The virtual empire starts from the game

Chapter 670 Thomas Booker: We'll Win! (Seeking monthly votes at the beginning of the month)

"A runaway rocket can come back?? Xiao Meng is awesome!!"

"Boss Xu is awesome!!"

"I knew it! How could Mr. Xu's project possibly fail?!"

"This is the first time I've truly felt how powerful artificial intelligence is! It's like turning the ordinary into the extraordinary!"

……

Netizens finally came to their senses and showered Xiaomeng and Xumeng with praise in the live stream.

But those working in the aerospace industry understand:
This is not solely due to Xu Meng and Xiao Meng.

The rocket engineers who modified this rocket also deserve much credit!

Traditional rocket engines, while capable of controlling the engine nozzle angle and fuel injection volume to adjust the angle and magnitude of thrust, cannot achieve such precise and rapid changes.

It must be that the engineers made comprehensive adaptations and modifications to the rocket engine and the entire attitude balance system to enable Xiaomeng to perform such exquisite and delicate operations!
Otherwise, no matter how strong Xiaomeng's real-time computing capabilities are, or how low the latency of Zhumeng's super server is, without access ports and attitude data feedback, it's like a skilled cook trying to make a meal without rice.

It's a pity that no matter how clear the live stream of Dream Building was, it only showed everyone the shape of the rocket.

It's impossible to put a camera right up into the rocket and show the world its internal structure.

It is even less likely that the modifications the engineers made to the rocket will be publicly shown.

Even though there is currently no other AI in the world with the capabilities of Xiaomeng, the details and ideas behind these modifications still need to be kept strictly confidential.

To ensure this, every engineer who spoke to Xu Meng in the past week has added a few words at the end, reminding him to keep it a secret.

—Everyone on the project team was used to keeping their mouths shut and adhering to the principle of confidentiality, except for Xu Meng.

What's even more complicated is that if he accidentally leaks the secret, no one can do anything about it.

There will be no punishment, not even criticism or education.

So everyone couldn't help but repeatedly remind him...

……

At the viewing platform, as the rocket fell completely silent and shuttle buses carrying engineers headed straight for the successfully recovered rocket, everyone finally came to their senses.

Excitement, exhilaration, and a feeling of surviving a disaster all surged into my heart at the same time.

Cheers finally spread through the crowd!
The staff who guided them to the viewing platform also reappeared:
"The first rocket launch and recovery operation has been completed. Everyone can take a short break."

She gestured to the side of the viewing platform: "We have prepared some snacks and drinks for everyone. Feel free to help yourselves if you need them."

"If you want to go back to the hotel to rest, you can take a shuttle bus at any time."

"The second launch will begin in two hours, so please don't miss it."

After finishing her introduction, she smiled and stepped aside, giving the space to the invited audience members.

Everyone is in such an excited state right now, who's in the mood to go back to the hotel to rest?
Someone held a telescope and watched as workers busily surrounded the recovered rocket in the distance.

Someone took a drink and started taking selfies to show off while drinking.

Some people gathered in small groups, chatting excitedly.

The reporters sat cross-legged on the floor, laptops on their laps, and began writing their articles.

They must seize the moment and take advantage of the peak of online discussion to gain as much traffic and attention as possible.
-
California, on the other side of the world.

In an office at Edge Industries' aerospace headquarters, Edge Industries founder Thomas Booker and a group of senior executives watched the live stream with serious expressions.

The difference between them and netizens is:
There are two live streaming windows in front of them.

One came from the official live stream of Zhumeng, and the other came from their own optical and radar remote sensing satellite.

While the satellite communication network of the peripheral industry has not yet reached Thomas's ambitious goal of "3 satellites covering the globe," it is already capable of monitoring almost the entire world.

From the moment Xu Meng announced her intention to launch a satellite, they mobilized a large number of satellites to search for a rocket launch site to realize her dream.

Xu Meng's side was in a hurry, so the construction of the launch site was carried out with great fanfare, and there was little intention to hide anything.

When sending invitations and plane tickets to invited players, the process was completely transparent.

Thomas Booker naturally made targeted adjustments—

Starting three days ago, a whole group of satellites took turns monitoring the launch site to ensure that at least six remote sensing satellites with 10-centimeter resolution were observing the launch site from different angles at all times, striving not to miss any details.

Before the official launch today, he personally went to the site and watched the live broadcast with the technical team.

The AI ​​that helped build the dream rocket regain its balance and successfully recover it surprised them greatly.

They had overestimated Xiaomeng's potential role as much as possible, but when the moment came, Xiaomeng's performance still surprised them.

