Will the out-of-control servitor meet the cosmic cat?

It is not only reflected in the huge mass of these four "protosatellites" compared with other satellites, but also in their very unique orbits - these four satellites are the most beautiful orbits observed so far ,none of them.

Because there is an orbital resonance of 1:2:4:8 between them.

That is to say, whenever Castel, that is, the satellite numbered 1.6 orbits once, No. [-] orbits twice, No. [-] orbits four times, and No. [-] satellite orbits eight times—the revolution period of each satellite is Twice that of the previous one, and the semi-major axis of the orbit is [-] times that of the previous one.

Their errors are so small that they are almost negligible on the planetary scale, so that they can be considered as a perfect large-scale resonance system composed of three 3:1 orbital resonances.

In this way, these four satellites will be paired in pairs periodically, that is, the phenomenon of two-star tandem, which greatly reduces the logistics cost between the satellites, but the orbital resonance ensures that they will not appear four-star tandem , that is, the situation where four satellites line up on the same side in a straight line to ensure the stability of the entire system.

"Although none of these satellites have realistically feasible geosynchronous orbits due to tidal locking, they are no more able to build a classic geosynchronous orbit type space elevator than we are, and for some reason unknown to us, they have not built The Lagrangian point-type space elevator that is feasible on these satellites is the special version of the space elevator whose center of mass is located at the Lagrangian points L1 and L2."

"However, due to its lower mass, the cost of building space skyhooks and electromagnetic ejection tracks there is much lower than ours, which is why the extinction unit is only about one-half to one-third of our industrial production capacity Under such circumstances, the biggest reason for having such a high orbital capability."

Staring at the defense map in front of her, which was composed of various complicated lines and parameters, Stuart recalled the information she had heard about the "core star field" in the celestial mechanics course.

Even the No. 4 satellite "Gageki Mead" with the largest mass has an escape velocity of only 2 kilometers per second, and its orbital speed is even lower than 10.8 kilometers per second—compared to 15.3 kilometers per second for Catus. The orbital speed per second and the escape speed of [-] kilometers per second are ridiculously large.

Originally, such a low orbital speed would make it not so cost-effective to build large-scale orbital facilities-when the electromagnetic ejection track of tens of kilometers can easily put a large amount of load into orbit, cheap reusable rockets can support it. When entering orbit efficiently, the cost performance of the space hook will not be so high.

Not only that, but with the reduction in cost performance, the disadvantage of the space skyhook's extreme orbital occupation will also be highlighted.

Taking Catus as an example, their space skyhook is centered on Kawei, that is to say, the height of the center of mass is 11000 kilometers, so when its near-earth end is at 200 kilometers, the space skyhook will be The docking speed can be reduced from 10.8 km/s to 3.5 km/s, saving about 70.00% of the consumption.

But for the satellites of the extinct units, the orbiting speed is already so low, no matter how exquisite their design is, it is difficult to reduce the cost by more than 40.00%, that is to say, they can reduce the consumption by at most 1 kilometer per second.

As we all know, the "environmental pollution" of the space skyhook is extremely severe-due to the difference in linear velocity, the cable will periodically sweep away almost all spacecraft except the orbit where the center of mass is located, forcing the civilization there to only spaceflight The device is deployed in the orbit of the center of mass or adjusted to avoid the equator, which greatly reduces the efficiency.

In this way, although the space skyhook can still reduce a lot of cost for extinct units, compared with Catus, the advantage is much reduced - the cost between 3.5 km/s and 1.5 km/s The gap is not as natural as 10.8 and 4. Katus' strong industrial capabilities can make up for this gap to a certain extent.

Before seeing the core satellite industrial chain of extinction with her own eyes, Hong had always thought so.

Unfortunately, when the large astronomical telescope in Cat's Claw Fortress was erected, reality told her that she had made a mistake.

