History of Human Space Exploitation

Chapter 37 Flying close to the ground 1 Extreme crossing
The blue-white tail flame of the last old-fashioned fusion shock spacecraft gradually changed from a ball of fire [-] kilometers away to a small spot of light.The tears secreted by Shu Yehua's lacrimal glands, who had just arrived at the airport, gradually turned into two transparent bubbles around the eyeballs.Although such an "ending" had already been calculated and deduced in Shu Yehua's mind, when the "lucky" pie fell on her head, she still couldn't contain the sadness in her heart.

Watching the last spaceship leave slowly, Shu Yehua knew that he would be in a situation where he would be alone without a star for some time to come.Abandon Shu Yehua. This old-fashioned passenger-cargo spaceship named "Varanasi" is an asset of the Ganges Transport Co., Ltd. founded by Indian immigrants, and its name should come from the Ganges River in ancient India. A religious city in the world.

Benares is sometimes translated as "Varanasi" in standard Chinese. It is a Ganges River, located in the city of Uttar Pradesh in ancient India, and one of the seven holy cities of Hinduism, Sapatapuri.This ancient city was the capital of the country of Kashi in ancient times, and Kashi means "city of light".According to legend, the city was built 5000 years ago. It was an academic center in the 4th to 6th centuries AD, and it was the capital of an ancient dynasty in the 12th century.When they were still on earth, Hindus generally believed that they could escape the cycle of life and death if they died in Benares, and they believed that after bathing on the banks of the Ganges in Varanasi, they could cleanse their dirty souls.In addition, cremation on the banks of the Ganges in Benares and the ashes scattered in the river can also transcend the pain of life.One of the protagonists of the famous ancient science fiction novel "Hyberian", the poet Martin Silinas was still driving a supersonic electromagnetic vehicle every day on the lingering earth when he was young, and once met on the streets of Benares An unexpected robbery.

In the "Da Tang Western Regions" written by Xuanzang, a monk of the Tang Dynasty in ancient China, Benares is the Poronis Kingdom in the ancient Ganges River Basin.The book describes: "The kingdom of Brahma is more than a thousand miles away, and the capital city of the country is adjacent to the Suga River (that is, the Ganges River) in the west. It is eighteen or nine miles long and four or five miles wide." Water transportation conditions allow people and goods to go directly to the Bay of Bengal.In the "Book of Liang", it is recorded that Tianzhu's "Xunhai Dawan" refers to the Bay of Bengal, the mouth of the Ganges River.

The old Benares has been in service for more than 50 years. In this operation to evacuate Solpathia, it was used as a means of transportation for the last group of people left behind. Shu Yehua was the last of the more than 200 people left behind. one of the personnel.Although the funds are not abundant, the Planetary Committee still has enough credits to pay the last transfer ship of the Ganges Company.Of course, such a spaceship is already the cheapest charter of the cheapest shipping company the committee can find.

One standard month before the flight, the Benares was also carrying frozen pork, concentrated fruit juice, and compressed dry food on the route from the Ganges star to the border star Ferrax.After receiving the advance payment from the committee, the shipping company temporarily installed sleeping berths in the cabin, and used partition curtains to separate out several single rooms that are large enough for people to lie flat, and temporarily bought a room for 300 people in the old equipment market. Meal canteen equipment.

According to people's rumors or plausible statements, if they don't leave here with the evacuation spacecraft, the people who stay here will endure the loneliness of not having the opportunity to see another human being within ten cubic light years in the next 100 years.The reason for this evacuation was evasive, and the officials gave several announcements that were not contradictory, but felt intentionally perfunctory.

Shu Yehua is neither a rational nor an irrational anarchist, nor is he the type of opponent who thinks about how to sing against the government every day, but the previous types of people have already set foot on the "last spaceship" that they claimed several times After leaving, she still insisted on "staying" here.Later, thinking of how in those few weeks, he and the people who came to persuade her to leave spent a lot of time finding various reasons, Shu Yehua would always secretly laugh.The reason for staying here is that she has an ideal and belief hidden in her heart for many years, which drives this woman who is still half a year old to use this evacuation event to practice her dream.