—None of them expected that the rocket development team in Xia Kingdom would actually digitize the rocket in order to maximize the potential of artificial intelligence!
Rocket manufacturing is a very delicate task, and any change can have far-reaching consequences.

If not handled properly, "optimization" could turn into "deterioration," or even lead to disastrous consequences.

Based on Thomas Booker's understanding of the Xia Guo aerospace industry, the engineers there were extremely averse to risk and failure, and the development and modification of rockets always emphasized a step-by-step approach.

Their sudden radical change and the massive modifications to the rocket have truly taken them by surprise.

After a long silence among the office staff, someone finally said uncertainly:

"Did the virtual world's simulation tests and Xu Meng's unlimited financial backing allow them to act recklessly?"

No one responded to him.

But silence is a form of acquiescence.

Thomas Booker remained expressionless.

This is certainly bad news, but it's bearable for now.

In any case, the peripheral industries were also required by the government not to undertake satellite launch business from Xia Kingdom.

Even if Zhumeng's reusable rocket is successfully launched, it will not directly affect the revenue of Peripheral Industries' rocket business.

At most, it will only have a slight impact on the stock prices of peripheral industries.

But the stock price has already fallen to an unbearable level, so it won't fall any further.

What truly has a direct impact on them is what the rocket sends into space—

A communication satellite that builds dreams!

In another live broadcast window, the rocket fairing of the "Dream Building" rocket separated layer by layer, and communication satellites detached from the rocket in an orderly manner and entered orbit.

bad news.

Thomas Booker and his engineering team frowned.

Xu Meng is indeed domineering; she said 550km, and she meant 550km!

The orbital altitude was not changed in the slightest despite the failure of the negotiations.

What makes it even more domineering is:

Xu Meng likely has absolutely no regard for international law!

According to the Outer Space Treaty, satellites must be registered with the United Nations and apply to the International Telecommunication Union for orbital and frequency resources before launch, and the principle of "first come, first served" must be followed.

At an altitude of 550km, the peripheral industry has already applied for 4.2 of them!

Leveraging their first-mover advantage, they have captured almost all of the best orbital resources.

If Dream Launch only launches one or two satellites, it can indeed avoid orbits that have already been occupied.

But the reality is clearly not like that!
According to their satellite monitoring, the rockets that built the dream project scattered satellites outwards like dandelions.

More than ten seeds were scattered in just a few seconds!

After finally finishing, they carefully counted and found that this one rocket had sent up a total of 36 satellites!
36 is not scary.

What's terrifying is that today, Zhuzhu Dream is going to launch six rockets!
If all of them are of this specification and all are successful, that would be 216 satellites!
Although it's nothing compared to the more than 10,000 satellites that the peripheral industry currently has, this is the number of launches per day!
The technology verification for reusable rockets is now almost complete.

With Xia Guo's outrageous industrial capacity... how many satellites could Zhu Meng launch in a month?

several hundred?

Or thousands?

Thomas Booker felt a chill run down his spine just thinking about it.

With so many satellites launched into low Earth orbit, how can they possibly avoid the 4.2 orbits already occupied by peripheral industries? If no countermeasures are taken, large-scale "orbit overlap" or even "accidental collisions" will inevitably occur!
There's no need to wait until later.

Thomas Booker isn’t even sure if the orbits of today’s 216 satellites are truly safe.

Does Xu Meng, the terrorist who evaporated hundreds of billions of dollars in assets from American internet giants in a single day, really respect the United Nations and international law?

Thomas Booker was highly skeptical!
and also……

“Release the high-resolution satellite images,” Thomas Booker said.

Someone immediately responded: "It's being processed! It'll be done soon!"

Soon, an ultra-high-definition satellite image began to load gradually from top to bottom on the 85-inch screen in the conference room.

In order to achieve the highest possible clarity, the original image was extremely large, taking nearly a minute to load.

Thomas Booker felt a little uncomfortable looking at the photos on the monitor.

—His home and his headquarters in California have both been upgraded to holographic displays.

When used with haptic control gloves, the angle and size can be adjusted at will, providing an excellent user experience.

However, the confidentiality requirements for aerospace operations are even higher, so they had to abandon the Dream Building equipment and retain traditional practices.

Thomas Booker shook his head, dismissing these fragmented thoughts.

He and three technical supervisors stepped forward and carefully examined the silver-white satellite, observing every detail.

After you've finished looking at the photo, switch to the next one and look at it from a different angle.

After looking at seven or eight pages back and forth, Thomas Booker finally spoke:
"So... this is a perfectly normal communications satellite, without robotic arms, giant scissors, electromagnetic guns, high-energy lasers, or anything like that, right?"

"should not."

"At least it doesn't appear to be."

"No!"

The three supervisors answered him one after another.