"The rotating space skyhook first "picks up" the load sent from the surface at the receiving end. Since the center of mass of this kind of skyhook is far away, the picked-up load will be greatly increased at the expense of absorbing the angular momentum of the skyhook. Orbit and speed, after a period of rotation, when the receiving end reaches the highest point of the entire orbit, they will release the load, allowing the load to leave the current orbit at a relative speed of more than ten kilometers per second."

In the "Maomao Encyclopedia" set up on the Internet, it is recorded in this way Hong's views on this unique "rotating space skyhook" developed by the Extinction Unit.

"During the release of the load, according to the conservation of momentum, the orbital height and angular momentum of the rotating skyhook will decrease slightly—this phenomenon will also appear in the non-rotating skyhook. According to our solution, in order to make the skyhook Hook back to the original track, and the skyhook will start its own engine to speed up."

"Although in theory, it is possible to increase the altitude of the orbit and achieve the effect of 'momentum exchange' by sending payloads in orbit to the surface, but since we have entered the space age, we usually do not consider sending orbital payloads to the planet. So this method is rarely used.”

"Yeah, the only reason an orbiting payload is expensive is because it's 'in orbit,' and sending stuff from space to the surface is putting the cart before the horse."

Stuart muttered to himself.

Generally speaking, except for the really scarce materials on a very few planets, the only payload worth sending back to the surface is "people".

After all, in order to send something into space, even with the help of a skyhook, Hong needs at least 3.5 kilometers per second of DV consumption-who would be stupid to send it into space after paying such a high price? How much to pull it down again?

And cross-star logistics is even more ridiculous. You not only need to consume the cost of falling into orbit, but also have to pay an additional transfer cost ranging from a few kilometers to a dozen kilometers. Most of the materials will be lost to grandma’s house in this process. go.

This is also the reason why Hong chose to move the shipyard to other planets instead of moving the raw materials from other planets back to the home planet-distance is such a ruthless thing, at a distance of hundreds of millions of kilometers, the distance between the planets Like semi-isolated islands, it is difficult to communicate with each other.

Of course, if she can find a cheap enough fusion propulsion method in the future, the spacecraft can easily reach the DV of hundreds of thousands of kilometers, or directly conquer the superluminal technology, and reduce the cost of superluminal navigation to at least break even At that point, interstellar logistics will truly become possible.

【Note 1】

"But in the core star field of the extinct unit, everything has changed."

"Starting from the No. 4 satellite, the semi-major axis of the orbit from small to large is 42, 67, 107 million, and 170 million kilometers. At this distance, with the help of the electromagnetic ejection orbit and the rotating skyhook, the logistics between them Costs have been low enough to 'break even'."

"Given the omnic nature of the extinct units, further compression of costs renders logistics between these moons profitable."

"In this way, thanks to the high-frequency and efficient interstellar logistics, the rotating skyhook can first consume the momentum to launch the load, and then accept the load sent by other satellites, decelerate it and send it to the surface to increase the momentum."

"Unlike the fixed skyhook used by Catus or the ordinary skyhook that is planned to be built on other planets, the rotating skyhook does not need to use propellant to provide acceleration, and the whole process depends entirely on the momentum exchange between the sky and the earth. Therefore, the rotating skyhook can be called a real momentum exchange rope."

"However, in actual operation, there will inevitably be situations where the received kinetic energy is smaller than the emitted kinetic energy, causing the skyhook to slowly lose angular momentum—at this time, the rotating skyhook will start the engine to compensate for thrust."

Obviously, the advantages and disadvantages of the rotary skyhook are obvious.

For a civilization like Red, which mainly uses spaceships for interplanetary development, and seldom carries out logistics due to multiple reasons, this kind of skyhook is completely tasteless-the risks brought by high-speed docking will also make the only one of this facility A little bit of advantage is directly washed away.

The situation is similar on the Alliance side. There are wormholes between the main population planets that need logistics, and those unmanned planets that are going to be developed in the future have no logistics value and are more suitable for building ordinary skyhooks.

