Will the kemonomimi encounter Alien Ranch Story?

“Recalibrate the equipment again, and review the production process of all raw materials and integrated parts.” Levi stood in the control room, his thumbs and forefingers rubbing together involuntarily. Leading the construction of a real interstellar spaceship that was even more powerful than the Buran was an irresistible temptation for him.

It's worth mentioning that Lao Xia ultimately didn't buy the hydrogen bomb production equipment. Modifying the reactor equipment would be a bit of a waste. Instead, he ordered a complete set of equipment needed to produce fission bombs and early hydrogen bombs. Although the equipment wasn't a controlled item in the Star Alliance, the related nuclear materials were.

Therefore, under these circumstances, Levy easily produced a nuclear bomb—mainly because the equipment kit was too user-friendly—his assessment was: it was probably no different from making sausages.

"Inspection complete, ready to begin!" All the workers and engineers were in place, their expressions serious and tense. "Let's begin!" There was originally a ceremony for starting work, but it was canceled in the end to avoid embarrassment should something go wrong.

This "weak protection soft" level production process is very simple. All parts are mass-produced quickly using specialized construction machines and nano-printers. Workers only need to manually inspect the parts using various precision equipment and switch the blueprint sequence and process flow sequence in a timely manner. The rest can be left to the automated equipment itself.

Engineers are responsible for ensuring that the final assembled product of each subsystem module fully meets the requirements, neither too low nor too high, and maintaining the uniformity of production across all subsystem modules.

The most cautious are the spacecraft's engine and keel production departments. Their equipment has the lowest level of automation and is very dangerous. In particular, unlike the obvious heavy hammer falling in a regular foundry, the gravity structure forming equipment has no visible forging hammer.

Between the upper and lower planar plates, the workpiece, fixed by the fixture, is first suspended in the center by a magnetic field, and then a holographic scan displays the machining point map. Next, gravitons are injected into each point, the compensation force field is removed, and then gravity causes the workpiece to collapse inward. The strong gravitational sources at each point act like an invisible arm, shaping the complex workpiece structure.

So the question is, what happens if something goes wrong in this process? The answer is, the workpiece is completely scrapped, and the fragments might fly out at supersonic speed and punch a hole in you.

Even with a force field protective fence, it cannot guarantee 100% interception, especially since its protection range is limited to the "normal error" range. If the error is too large, it will not be able to stop the flow.

In contrast, the forging workshop next door is even more terrifying. Because it is a super-large-sized cold forging workshop, there are no fences or barriers around the workbench. The platform is about half the size of a basketball court, and people operate below the platform.

Once the metal material is fed into the platform and fits into the mold, a downward supergravity field will knead the superalloy metal into the force field mold like kneading clay.

Then the platform mold will rotate, and the strong gravity from the upper and lower generators will evenly transform the metal into an extremely dense structural part.

If this malfunctions, the surrounding operators won't even have time to react; they'll be crushed into a sheet of paper by the supergravity field. This is considered a good outcome, as it's a relatively small device.

If it were an industrial mothership or a Titan engineering station, the molecules would be torn apart, and the carbon atoms that make you up would be compressed into a diamond-like structure. Your blood and bodily fluids would slice through your coworkers around you like water jets.

It was like stuffing a bag full of water under a ten-thousand-ton forging machine, but even more uniformly and instantaneously; a person was instantly transformed into a two-dimensional image of a single atomic layer. After replaying several operational accidents and their possible consequences, the engineers operating these two monsters were so meticulous that they wanted to check each procedure eight times before daring to press a button.

In contrast, the assembly workshop workers have it much easier. They just need to follow the installation drawings for the weak current protection software. The only thing to be careful about is that the engineers need to review the drawings first and then confirm them multiple times before allowing the technicians to start installing—for fear of the bizarre situation of the drawings being reversed.

You really would get beaten up by the workers in the forging workshop next door. They made the components for you with boundless fear. If you installed them backwards, causing them to need to be disassembled and scrapped, and a whole batch to be reprocessed... that's not just a matter of making a few, it's an entire batch. You'd have to endure the terror of potentially turning them into pictures hanging on the wall at any moment.

Finally, the workers in the segment workshop and the final assembly workshop should be a little calmer, because if their welding machines make a mistake, at most they will lose an arm or a leg, but the force field point source will directly tear off a hand, leg, or even a colleague's head.

