time-consuming.

(End of this chapter)