Of course, Shu Yehua didn't have much distrust of the official information, nor did she have much emotional nostalgia for the life she had lived for more than 20 years. Of course, she didn't want to experience the loneliness of the protagonist in the rest of the desert island.Even the actual situation of Solpasia is not enough to give her the luck similar to Robinson's encounter with the aborigines. From the moment she was notified of the arrival time of the Benares, she tensed up every second. Come and try not to miss this last spaceship.

However... Shu Yehua still missed that "last train".

Shu Yehua, who usually loves freedom to "fly close to the ground", really "lost" this time to his hobby.The only air station on Thorpasia star is located in the northern hemisphere, and it is connected to the synchronous geostationary orbit above by the space elevator and the planet's capital Huangbao Pagoda City.This neither luxurious nor huge space station was built in the standard year when the planet began to officially accept free immigration, and it has been operating safely for 250 years.

Shu Yehua's house is on the backside of Solpasia's planet relative to Huangbao Pagoda City, in Potato Town in the southern hemisphere.If you use a normal atmospheric aircraft from Tudou Town to Huangbaota City, it usually takes one and a half to two hours to fly over a distance of more than 5000 kilometers between them.In theory, if you choose intercontinental highways and secondary highways to travel between these two cities, it is still very long.

This intercontinental, trans-hemisphere route, even in the era when infrastructure costs have long been forgotten by people and society due to the application of large-scale weak artificial intelligence robots, still has a distance of [-] kilometers to go.The emphasis on "in theory" here is because no one would torture themselves to do such "meaningless" things.However, such an action, Shu Yehua, who has a faith-like obsession with "flying close to the ground", and the group of people like her, don't think it is a theoretical imagination.

On those restless and remote planets, the bikers of the cosmic age always have fertile soil for them to grow.Sparse population, loose cities, free and safe laws, and rich life and ample time provided by abundant resources make those idle young people always willing to spend time, money, passion and imagination in these dangerous games , even at the cost of life.

In order to pursue the most intuitive stimulation of the body and brain nerves, the speeders of the cosmic era abandoned electromagnetic aircraft, vertical rotor aircraft, etc., and chose to use only pneumatic devices to lift the car body to one meter above the ground. ".After installing top-level civilian or military plasma engines smuggled from some special channels, the speed of these ground-mounted speeding cars can often reach an astonishing [-] kilometers per hour or more under the driving of top experts.

Shu Yehua is one of these fringe planets, who has a lot of time and resources to pursue "flying" on the ground.

Shu Yehua is not considered the top expert in the Virgo supercluster where all human beings are located, but her level is in the galaxy where Solpasia star is located, and in several nearby galaxies, she must be regarded as the most powerful figure in the 5.00% .Her personal highest record was 8907000 meters per hour when she won a [-]-meter sprint three months ago on Planet Pacras.

A powerful flying driver will always use various methods to challenge her new limits. This time, the almost empty Solpacia star is an excellent stage for her to challenge herself.This challenge is also accompanied by Shu Yehua's follow-up grand vision of being "abandoned" on an uninhabited planet.

Shu Yehua's plan this time is to cross the land mileage of 23 meters between Tudou Town, where her home is located, and Huangbao Pagoda City, the capital of the planet, in 1307000 hours at an average speed of [-] kilometers per hour.After arriving at the central space elevator station in the capital, take the space elevator for an hour and a half to the air station, and board the spaceship one hour before the last spaceship Benares takes off.

During the whole process, flying driver Shu Yehua used a total of seven holograms inside and outside the car to broadcast his extraordinary adventure to the whole super galaxy cluster.

Miniaturized gravitational hydrazine engines are commonly used throughout the galaxy clusters to achieve a travel speed of [-]% to [-]% of the speed of light as a means of travel between major galaxies or economies.The Solpacia star traffic in the marginal zone is in the position of branch line after branch line on the navigation star map of the entire galaxy.

The reason for this phenomenon is generally believed to be the discovery of the epoch-making "Neptune Galaxy" in the 570th year of the cosmic epoch, which has more than [-] stars similar to Neptune in mass and composition, and is suitable for blasting to become a new star tunnel.

