Super Copy of Great Power Technology

"Doesn't this mean that if this alien spaceship hadn't had an accident, it would have already reached the inner solar system, and might even have discovered Earth and humanity?"

"The situation may be worse than imagined. The alien spacecraft crashed in the asteroid belt, not far from Mars' orbit. This location is not too far from Earth. As long as the space telescope or other detection equipment on the alien spacecraft is not too outdated, all information about Earth can be seen clearly."

"I just don't know what level of technology these aliens have, or if they have interstellar communication methods. If they don't, that's fine, as Earth and humanity's information won't be exposed. But if they also have quantum communication-like methods that can transmit exploration information back to their home planet, that would be terrible."

"Yes, these aliens have mysterious origins and unknown technological level. Whether they are friend or foe is still unknown. Once their race obtains information about Earth and humanity, no one knows what the consequences will be."

"What's there to be afraid of? The worst outcome is simply war. Two interstellar races waging a war that spans galaxies—just thinking about it is exciting."

The group discussed amongst themselves as they entered the cockpit. Having only spent some time on the outer deck during the departure ceremony, they hadn't been to the cockpit and were understandably curious. Looking around, they were somewhat disappointed. The cockpit was only about 100 square meters. Besides Duan Side, there were a dozen or so dummy robots in blue fleet uniforms scattered throughout, operating their respective instruments. Perhaps to enhance the cockpit's resilience, the front bulkhead lacked the glass observation windows typical of ship cockpits, instead featuring several large display screens. However, only two screens were currently showing real-time images of the outside world. The remaining screens displayed the immigrant ship's location and course information, navigation data, the operational status of various components, fusion reactor parameters, remaining fuel, and other information. Anyone unfamiliar with spaceship piloting would be completely bewildered by the dense information displayed on the large screens.

A variety of instruments and control panels, their purposes unclear, were distributed along the bulkhead in a roughly semi-circular pattern, occupying almost a third of the cockpit area. Numerous buttons, knobs, keyboards, and touchscreens were present; without systematic training, it would be difficult to master their operation. However, this immigrant spaceship was highly automated, with many tasks handled by artificial intelligence, requiring minimal human intervention. The crew, including Captain Duan Side, did not have particularly heavy workloads.

"Xiao Jia, project the latest photos of the alien spaceship onto the big screen," Duan Side said, walking behind a stand-in robot.

"Yes, Captain, delivery complete." After a few movements on the control panel in front of it, the robot projected a huge photograph onto the largest display screen in the center. In the darkness, dozens of objects of varying sizes appeared as blurry outlines. Several red lines highlighted a few oddly shaped objects. Duan Side explained from the side:
"As we got closer, we discovered more than a dozen pieces of alien spaceship debris. The largest piece was nearly 100 meters long and tens of meters wide, while the smallest was only a few meters long and wide. Using spectral analysis, we learned that these pieces of debris were made of an alloy containing iron, nickel, cobalt, silicon, and several other rare metals. The materials of several pieces of debris were very similar, and they most likely came from different parts of the same alien spaceship. The surrounding fragments were formed after a rocky asteroid broke apart."

As Duan Side explained, the images on the large screen were magnified in detail, and some spectral analysis data appeared next to the spaceship wreckage circled in red. Then, the largest piece of spaceship wreckage was locked onto, and further magnification was performed, including noise reduction, saturation and color adjustments, revealing more details that had been hidden by darkness.

"This is the largest piece of the alien spaceship wreckage. Judging from its shape, it should be the bow of the spaceship. See those long tubes of varying thicknesses? That should be the barrel of some kind of kinetic weapon. This arc-shaped, pot-like thing is likely some kind of communication antenna or radar antenna. Now look at this second largest piece of wreckage. Doesn't that part with the circular nozzle look remarkably like our spaceship's engine...?"

As Duan Side analyzed, everyone confirmed one piece of information once again: these wreckages were definitely not naturally formed, but most likely man-made objects, or the wreckage of an alien spaceship that had crashed unexpectedly.

"Unfortunately, the distance between the fleet and the alien spacecraft wreckage is still too great. This place is located on the edge of the asteroid belt, far from the sun, and the light in space is too dark. Even if we use the best space telescope in the fleet to take pictures, the information we can get is limited." Academician Sun stared at the photo and carefully observed it while saying with regret.

"Unfortunately, the direction our expeditionary fleet is traveling and the flight path of the alien spaceship wreckage are not exactly opposite, but rather at a relatively large angle. Based on our current calculations, the expeditionary fleet and the spaceship wreckage will be closest in about half a day. After that, they will pass each other and move away rapidly. We don't have much time left to observe them."

Duan Side shrugged helplessly and explained the current flight status of the fleet and the alien spaceship wreckage. It's important to understand that large spaceships navigating interstellar space are extremely energy-intensive, especially during acceleration, deceleration, or course changes. The joint expedition fleet's destination was to traverse the interstellar passage to reach the distant Proxima Centauri system for exploration and investigation. This journey was fraught with unknowns and dangers, requiring sufficient logistical supplies and fusion fuel to cope with potential perils. It was absolutely impossible to use precious fusion fuel to change the fleet's course mid-journey to probe for alien spaceship wreckage. Even if exploring these wreckages were equally important, and might even threaten Earth and humanity, it wasn't worth the cost; the price would be far too high.

"I remember there are a dozen or so small research vessels in the expeditionary fleet. Could we send two over to closely track and investigate these alien spacecraft wreckage? If possible, it would be even better to capture the largest pieces of debris and send them back to Earth." At this moment, Wu Ziqiang interjected, offering his suggestion. (End of Chapter)