The workers welding the ship plates had it even easier. The Covenant's plasma welding torch wasn't much more dangerous than the tower welding torch. Well, that's not to say the power was about the same, but rather that both of them could instantly vaporize. So, even if the Covenant's welding torch was more powerful, there was no fundamental difference; both would vaporize instantly if accidentally handled.

They had gotten used to it when building land-based ships, so in the section workshop, you could see two completely different groups of people: one group of workers holding plasma welding guns, smoking cigarettes, looking confident, and working with ease and fluidity.

A group of workers carrying force field connectors looked terrified. They checked the tools repeatedly to make sure they were turned off before carefully putting them into special protective sleeves and sending them to the maintenance area as if transporting bombs.

As a result, every day when Levi went to work, he would see a large group of overly nervous guys, carefully following the manual and installation instructions, even though Lao Xia had said that there was no need to be so nervous, that these accidents were extremely low-probability events, and that the design and construction plans provided were only for weak protection and did not involve those operations and procedures that were prone to accidents.

In theory, these are all the most basic procedures. If an accident occurs, he can claim compensation from the equipment manufacturer until the manufacturer goes bankrupt. Moreover, these machines have foolproof designs. As long as these skilled workers are not young workers recruited from some third-rate high school, under normal circumstances, as long as they strictly follow the step-by-step procedures, there will be no problems.

It's important to understand that the plans and designs he received weren't just a stack of drawings. They were actually a massive data package, far exceeding the normal shipbuilding needs of the Covenant. It even included details on how many times each worker should press a button during any given process, and whether they should use their left or right hand.

The assembly diagram is so detailed that it specifies the tool size and number of turns required for the screws in your assigned section. To prevent you from misjudging the total number of turns, there are even red cross lines on the mounting holes and on the screws themselves. The instructions are to align the red lines and then tighten the screws accordingly.

If it's not something that absolutely requires human intervention, then simply use automated screw-tightening drones to do it, eliminating the human element as much as possible. Otherwise, why would it be called a "low-IQ nanny-level" solution?

"Even if you train a bunch of chimpanzees to do the work, you can still build this spaceship!"

That's what the OEM manufacturer guaranteed. Of course, Lao Xia knew this was an exaggerated advertising claim, and that professional technicians were actually needed. However, it was enough to illustrate how simple the solution was.

Inside the shipyard, countless industrial drones crisscross the various passageways, while exploration and surveying drones swarm around like bees. These drones greatly reduce the workload and significantly decrease the probability of workers making mistakes.

Furthermore, what they built was just a spaceship weighing less than 3500 tons, roughly the size of a Covenant tour bus. If something like this goes wrong, then it really shows that Kazdel's industrial capabilities are so limited that they should just stick to making hot air balloons and airships in their workshops.

The segmented construction took about three months, the overall project took one month, and then two and a half months were spent on safety checks and tests to avoid problems caused by incomplete stress release. Finally, when the space station construction department was getting impatient, the roof of the spacecraft dock was finally removed, and the spacecraft named "Ghost Shark" was exposed to the public and the media.

It is 137 meters long, 38 meters wide, and 26 meters high. Its empty tonnage is slightly over 3660 tons, and its full load tonnage is 7100 tons. It can carry a payload equivalent to its own weight, but that is when it is transported by rail. If it is launched from the ground, it can only carry a maximum of 1100 tons of cargo.

Three Specter-class spacecraft need to be built: two to transport to and from the Ark construction site, and one to transport large components. Meanwhile, the existing four Skadi-class space shuttles will continue to transport personnel and relatively lightweight supplies.

During the evacuation, these spacecraft will primarily be used to transport personnel, while cargo will be handed over to the super electromagnetic acceleration orbit system being laid near the Dragon Ridge Mountains.

The electromagnetic acceleration system, with a length of over 150 kilometers and an altitude of nearly 8 kilometers, is sufficient to launch any cargo onto orbit—the only problem is that it cannot be used to transport people or any materials or cargo with a strength lower than the "UNSS-S-90" safety standard—the acceleration overload is enough to instantly kill any living organism.

Its proper purpose is to launch minerals and processed metal ingots; it never delivers complex components or living organisms. On low-gravity planets, it may also be used to launch living supplies and essential materials, such as ice, but it cannot launch personnel.

The reason it's called Ghost Shark is because the spaceship is pure black. The Terrans hadn't mastered the technology of coloring starship hulls yet, so they could only use the original black coating provided by the manufacturer. Even if they applied other colors of paint, they would be burned off by the atmosphere after one flight, so they simply stopped painting it.