However, as far as Hong knows, humans seem to have built this kind of rotating skyhook, but not in the giant planetary satellite belt, but on their two main populated planets, Mars and Earth—different from omnics. Civilization, the human giant planetary satellite belt is not so highly developed, and is more suitable for transportation using electromagnetic ejection orbits. In contrast, population planets need a little more.

Of course, judging from the fact that humans did not choose to build more rotating skyhooks, but built a space elevator on Mars, this rotating skyhook can only be regarded as a transitional product after all-in the case of more advanced technology Afterwards, the advanced product of the rotary skyhook, the space elevator is the real king.

Different from the "competitive relationship" between the rotating skyhook and the fixed skyhook, while the space elevator is a special variant of the skyhook, its performance far exceeds its two predecessors.

Theoretically speaking, the space elevator is actually a skyhook, but its center of mass is just in the synchronous orbit, causing its revolution speed and equatorial rotation speed to be basically equal, so that the other end can be directly grounded.

For the skyhook, the higher the center of mass, the longer its orbital period, so that the linear velocity of its near-earth end will be lower, and the speed of docking will also be lower—in this way, when the center of mass reaches the synchronous orbit, let When the near-ground end is grounded, its linear velocity will be synchronized with the equatorial rotation, and it is no longer necessary for the aerospace plane to send the load into the sky before docking.

In addition, the space elevator also has a unique solution to the orbit lowering problem caused by the "loss of kinetic energy" faced by the two old predecessors-as long as the connection between the ground terminal and the surface is ensured to be strong enough, the counterweight outside the synchronous orbit will Spontaneously straighten the elevator, so that as long as the quality of the goods being transported is not high enough, the counterweight can automatically pull the center of mass back to the synchronous orbit.

Compared with the huge mass and slender pipe diameter of the space elevator, the quality of this cargo is basically impossible to achieve-in this way, the main problems faced by the skyhook are all solved.

It can be said that the space elevator is a complete replacement for the Skyhook, except that it is more expensive than the Skyhook.

But it was precisely this "expensiveness" that killed Hong's desire to build a space elevator.

After all, this is not simply expensive, but the "expensive" technology.

An [-]-kilometer-long synchronous orbital space elevator is completely unfeasible in terms of engineering at Hong's technological level.

You must know that the [-]-kilometer-long Kawei-[-] fixed skyhook and the [-]-kilometer synchronous orbital space elevator that humans plan to build are already stepping on their current material science limits— —Even the [-]-kilometer level of the human home planet Earth is impossible to reach, let alone the [-]-kilometer level of Katus.

Not only that, according to Hong's calculations, there is no planet suitable for building a space elevator in the entire Devo galaxy-the rotation period is slower and slower, and the synchronous orbit can even be as high as more than [-] kilometers. How to build it?

Although the alliance has two suitable planets that can be built, due to their embarrassing development progress, it is estimated that it will be impossible to start construction on them for decades-in fact, if Stewart is to say, she doesn't even think the alliance can Lay Skyhooks on all major planets within 150 years.

"With their appearance, how could it be possible?"

Recalling the darkness she had seen in the federation, she unconsciously clenched the armrest.

Sometimes, she also wonders if her violent tendency has been affected by those experiences-although as an expensive "goods", she has not suffered any physical harm, but many times, the mental Injuries are far more difficult to heal than physical scars.

Much harder to smooth out.

------

[Note 1: Although the cross-star logistics is particularly at a loss, the loss does not mean that it will not do it-limited by reasons such as marginal income, although the efficiency of accumulating production capacity on the mother star is high, the overall On the contrary, the income is not as good as the "losing business" of using the same energy to develop other planets. Therefore, as long as the distance is not far enough, the overall improvement of civilization by developing other planets is more "profitable" than simply developing the parent star.

Of course, there are exceptions, such as colonizing other stars when there is no means of superluminal speed-although it is beneficial to the entire "civilization", if the parent galaxy is attacked, the civilization branches of other stars will not only be of no help, but also equivalent to changing direction Divide away the production capacity of the parent galaxy, resulting in the weakening of the resistance of the parent star.

