Voyage of the Stars.

Chapter 1404 Gazing into the Abyss
The night comes wind and rain, Whispering Colour.

This is a feeling that can only be evoked by a planetary environment. In the interstellar age, all that can be seen is a vast sea of ​​stars, and everywhere one looks is a boundless galaxy.

Withdrawing his gaze, Yue Yuan waved his hand, transforming the holographic screen displaying the entire exterior view into a real-time dynamic map of the Milky Way Grand Expedition Organization's star path layout. The bright spots in the dynamic map, each with various annotations, represent the star paths.

The star path is not entirely composed of the planets that are pushed out; there are also many surplus warships and various spaceships that are used as resources and launched into the interior of the Great Void.

These spaceships are loaded with matter, and then their warp engines, with a set operating time, are ignited. Initially, they travel at warp speeds for thousands or tens of thousands of light-years before switching to conventional thrust, propelling the spaceships to near the speed of light. They then drift towards the Great Void by inertia.

The three major expeditionary organizations would send a fleet into the void every so often. In addition, they would also equip some asteroids and planets with engines and send them into the void.

This is what is known as the "star path".

Because the journey is so long, the time required to lay the star path will also be longer.

Take, for example, the first voyage by the three major voyage organizations to the Great Void, which is a galaxy about 1760 million light-years away from where we are right now.

Given the current navigation capabilities of all civilizations in the three major long-range shipping organizations, no matter how large the fleet, it is impossible to reach the destination by warp drive. All civilizations that attempt to reach their destination by warp drive will inevitably perish due to energy issues, because warp drive also consumes more energy with greater mass. Even if a Level 6 civilization's ships are fully loaded with energy resources, there will eventually be a limit to their range. Even if they burn themselves for energy, the outcome will still be the same, and they will inevitably perish.

Various Level 6 civilizations have tested this, and the maximum distance is approximately 3 million light-years.

Even if a fleet were to travel 300 million light-years in a single journey, it would be almost entirely dismantled by the time it reaches its destination.

Therefore, the only way to solve this problem is through the use of the energy of the galaxy where the object is located to launch the object first, and then use it as a resource to replenish the object when it catches up later.

However, there is a problem here: the launched matter also has mass and is also limited by the limit distance caused by the "thrust-to-weight ratio". Therefore, nothing can be launched at full warp speed.

Most of the time, these launched objects travel at normal speeds, meaning they cannot exceed the speed of light. This is the main reason why laying star trails takes so long.

Therefore, the optimal time for the three major spacefaring organizations to lay out star paths should be 250 to 300 million years, so that when everyone reaches the limit of their travel distance, they can catch up with the launched matter.

Of course, that's for distances that are only twice the maximum travel distance to the destination. But the current destination is 1760 million light-years away. Theoretically, to arrive at the destination smoothly, it would take at least 1460 million years to lay out a star path.

But that's almost 15 million years! Putting aside whether it's realistic to spend that much time laying out star paths, there's bound to be big trouble if we spend that much time here.

Because the fourth phase transition region is constantly expanding. The three major spacefaring organizations don't have that much time to stay here. Even if they could wait until the fourth phase transition region spreads to this area before leaving at warp speed, building star trails and stopping to resupply would still take time. As things continue like this, the time available will become shorter and shorter over time.

Entering the Great Void is not the end of the story. Each civilization still needs to find a way to master the zero-point energy of the vacuum, which takes time, and the time required is uncertain. Therefore, it is best to allow as much time as possible.

In other words, it is impossible for the three major spacefaring organizations to spend 15 million years laying star trails here. Their only option is to rely on inertial navigation, commonly known as hard flight.

This method is time-consuming and places extremely high demands on the technological equipment of each civilization. Therefore, the preparations required by each civilization are somewhat different from those of previous long voyages. In the past, the focus was on loading transport ships with resources, but now the emphasis is on the need to maintain facilities.

As far as the Galactic Expedition Organization is concerned, the first phase is to travel 300,000 light-years at warp speed, and then use up the star resources previously launched along the way as supplies. After that, they will enter the regular near-light speed travel phase and head towards the galaxy 17.3 million light-years away.

From the start to the end of the star path, no one was too worried. The most difficult part was the long period of inertial navigation that followed.

That would take 1730 million years to fly! Such a long time! If all things were to perish, no level six civilization could guarantee that it could survive for 1730 million years on the resources it took with it.

When traveling in a conventional manner, when the speed is extremely close to the speed of light, there will be time dilation and length contraction. However, that is from the perspective of a stationary observer. From the perspective of the people inside the spaceship, the flow of time in their world is normal. Time slowing down only occurs during acceleration and deceleration. Whether at near-light speed or light speed, the flow of time remains unchanged because, for them, the speed of light remains constant.

Therefore, if the various civilizations on the Great Voyage wanted to travel a distance of 1730 million light-years at near-light speed, it would take them 1730 million years. Of course, if they didn't slow down upon reaching their destination, the fleet's intrinsic timeline and the target galaxy's intrinsic timeline wouldn't coincide, and there would be no overlap, thus shortening the travel time considerably, but that would be meaningless. (Explained in Chapter 1267)

In reality, the 300,000 light-year star path laid by the three major voyage organizations is not even a fraction of the total distance of this voyage. Theoretically, everyone can directly start their journey from this galaxy by hard flight, because laying a 300,000 light-year star path would take 300,000 years.

Using a warp drive to launch supplies would greatly reduce the time required, but the warp drive consumes energy every moment. Launching supplies in this way is essentially no different from loading a transport ship full of supplies and launching it directly at warp speed.

Once the distance of a long voyage exceeds the limit of warp speed travel, the form of the voyage and the main content of its protection change.

For a journey of three million light-years, the main concern for a long-distance voyage is the warp energy consumption along the way. Calculating the consumption carefully is crucial to ensuring the fleet can reach its destination.

This has been the case for all three major voyage organizations, and everyone is familiar with this format.

But modern voyages are different. They go far beyond the limits. The focus of long-distance voyages is no longer on fuel allocation for warp drive, but on how long the energy contained in the entire fleet can sustain the entire civilization!
All the resources and energy carried by the entire civilization must be converted into the consumption required for the long-term survival of the civilization as much as possible. Therefore, warp drive should be avoided as much as possible, and the energy that should have been consumed by the warp drive should be used for the survival of individual life and the maintenance of ships throughout the civilization.

This is the essential difference between conventional long-distance voyages and voyages into the Great Hole.

(End of this chapter)