Its overall shape resembles a shark, with a dorsal fin that forms the island superstructure. The tail features two symmetrically distributed sets of 16 engines, while the wings are equipped with large attitude control engines and afterburner engines. The cargo hatches are located at the head and belly. During transport, multiple specialized tracks are required for support – because there is no landing gear.

Meanwhile, as an authentic orbital spacecraft, it is equipped with a vortex shield, a small sub-light speed jump engine, and a microgravity field system, making it more difficult to pilot. Therefore, the first flight was piloted by Lao Xia, the only one with a "license".

"I've almost forgotten how to operate this thing." Old Xia got off the shuttle bus, walked to the boarding gate on the abdomen, and looked up at the bottom of the spaceship, where the indicator lights above shone like stars in the sky.

"How many times have you driven one of these?"

"About ten times, all for my family to drive and deliver goods to clients' homes," Lao Xia replied.

"A client?" A question mark appeared above Kal'tsit's head.

"Well, it's not exactly a daily household type, but more like a tourism type. It's usually bought by a company or community through group fundraising, so that when everyone goes on a trip together, they don't have to squeeze onto a passenger-cargo ship like me, especially during the peak season for interstellar tourism when tickets are hard to buy."

"Therefore, companies with good economic conditions can buy it. However, large enterprises with a large number of employees would not buy this 'shark' type spaceship. Instead, they would directly buy the 'whale' type 3 series large yacht. That thing is huge. You can even hold banquets with hundreds of people on it. It has a banquet hall and a fully transparent star observation hall."

"This type of ship is relatively old. It doesn't even have a zero-gravity oxygen-enriched bubble pool. It only has a small bar and a separate restaurant. It's basically a budget model. We also asked the designers to change the drawings, removing unnecessary entertainment and leisure facilities and turning them into cargo holds and densely packed passenger cabins."

Regarding this matter, Lao Xia was even criticized by the other party for having strange hobbies. The other party directly suggested that he should just go to the Starway Company next door and buy a real small high-speed cargo ship.

However, after consulting with Xinglutong Company, Lao Xia discovered that their previous products had been discontinued and they did not support custom design modifications. As for new products, they did not do OEM manufacturing, but only finished boat transactions. Since the other party was unlikely to ship the goods, he could only continue to make things difficult for the yacht manufacturer.

"I reckon they're all complaining right now that this deal is low-paying, has a lot of work, and is affecting their mood and mental state." During the construction process, we sent a lot of basic questions over to the engineers and design team on the other side for online answers—and they complained several times that they wanted to charge extra for consultations.

After passing through the boarding gate and entering the cabin, due to the customization requirements, there are no decorations or deck structures inside, but rather a spacious, super-large cargo hold. Go up the gangway on the side of the cargo hold to enter the cockpit, where only a captain and co-pilot are needed. If it is just a simple five-sided flight, then one pilot is sufficient.

In other words, it consists of five basic parts: takeoff, climb, orbit insertion, descent, and landing and coming to a stop.

"Reactor activated!" Old Xia directly connected to the spacecraft's control system through the symbiote's operating interface, turned on the reactor, and said, "Activate microgravity field, levitation mode." The spacecraft slowly rose with a buzzing sound of air vibration. "Maintain stability, release anchors." The surrounding personnel had already evacuated from the launch site.

"Microgravity field power 75%, levitation engine activated." The side armor plates on the ship's belly slid open, revealing dozens of jet nozzles. The scorching ion jets propelled the hull further upward, and the bow lifted slightly. "Gravity coordination, default mode."

"Auxiliary propulsion ignition." The auxiliary thrusters on the side wings started working, and the "Low Power" spaceship slowly rose into the sky. Due to the microgravity field, the hull was not affected by planetary gravity, so even with relatively low thrust, it could take off.

"Safe altitude reached, main propulsion ignition!" The surging plasma flames transformed tons of metal salt into raging flames and ejected them, instantly putting the spaceship into high-speed acceleration mode. "Compensation shields normal!"

The atmosphere was separated by a force field, rather than directly rubbing against the hull, making the hull seem to be rushing into the sky as if it were in a vacuum tube.

The blue sky quickly turned dark blue, then inky black, and finally transformed into a dazzling starry sky. "Maximum power!" The flying object, trailing a tail several kilometers long, flew towards the space station. The astronauts on the station looked at the largest spacecraft with expressions of horror. If this thing didn't stop properly and even grazed the station, the entire station would shatter.

