Voyage of the Stars.

Chapter 665: Warp Stairs
The warp speed test experiment was successfully completed without any accidents. Then humans built a few small warp speed test ships and went to the vicinity of the few remaining gas planets to test warp speed travel, and then to the vicinity of stars.

The result was indeed as people expected. In areas close to planets and stars, warp speed navigation is prone to going off track. Especially when close to stars, an unmanned test ship of humans crashed directly into a star.

After many tests, people can basically determine that the gravitational influence of stars like the sun on warp speed travel is about 0.8 to 1 astronomical unit. The reason why it is not a definite value is that the so-called influence also depends on the stability of human equipment, that is, the level of warp speed travel technology.

The more thorough the research on warp travel technology and the more advanced the warp engine, the less affected by stellar gravity. When this type of travel technology develops to a very high level, the influence of stellar gravity can be completely ignored.

It was just like when the Awakeners and Reapers directly stuck to the chromosphere of the star and started warp travel.

As for the impact of planets, the range is also small because of the weak gravity. After testing, it was found that human test ships have basically no impact as long as they do not enter the orbit of gas planets. For planets like the Earth, human ships do not need to worry about warp speed unless they enter its orbit to dock or transport between the ground and orbit.

In other words, after all ships have been upgraded, humans' large fleets can go directly into the interior of the star system. Just be careful not to run too close into the star range. This is not much different from theoretical calculations.

Come to think of it, gravity is the weakest of the four fundamental forces. Although its range is infinite, it is still not enough for a spacecraft that can directly generate a gravitational potential well and achieve warp speed, unless it comes close to an object or encounters an extreme celestial body, such as a neutron star or a black hole.

This result makes human scientists very satisfied, because it means that in the future humans can quickly maneuver in and out of the star system, and can quickly enter the warp state and leave after discovering danger.

The warp speed experiment also has another purpose, which is to test the warp speed that humans can achieve at this stage.

In fact, strictly speaking, using speed to describe warp speed is not very accurate, because warp speed sailing is not the movement of ships in the traditional sense, but everyone can understand it, so there is no need for humans to change these words.

After many rounds of testing, scientists have come up with the current warp speed level of mankind. At the beginning, when the warp engine was not running at full power, the test ship only ran at 1 times the speed of light, that is, the speed of light.

As people adjusted the warp parameters and increased the engine power, the warp speed of the test ship immediately soared from 1 times the speed of light to 10.079 times the speed of light.

This value is very accurate because it is exactly the same as the result calculated by humans from the warp speed formula. According to this company, scientists can also calculate that based on the current human "gravitational potential well" warp speed, there is theoretically another level of warp speed. They have calculated it and the result shows that it is 38.941 times the speed of light.

However, this warp speed, which is multiples of the speed of light, cannot be achieved even at full power by human warp engines.

Scientists are confident about this. They believe that there is still room for improvement in the current warp engines of human beings. As long as they continue to improve the process and the level of creation, human beings will definitely be able to achieve the level of 38.941 times the speed of light in the future. 1 times the speed of light, 10.079 times the speed of light, and 38.941 times the speed of light are three warp speed levels directly divided by human scientists, and this warp speed level is also directly moved to the warp gear of the ship by human engineers.

Yes, warp gear.

There are three gears in total, warp 1 is 1 times the speed of light, warp 2 is 10.079 times the speed of light, and warp 3 is 38.941 times the speed of light. Of course, human warp ships now have only two gears, warp 1 and warp 2, and warp 3 has not yet been realized.

This gear is not set randomly, but is determined by the calculation formula of the gravitational potential well technology and the degree of space distortion. Not only that, it also reflects in the display of creation. The 2 times the speed of light of warp 10.079 is like a technological threshold.

Human engineers still remember this. When they were testing the warp engine, they found that the first generation of warp engines could not break through the double-digit times the speed of light. After years of research, they found that the problem was the process precision. After the manufacturing process precision was improved to a higher level, the warp engine they manufactured broke through the shackles of 1 times the speed of light in one fell swoop, achieving a gradual improvement from 1 times the speed of light to 10.079 times the speed of light.

In fact, human engineers at that time did not realize that the reason they were able to break through the shackles of 1 times the speed of light in such a short time was entirely due to human mechanical expertise. Humans have always been very advanced in mechanical technology, even more advanced than civilizations of the same level such as the Red Flame Civilization, which enabled them to succeed so quickly.

It can be said that humans, relying on their mastery of mechanics, have unknowingly crossed a small technological barrier of the fourth-level civilization.

According to the classification of civilization levels by the top civilizations in the Milky Way, after entering the fourth-level civilization, humans quickly jumped from the primary stage of the fourth-level civilization to the intermediate stage of the fourth-level civilization.

Of course, humans do not know this now. Until one day in the future when they encounter a civilization whose speed is only 1 times the speed of light, humans will realize how much other civilizations envy them for breaking through the shackles of 1 times the speed of light in such a short time.

Not only that, without humans themselves realizing it, human engineers even feel that with the current level of human manufacturing technology, breaking through the shackles of 10.079 times the speed of light does not seem to be a difficult thing. Perhaps if they can make another breakthrough in mechanical technology, they will be able to manufacture warp engines with higher precision and efficiency.

All humans feel that improving their mechanical manufacturing technology is not difficult and is only a matter of time. The mechanical proficiency gained from becoming a nomadic civilization has brought benefits to humans that they themselves are not even aware of.

Similarly, humans now do not realize what their talent in mechanics would mean if other civilizations knew about it.

It was not until the discovery of more civilizations trapped at a speed of 1 or 10.079 times the speed of light that humans realized that things that they once thought were natural were actually extremely difficult for some civilizations.

(PS: The warp speed multiple value is borrowed from Star Trek. If I don’t mention this, someone will definitely criticize the author, just like some chapters in the previous article.)
(End of this chapter)