Thomas Booker finally breathed a sigh of relief.

Xu Meng has always liked to act recklessly.

So he was really worried that Xu Meng might go to any lengths to create a bunch of "satellite killers" or similar devices to hunt down their satellites in low Earth orbit...

Fortunately not.

However, he quickly added cautiously, "You need to photograph and archive all the satellites launched by Zhumeng, and check them one by one to make sure they are all normal satellites and that there is nothing strange hidden inside."

"clear."

Several engineers in the conference room nodded in response.

Thomas Booker was relieved.

Since Xu Meng didn't bring anything out of the ordinary and there's no technological gap between them, Thomas is confident that he can compete with Zhu Meng in this battle!
Peripheral industries do have a first-mover advantage.

In terms of both morality and scale, it is far ahead of the fledgling Zhumeng.

If you still don't dare to fight, then don't even think about any plans to immigrate to Mars or explore the stars!
However, a technical manager named Falken was so shocked by Xu Meng's achievement of catching up with their progress in just a few months that it took them several years to complete that he was a bit confused and couldn't help but ask:
"Would Zhumeng intentionally disintegrate its satellites to attack them with space debris, causing a large-scale chain reaction of disasters?"

This idea also startled others:
"No way……"

"This kind of behavior would be condemned by the whole world; he shouldn't be that crazy."

……

At the conference table, the engineers all shook their heads.

Thomas shook his head repeatedly: "It's not that bad."

“It’s not that Xu Meng wouldn’t dare—I highly doubt there’s anything he wouldn’t dare to do.”

"But once low Earth orbit is filled with space debris, it will take months or even years before it falls into the atmosphere and clears up again."

Xu Meng doesn't have the patience to wait.

"He won't do that unless he's provoked to the point of losing his mind."

Thomas's reasoning successfully convinced them.

— Under Xu Meng's leadership, all the projects that Zhumeng participated in sped off like they had sprouted wings, never stopping for a moment.

How could someone like that have the patience to wait for several years?

Falken nodded, putting his worries aside.

"Okay then. You guys keep track of the launch of Zhumeng, and I'll contact the officials at the National Space Administration to see if I can get Zhumeng's orbital registration information."

Thomas Booker turned and walked briskly toward the conference room exit.

But before leaving, he turned back to the key technical personnel in the conference room and said:
"Gentlemen, this will be a long-term competition that will last for several years!"

"You need to be mentally prepared."

"But don't put too much pressure on them. Zhumeng's strength lies in information technology, not aerospace technology. Artificial intelligence can give them some shortcuts to catch up with us temporarily."

“Taking shortcuts can also lead to omissions, resulting in a weak foundation, and these problems will be exposed sooner or later.”

"Final victory will surely belong to us!"

After saying this, he strode confidently out of the conference room.

The engineers in the meeting room, whose thinking was relatively simple, were encouraged by these words and became more focused on their work.

Thomas Booker didn't stop smiling until he entered his private office, at which point he took out his phone with a serious expression.

He needs the support of the National Space Administration.
-
Two hours later, amid cheers from the crowd in the viewing stands, the second rocket took off again.

This time it went even more smoothly than the first time; Xiao Meng didn't even have a chance to participate before the rocket completed the recovery and satellite release on its own.

Four hours later, the third rocket was launched.

This time, a serious hardware failure occurred. When the problem occurred, the distance to the ground was less than 20 meters. Even Xiaomeng's immediate intervention could not save the situation.

The rocket still crashed to the ground and exploded into a fireball.

Xiaomeng was very unhappy.

Netizens and viewers are very concerned.

But Xu Meng remained calm.

The cost of blowing up a rocket can be earned back in minutes by the [Rejuvenation] project, so it's hard to feel any emotional reaction.

After that accident, subsequent launches went much more smoothly.

The fourth time went very smoothly.

The fifth malfunction occurred, but Xiaomeng took over and "drove" it back to the ground.

The sixth time, it was completely dark.

After a full 12 hours of hard work, even with plenty of breaks in between, the participants still felt extremely exhausted.

Even so, none of the players in front of the viewing platform left early.

Everyone stood there quietly, watching the last rocket slowly rise.

The blazing flames spewed from the engine were even more magnificent and spectacular in the night, making it impossible to look away.

At that moment, they were unaware that an even more spectacular scene awaited them—

Inside the command center, a holographic image of Earth floated in front of Xu Meng.

There are also 180 silver dots around the Earth.

Those are satellites that have already entered orbit.

No one outside realized one thing—

These 180 satellites are not fully operational.

Xu Meng plans to wait for the final 36 satellites to enter orbit before activating them simultaneously!
(End of this chapter)