"Automatic docking, mode two, done!" Old Xia patted the panel, released his hands, and assumed a comfortable posture. The rest of the docking process was handled by the spacecraft's main engine. Soon, the behemoth entered the docking area marked by light buoys around the space station.

The braking rockets accurately brought the spacecraft to a stop in the center of the docking area. This was just a test flight, and no cargo was carried. Of course, on the return trip, some astronauts whose service was coming to an end could be brought back to Earth.

Two hours later, the Ghost Shark returned from space on time, hovering above the docking station in a hovering docking mode, and then slowly descended vertically to stop itself on a special support system.

“I said this step is completely unnecessary. Driving this thing is no different from driving a space bus.” Old Xia shook his head and walked down the gangway. “Although it’s not something you can do with your hands, it’s not too difficult either. Besides, there’s no air traffic control here, so you don’t have to worry about colliding with other people’s spaceships.”

"...I think it's better to be cautious. If this thing crashes down...it's no small accident." The doctor also felt that saying that wasn't an exaggeration, and even if it were a real bus, you still need a driver's license.

“That’s true. We only have a maximum of two such accidents a year, which is considered a major accident.” Old Xia nodded. However, the probability of such an accident is not high. After all, the universe is so vast. As long as you are careful enough when leaving and entering a port and passing through a stargate, the probability of hitting something on the rest of the journey is so small that you can make a wish while you’re at it.

Chapter Seventy-Five: The Ship Reaches the Track...

Chapter 75

In the Victorian Parliament chamber, the Speaker, holding the agenda, spoke with a nonchalant tone, "Now let's move on to the next topic..." He seemed to be suffering from a headache, but finally began, "Regarding the Kazdel Aerospace Industry's response strategy." Immediately, a murmur of whispers arose from the crowd below.

"Let the person who proposed this motion make their statement." The speaker was utterly exhausted. This topic had a lot of support in the parliament. After all, no matter what the future held, Columbia Black Steel Group had certainly made a lot of money by joining the plan.

As a cooperative group, Kazdel ordered a lot of raw materials and contract-manufactured parts from him, which can be considered a concession. Although it seems that there are no profitable projects yet, investors will not care so much, which means that a lot of Victoria's capital is fleeing.

Their familiarity with the efficiency of the Victorian government made them less hopeful about their own country's asylum program. Besides, there was no rule against hedging their bets, was there? Rather than letting Colombia profit as a middleman, why not cooperate directly with Kazdel?

However, this presents a problem. In order to sell their shelter tickets, these countries have ridiculed and exaggerated the Kazdel space accident in the media. Now they are going to join in, which means that they not only have to accept what they said before, but also have to exaggerate to increase investor confidence.

"...I know this is difficult, but what I want to say is that the Swire family has already invested in the space station. If we don't make a decision immediately, we will miss this opportunity completely, and then we won't even be able to get on a public bus."

"Wait a minute, shouldn't the Swire family's business include this kind of precision industry?"

"Yes, so they commissioned Blacksteel and Rhodes Island to build a space hotel and a souvenir shop, respectively. Do you know what that means? What gentleman could resist the temptation to climb to the highest point in the world and overlook the entire earth? They were willing to pay hundreds of thousands of pounds in premium for it."

This is an indisputable fact. The more elite and wealthy a person is, the harder it is for them to resist this sense of superiority. This sense of superiority is reflected in physical height, just like why CEOs' offices are located on the rooftop, overlooking the entire building complex and city, as if they are the masters of the entire city.

For them, going to the space station, a place higher than any skyscraper or mountain range, overlooking the entire Terra land, is a dream. At this height, humans are not like trash, but rather insignificant specks of dust. The vast majority of the great achievements of civilization would be nothing more than black dots when viewed from this height. Which elite class could resist such a temptation that is like that of a creator?

Therefore, space tourism is a very fashionable and tempting thing for the wealthy and elite. Even just the gimmick, let alone a real space ticket, can attract a lot of investment and advance payments.

This is pure profit, and if Kazdel can actually pull off this plan, the Swire family's hotel and souvenir shop on the space station will be rolling in money. They'll sell you a bottle of water for £200, and you won't even be able to say a word.

In particular, Kazdel's space refuge plan means that if they don't want to break their promises or waste all their previous investments, their carrying capacity and space station capacity will inevitably increase significantly. Under such circumstances, space tourism and the hotel industry are extremely promising blue ocean markets.

Moreover, if we don't join in now, when they actually manage to build a space hotel, we'll only be able to eat the leftovers.

