Reborn Before the Apocalypse: My Backing is the Nation

Chapter 175 A Barrage of Arrows
A heavy multi-rotor cargo drone roared as it landed on the helipad on the edge of the city, alongside drones from other locations.

Before it had even come to a complete stop, staff members quickly arrived in a small vehicle and skillfully removed the two heavy batteries from it, replacing them with new ones.

After pressing the confirmation button and undergoing a brief self-check, the drone roared into the sky and took off again, joining its many companions.

This drone battery swapping center maintains a constant state where drones are landing and taking off at all times.

The number of drones landing or taking off in an orderly manner above it is probably over a thousand.

Countless rotors spun wildly at the same time, and the sound waves they emitted enveloped a space with a radius of nearly a thousand meters.

After takeoff, it flew quickly over the city under automatic commands from the drone control center.

Under the control of the automatic flight path planning program, even though the number of drones flying over the city at the same time exceeds 10,000, they will not cause any impact on each other.

In just twenty minutes, it landed precisely outside a factory building.

The staff there had already packed a standard box.

After scanning the QR code with an electronic device and confirming that all data matched, the standard container was secured to the shelf. The next moment, the drone took off again.

This time, it did not continue to hover over the city, but flew straight to another city hundreds of kilometers away.

At a straight-line flight speed of over 200 kilometers per hour, a distance of 420 kilometers by road transport was traversed in just one and a half hours.

After unloading a standard cargo container at another factory, the drone took off again and flew towards the city's drone battery swapping center.

After its "heart" was powered up again, it took off once more to begin its next transport mission.

At the same time, the number of drones flying in the sky around the world is probably more than 5 million.

These 5 million drones are controlled by 562 drone control centers around the world, depending on their location.

The supercomputers operating within the system can sense the location, speed, battery level, range, and orientation of each drone in real time, and assign them appropriate tasks accordingly.

These 562 supercomputers are all under a unified control supercomputing management system. This supercomputer at the top of the control chain is just one of many supercomputing bases under the Doomsday Project Command.

Smaller, lighter, and shorter-distance goods are transported by drones; large, time-sensitive goods are transported by large transport aircraft; bulk goods are transported by trains and freight cars; and oversized goods are transported by giant cargo ships. With various means of transportation, all kinds of materials are flowing wildly across this blue planet.

At this moment, numerous components were gathered at an aerospace engine production base.

On the assembly line, thanks to the combined efforts of robotic arms, robots, skilled workers, and engineers, standard small-sized engines are continuously "flowing" out.

This is an engine specifically designed for the third stage of the "Flying Eagle II" reusable rocket.

According to design standards, each Flying Eagle II rocket's third stage will use four of these engines.

This large production line can assemble one engine per hour on average, which is 24 engines per day.

This large aerospace engine research and production center employs over 3 people, including frontline workers, logistics, testing, research and development, and management staff. There are ten production lines like this one.

A single day can produce enough third-stage engines to power 60 rockets!
but……

Taking into account potential losses during reuse, such as failed rocket recovery or engine damage, the total number of these small engines required for this launch mission is... 50. At the capacity of this large factory, it would take a full 70 months.

This is undoubtedly unacceptable.

But that's okay. At this moment, there are a total of 40 other factories on Earth that produce the same model of engine as this one.

In this way, the daily production of this engine reached nearly 10,000 units!

However, a rocket requires more than just this one type of engine.

The first-stage engine, the second-stage engine, and the engine that is needed to propel the cargo into the Earth-Moon transfer orbit after it enters space—these engines are disposable. After pushing the cargo into the Earth-Moon transfer orbit, they will detach on their own, adjust their orbit, and plunge into deep space, never to return.

Because they are moving too fast, recycling them is too difficult, so it's better to just discard them.

Once the cargo reaches the vicinity of the moon, it needs to be decelerated and enter lunar orbit, which also requires an engine.

The cargo also needs to decelerate during its descent to the moon, requiring an engine as well.

It is also a one-time use vehicle and will crash on the moon.

Roughly estimated, the total number of engines of various types and sizes required for the entire launch mission is likely to exceed 300 million.

Fortunately, other engine models are also produced by specialized factories, totaling more than 1000 factories of all sizes.

Even the smallest factory has over 10,000 employees. The larger ones have over 100,000.

At this moment, tens of millions of highly skilled workers and engineers are employed in engine production alone on this planet.

This doesn't even take into account the manpower consumed on the transportation side, let alone the share occupied by upstream factories.

Don't forget that at this point, these factories are just final assembly plants, and almost all the parts they need are supplied by upstream factories.

The upstream factories will require more, not less, manpower than it.

All of these components combined amount to only one engine. Besides the engine, a rocket also requires electronic controls, a shell, coatings, navigation systems, chips, and most importantly, fuel, totaling over 100 million tons.

Under these circumstances, the first batch of Flying Eagle II rockets was finally manufactured and transported to more than 1000 launch sites around the world.

Countless countdowns echoed from various launch sites as rockets, carrying their payloads, soared into space.

The astronauts working on the space station witnessed this awe-inspiring scene firsthand.

Hundreds and thousands of bright spots, like stars, took off from the continents in a short time, as if the Milky Way had reversed and descended from the vast starry sky to the earth.

At that moment, the same word rose simultaneously in the minds of many astronauts.

Thousands of arrows fired!

(End of this chapter)