To put it simply, the mother star loses money at all times, but as long as the overall efficiency is not particularly bad, it is mostly profitable.

】

Volume 90 Extinction War: Chapter [-] I really worked hard on myself today

After about a few seconds, Stuart gave up this meaningless idea—whether it was born or influenced by the day after tomorrow, it will not change this reality.

Maybe it was out of anxiety at first, out of venting, maybe even out of some dark thoughts, but whatever it was at first, now she just simply likes these things, this feeling.

She likes weapons, she likes battleships, and she likes these powerful forces that can protect herself and her friends.

"Besides, it's not a hobby that hurts other people."

Slender fingers swipe across the electronic screen, switching the interface back to the galaxy's star map data and defense platform deployment map.

Although qualitatively speaking, whether it is those "military enthusiasts" in the alliance who simply like weapons and equipment, or people like her who have taken the initiative to study military command and want to personally command the battle, they are essentially a kind of power. Pursuit is a manifestation of destructive desire, but this does not mean that people who like this kind of "violence" are also people who like to resort to violence in real life.

On the contrary, in fact, Stuart is a very positive and optimistic person.

At least in the eyes of most of the kids, her image is more like a gentle and lively big sister. Except for a very few people/machines who understand her heart, no one will know that under her appearance, there is something hidden. A warlike soul.

In fact, in today's Katus, except for a few who have really completely stepped out of the shadows, who doesn't have a little darkness in their hearts, as long as these things don't hurt themselves or their partners in the same civilization and camp Therefore, Hong will not deliberately "eliminate" these darkness.

After all, if you want to get rid of the scar quickly, you can't avoid taking the initiative to uncover the scar, Hong can't bear to do so.

Compared with those "fast and efficient" methods, she would rather make things less efficient and lengthy, use her selfless and caring care, and spend tens of hundreds of years of life to slowly heal their inner wounds—it turns out that, It really works.

Even Stuart, who had the biggest and darkest opinions on the Federation in the entire Catus, can now communicate with the Federation people normally, without showing the slightest hostility.

"Ha~ah..."

About half an hour later, after looking at the star map and simulated combat for a long time, she finally couldn't help being sleepy and yawned cutely.

No matter how much she acts like an adult and how many things she knows, she can't hide the fact that her real age is only 96 years old—that is to say, she is still a real minor, and her body is still in the development stage.

And for an underage Jeffrey, staying up late is not a good habit.

What's more, as one of the very few cubs on Katus who has not yet undergone a complete set of "growth arrest surgery", her need for sleep is higher than those cubs that have undergone a full version of the operation-at least, at least one day a day. Ten hours of sleep is a must.

"It's really hard for me today." She checked the progress of the project for the last time, and then reached out to switch the electronic board to sleep mode, "It's time to sleep."

"Good night, Red."

After changing into pajamas, Stuart got into the quilt that had been warmed up in advance, and grabbed the edge of the quilt with both hands, only revealing a cute little head, looking eagerly at the half-closed eyes of Hong on the sofa.

Hong, who was immersed in commanding the construction ship to install the turret, raised his head and smiled peacefully: "Good night."

The lights on the bulkhead were scattered, and except for the night light in the corner, the entire room was shrouded in the purest darkness.

Although in theory, having artificial light sources when sleeping has a great impact on the quality of sleep, and the room should be kept completely dark, this is not the case in practice - unlike the night on the planet, in the compartment and armor In the depths of the spaceship shrouded in layers, there is no light source in the true sense.

For the Jeffreys who rely on "visible light" with a wavelength of 800nm ​​to 400nm to passively see objects, and cannot receive the 850nm infrared light emitted by red, if they don't turn on a small night light to supplement the light, then it is really "" I can't see my fingers."

"Whoo~"

Breathing the cool air in the cabin, she wrapped herself in the quilt and smiled happily.