The at least 47 galaxies that can be directly reached from the Neptune galaxy, as well as the secondary star tunnels opened from these galaxies, or the secondary galaxies reached by the secondary star tunnels extended from these secondary star tunnels, for For Solpacia Star, it is already considered a node-style metropolis.So from this point of view, most people on this planet are used to the comfort and ease in remote areas, so it is difficult for them to accept and understand the thoughts of Shu Yehua and his gang of space bikers.

And the "tragedy" may come from here...

Of course, for Shu Yehua, the speeding hero who will become popular in the universe in the future, the "tragedy" that began with the successful end of the extreme ground-to-ground flight is the beginning of her later reputation in the universe.

Thirty hours before the scheduled departure time of the Benares, Shu Yehua boarded the flying car that had been meticulously maintained and thoroughly inspected before.This is a speeding car bought two years ago with her savings and winnings from wild car races and underground gambling races. She named her speed machine "Burning Blood Blade".This, together with the names of her brothers and sisters, "Ruthless Skate", "Bone Erosion Mad Poison", "Flying Locust" and "Sharpening Spear", coincides with the names of Shu Yehua's ancestors in ancient China. In a certain natural philosophy, the law of the elements of gold, wood, water, fire, and earth.In the silence of no one shouting, she began her final journey on Solpathia.

Climbing mountains, crossing rivers, bypassing deep valleys, crossing deserts, and passing cities, all of these are in Shu Yehua's confident brain, hands and feet, and also in the eyes of several fans who show their attention to her through the live broadcast of Wells information stream and in the brain.Dozens, thousands, tens of thousands, and hundreds of thousands of fans and supporters from light years away cheered, shouted, and cheered for her, but these voices did not come from the cockpit of the Benares.

The captain and first mate in the cockpit dedicate their lives to ensuring the safe transport of guests from point A to point B for their meager credits.What's more, in such a remote place, their salary credits are not even as good as those in the metropolis that provide entertainment, and each payment only symbolizes the distance of hundreds or even tens of meters.Naturally, they don't care about the boring death live broadcast of that desperate sprinter, let alone whether she will arrive at the air station on time to board their Benares.

It's just that based on the experience of the captain and first mate, the average ground vehicle can provide a movement speed of up to 6000 kilometers per hour.According to the passenger information about Shu Yehua's permanent residence and the location information provided by Shu Yehua himself two days ago, it takes at least 50 hours to drive from Tudou Town, which is more than [-] kilometers away, to the capital.

In this way, the captain and first mate, except for Shu Yehua, all the passengers have boarded the ship and waited to leave the port. There are still three hours before the official departure time, and Shu Yehua is only more than 500 kilometers away from the departure platform of the space elevator. At that time, when they agreed that Shu Yehua could not arrive on time, and no one proposed to use any means to contact Shu Yehua to confirm the location, they let the Benares leave the airport ahead of schedule.

Shu Yehua, who was alone, wanted to cry in the weightless airport, but the tears couldn't fall.Wiping away her tears, she raised her hands to all her supporters, stretching out her index and middle fingers on her left and right hands, making that ancient gesture of victory.The cosmic bikers, land bikers, racing madmen, and extreme athletes in the Virgo supercluster all cheered for her, and she became an eternal legend.

After cheering, Shu Yehua began to think about his situation.If it is true according to the official statement, there will be no second person within the surrounding 100 cubic light-year range for at least 100 years in the future, which means that she needs to live here alone for at least 29 years.And she is just 170 years old this year. In today's universe where the average life expectancy of human beings has reached 50 years old, it should not be a problem to live to at least [-] years old with sufficient supplies.However, is the supply so sufficient?

Thinking of this, Shu Yehua, who has always had a hot temper since childhood, wiped away tears, floated back into the space elevator car, and pressed the button to the ground.As the car gradually left the synchronous track and descended to the ground, the feeling of gravity gradually appeared in every cell of Shu Yehua's body.For some reason, with the increase of gravity, what she felt was no longer the sense of loss of being alone on this lonely planet, but the inexplicable sense of steadfastness given to herself by gravity.

The full text of this article is excerpted from the entry about Shu Yehua in "Outstanding Human Athletes" in "Character History", the fourth part of "The History of Human Universe Development".

(End of this chapter)