However, for the Victorian government, this means an embarrassing situation has occurred. Just yesterday, they were saying that the Kazdel plan was impossible and that the sanctuary plan was the only salvation, trying to trick people into buying tickets that were like indulgences.

Today, they're going to loudly proclaim that Kazdel's plan is reliable and safe, and start selling tourist boat tickets, even though the boat isn't even theirs yet, and there's no guarantee that Kazdel will agree to the business.

"So, after spending tens of millions of pounds on slander, defamation and spreading rumors, do we now need to spend just as much money to clean up the mess we made yesterday?" The Chancellor of the Exchequer posed an extremely pointed question, but received an even more embarrassing answer.

"That's not all. In fact, refuting the rumors is even more difficult. We may need to spend more money and further invest in lobbying Kazdel's top brass, as well as invest in the space station project in advance to develop our own space station and spacecraft to avoid being held hostage by Kazdel. Moreover, we also need to make considerable concessions on political and geopolitical issues in order for the cooperation to be successfully achieved, sir."

Immediately, a noisy uproar erupted in the parliament. However, the parliament's procrastination and arguments could not stop companies like Rhine Life from making early preparations.

Meanwhile, in Kazdel, the second ship of the Specter was launched much faster, and the workers gradually became more skilled. The good news was that the manufacturing speed had increased, but the bad news was that they had become complacent about safety rules due to the long-term safe production environment. It was estimated that unless a dozen or so lives were lost, training and education by foremen and safety officers alone would probably not be very effective.

The Ghost Shark II is a purely passenger ship with a capacity of approximately 140 people, including 20 first-class passengers, 40 business-class passengers, and 80 economy-class passengers. The first-class cabins are actually single cabins, the economy-class cabins are like airplanes with 20 rows of seats arranged neatly in a long cabin, and the business-class cabins are two people per cabin.

For the Covenant, this kind of spaceship can fly freely within the star system. You can visit Mars in the morning to admire the largest and oldest space metallurgical industrial complex ever built by humankind, and listen to a guide tell the story of this place during the war, as well as why it was abandoned.

We stopped at Titan Satellite Station at noon, enjoyed a feast of locally farmed seafood caught from the icy sea, and admired Saturn's Great Red Spot and the gas extraction stations surrounding the planet's rings.

In the afternoon, we observed the Pluto military base and the massive SDF fleet, rarely seen in normal times, from the orbit of Pluto at the outermost edge of the solar system. Finally, in the evening, we returned to the Earth orbital station and enjoyed the fun of camping in the paid camping area of ​​the pristine ecological reserve on the ground.

Therefore, the cabins inside the spacecraft are arranged like those in a ship's cabin. In other words, there are sleeping berths, private showers and toilets, large openable skylights for panoramic views, and various onboard entertainment and leisure facilities.

Old Xia's current business doesn't need these at all, so he dismantled all the cabins and turned them into densely packed seats like a passenger plane, while the empty areas are used for cargo.

After all, a round trip between Earth and space, including a short visit and unloading time, would only take about an hour and a half. Even flying to the moon wouldn't take much time, since the warp drive wouldn't even be needed.

As for real yachts, they are not needed now. The third ship is to be built as a work ship, mainly to retrieve the solar probes and various spacecraft launched by our ancestors. The technology and observation data on these are still very useful.

After a simple ribbon-cutting ceremony, the Specter II, a passenger and cargo spacecraft, entered service, awaiting a new batch of engineers to board and carry out large-scale expansion of the space station. The previous Specter II had already dropped more than 2 tons of mass into orbit.

This spacecraft doesn't need to consider launch windows; its engines have enough power to fly in, and its vortex shields can withstand most small impact debris, making its launch cycle much shorter than that of the Skadi.

However, on the other hand, it is also more difficult to operate, and the safety checks at the launch site are more complicated. Previously, the Skadi was launching payloads while waiting for the spacecraft to be available, but now the Specter 1 is often launching payloads while the spacecraft is waiting for the payloads.

Because the docking bay of the space station is not yet completed, it cannot dock with it. Therefore, the transport of personnel and supplies to the station still relies on the Skadi launch vehicle and spacecraft.

Now, the second phase of the Perimeter Bay has been completed. At the same time, the long-arm docking station prepared for the "large spacecraft" has finally been installed after working overtime and can now be directly docked to transport personnel. As a result, the No. 2 spacecraft has been converted into a passenger and cargo spacecraft.