Although it is not currently the most comfortable temperature for Jeffreys biologically, for her personally, this kind of cold feeling makes her feel more pleasant.

It's not that Hong's temperature control is not good--thinking about it, if the temperature of a person's living compartment can't even be balanced, how can she cope with the extremely harsh high-temperature environment of a battleship?

It's just a hobby of Stewart's.

Mingminghong could create the most comfortable environment in this room, but she insisted on lowering the temperature of the room by a few degrees Celsius, and then wrapped herself in a blanket to keep warm.

It's not just her, according to Hong's observation, nearly two-thirds of the cubs like to do such superfluous things.

At first, out of logical considerations, Hong thought that it was because of the difference in the environment of the planet that the cubs preferred cooler temperatures, and there was a precedent for this.

After all, no matter how simulated it is, there is still a big gap between Katus and Talalon—no matter how well Hong transforms the environment, it cannot change some differences in physical properties.

A simple example, the "growth arrest surgery" that all the cubs have done is a typical one - since the gravity of Catus is nearly 10% higher than that of Talalon, in order to prevent the cubs from growing too high and affecting the bones In order to ensure the safety of the cubs, cardiovascular and other systems, Hong had to stop the growth of the cubs through surgery before their height reached a dangerous height.

Although it is surgery, it mainly depends on gene adjustment, supplemented by some drugs to complete the stagnation. Except for the adjustment of bones, other processes do not require surgery and are completely harmless to the body.

However, although the main purpose of red is safety, for the cubs, the "side effect" of this operation, the "appearance" brought about by keeping the same appearance, is the "main effect" they really value.

There are also a few cubs who don't want to stop growing immediately, but want to grow bigger and look more girlish, such as Stewart. Hong will not do a complete set of stagnation surgery, but simply first Keep the height below 1.7 meters, and wait until they feel suitable before taking the next step-for Hong's current technology, this is not a problem at all.

However, upon questioning, she found that was not the case.

They just simply like the behavior of "turning on the air conditioner and covering the quilt".

Six minutes and 30 seconds later, Hong, who received the message, confirmed the position of the spaceship and smiled slightly.

Even though at this moment, where she was at noon and the sky was clear, she still said "good night" silently in her heart.

This kind of peaceful life is what she really pursues - to live carefree with the cubs, to live peacefully with other civilizations in the same cosmic background radiation, and to explore the deepest part of the universe together. mystery.

"It would be great if there were no enemies in the universe..."

Hong muttered to himself.

However, she can only fantasize in her heart—this universe is almost impossible to be peaceful.

Since the appearance of the first creature on the planet, the survival war full of life and death has begun.

Competing with other cells for energy, competing with other animals for food, and competing with other species for living space, even if they can become the most powerful species on the planet, the competition will never stop.

For resources, for profit, even within the same intelligent species, they are full of blood and fire. Even, even if they have sufficient resources, these intelligent creatures will create more reasons, to each other, to foreign races, Wage war on aliens.

In order to create a unified civilization and bring the entire population into a new era, the Catus launched a unified war and wiped out all "backward" and "selfish" countries.

Although in Hong's view, this kind of war for the sake of population, civilization, ideals and the future can indeed be called "justice", but in essence, war is still war after all.

No matter what kind of creatures they are, when they decide to embark on this evolutionary path, "pure peace" has nothing to do with them anymore.

But for Hong, she doesn't care whether peace is pure or not, and she doesn't care whether the so-called peace under power is real peace—for her, the peace she pursues is that the cubs can be safe and worry-free. Live without worry in this starry sky.

Those who are willing to live in harmony, welcome them with smiling faces, and those who do not want to live in harmony, greet them with fleets.

"Red, red."

Not long after Hong was immersed, Xi'er tugged at her sleeves and dragged her out of these philosophical thoughts.

"what happened?"

After deleting all kinds of thoughts about peace from her memory, Hong showed a faint smile, touched her head, and made her narrow her eyes comfortably.