I ask you to build tractors, but you build rockets?

Tick.

It was obviously winter, and the air conditioning temperature in the office was very comfortable, but there was still a drop of sweat falling on the floor along the sleeves.

John seemed unaware of this and was in a daze.

Suddenly being pulled onto the vast stage of the solar system, he was unprepared and had no idea what to do.

Even if there is only a period of uncertainty in the signal, huge pressure can be transmitted hundreds of millions of kilometers away.

Cheyenne Mountain has plans to deal with various dangers, including even asteroids hitting the earth, but no one has thought about how to deal with aliens.

Because anyone who really devotes energy to thinking about these will find that trying to speculate on alien civilization from a human perspective is itself a kind of nihilism and absurdity.

Humans can crush an ant to death for no reason. Obviously, the gap between the two is not as big as that of aliens.

The simple values ​​​​of ants cannot understand why there are living creatures doing things that have nothing to do with survival, and human values ​​​​are even more meaningless in the universe.

Thinking about aliens was pointless, but John couldn't stop thinking.

"I authorize you, I give you all permissions."

John leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and said the last sentence:

"Inform Sullivan. He knows who to call."

…

Class B base.

"This is flat land."

"Gone?"

"Gone."

Lin Ju and Xiao Gangtian looked at each other with confusion in their eyes.

"Lihuo" has arrived on Mars and conducted intensive monitoring for two months. It used all means to collect almost all data on Plain Zero. The base's geological experts and astrophysicists also carefully analyzed it for two months.

Now that all the valuable content has been summarized, the conclusion they reached is the sentence relayed by Xiao Okada.

It's really nothing special. Judging from all the information currently available to humans, the biggest feature of Plain Zero is that although that small piece of plain is small, it's really flat.

This flatness does not mean that the surface is simply flat, but that the loose soil on the surface detected by "Lihuo" is very flat. Instead, the surface will form various small mounds due to the wind blowing back and forth.

There are two possibilities behind the flatness: there are underground buildings and it is formed naturally.

Both have the same probability and cannot be further judged. They are all guesses without reliable support. The limit of satellite monitoring can only go so far.

For Plain Zero, the survey value of "Lihuo" has been exhausted. Next, it will be a very powerful comprehensive survey satellite, which is enough to keep surveillance on Plain Zero.

"Then let's quietly leave the fire as planned. Except for waking it up when necessary, don't use it again before October next year."

Xiao Gangtian nodded, this was a strategy that had been planned for a long time.

Before Lihuo was launched, the base had seriously considered the issue of communication confidentiality. In addition to disguising it as a natural signal, the most important thing was to carry out forwarding and relaying.

At first, they used the Moon's "Laurel" series of satellites for transmission. Later, with the help of the Tianmu-1 mission, the space shuttle threw several micro-satellites to the ecliptic plane. Now it is more complicated.

The three detectors "Descendant", "Golden Crow" and "Changsi" launched in the past few months, targeting the sun, Mercury and Lingshen respectively, took turns to undertake the forwarding mission according to certain rules, and were sent back to the earth after several relays and re-modulation. , it is impossible for humans to discover where Li Huo's signal went with the existing means.

Encoding and encryption took a lot of effort. A large group of engineers summarized the different timeline information learned from the system, various unrelated content and different physical parameters as the encryption method. SC09 was used directly for encoding. The communication format of the spacecraft control system is a truly alien civilization coding format, which has no basis on earth.

But even so, Lin Ju was very cautious. Every time Li Huo sent information, it was transmitted irregularly through pseudo-random numbers and limited the number of communications.

Now that it has little value, Lihuo will enter a silent state and will no longer send any information unless necessary.

However, this does not mean that "Lihuo" is a loss-making business. Before it can make a public appearance, it will continue to collect information from all over Mars. Thanks to the great advantages in weight and technology, the survey capabilities of a satellite are Almost as much as all other Mars orbiters combined.

The information it provides will be available for reference when formulating subsequent Mars missions, which will virtually save a lot of time and cost.

Launch plans flashed through Lin Ju's mind, telling himself that it was almost done, it was almost done.

In as soon as 6 months, Plain Zero will usher in the pace of robots, and something will be discovered by then.

"By the way, boss, someone wants to fund us to carry out the solar system's giant planetary exploration program."

"who?"

Lin Ju was a little surprised. Giant planet exploration is also deep space exploration, including Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune beyond the orbit of Mars, as well as many satellites around them.

Traditional aerospace detection technology can take more than ten or even twenty years to travel by light. The base's nuclear propulsion technology can compress the time to a few years or even a year, but the cost is too high, so it has been decided that deep space missions will not be carried out for the time being.

We will not consider restarting until the production capacity of the base is greatly improved again in the future, or when funds are abundant, but waiting for a few years is much better than flying slowly for decades.

NACA carried out the detection during a rare window period in 176 years. Besides, who else is willing to carry out such a thankless project?

"IAU, International Astronomical Union."

The name Xiao Gangtian said was unfamiliar, but it also had an indescribable sense of familiarity.

“The chairmen of the 15th and 16th Committees of the Third Division of the Federation have been traveling around the world since last year, and they have already won funding intentions from many universities and scientific organizations.

A few days ago, they conveyed their hope through the head of the Beijing branch. If Xinyuan can complete the commission within one year, they can surely persuade the entire federation to raise funds. "

The International Astronomical Union has a long history. It was established in Brussels, Belgium in 1919. Its main purpose is to organize academic exchanges and protect the astronomical observation environment. It is a very influential non-governmental academic organization.

They have also divided into 11 departments and 51 committees, which are responsible for educational science popularization and academic promotion research in different fields.

Although it is only a loosely organized academic organization, it is precisely this characteristic that makes it have a strong presence around the world, and it really has the potential to raise funds to carry out detection projects.

The reason why they are interested in Xinyuan is of course because of nuclear propulsion technology, which makes it possible to quickly understand the conditions of several gaseous planets in remote areas of the solar system and even the Kuiper Belt.