Will the kemonomimi encounter Alien Ranch Story?

"But the cost of your custom designs could buy several sets of clothes."

"But I need tens of millions of sets."

"Huh? Then why don't you just find a professional engineering group? These large industrial clusters have professional construction and commissioning personnel."

"We don't have the money, we can't afford it, and the environment here is quite special. Large ships can't come over, so we can only make it by hand. Otherwise, why would we outsource the design to you?" Old Xia was completely justified. Even if they could come over, the cost was beyond his scope of friendship sponsorship. Moreover, for the Terrans, such a super-large industrial cluster array... they couldn't even get past the threshold of using it. Is it possible to mine for a hundred years by turning it on for a day?

Surely Old Xia isn't going to have to order a long-term supply service from Riftstar Mining for them? That level of assistance should be left to the Star Alliance government; he doesn't have that kind of influence.

"But according to your requirements, this thing is not compatible with most of the Star Alliance standard parts and manufacturing processes. You'll have to find someone to design matching standard parts, which will cost you even more money in the end." To be honest, the other party really didn't want to take on this kind of job. It was low pay and involved a lot of work, and the client might also require a lot of after-sales service afterwards, so they made all sorts of excuses.

"Don't worry, we won't be asking you to design anything afterward, it's just this industrial integration system..."

"Okay, we'll try to give you results within six months." Completing the design and testing of an integrated, independent industrial manufacturing core within six months is already a very fast pace.

If it weren't for the widespread adoption of nanotechnology in the Star Alliance, and instead it were a normal industrial design contracting and manufacturing job, Lao Xia's few orders wouldn't even have enough for a contractor to take on the work—it wouldn't even cover the cost of mold making!

Compared to the manufacturing core itself, we've already acquired the supporting development tools and standard interfaces. It's better to let the people here familiarize themselves with the Star Alliance's industrial interfaces and various standards first. After all, with the amount of money Lao Xia gave us, it's really unlikely that the other side will create a new standard for us from scratch. Therefore, the probability of using the old standard is very high.

Chapter Ninety-Two: The Foundation

Chapter Ninety-Two

The outsourcing company completed the work much faster than they promised. They said it would take six months, but in the end, Lao Xia received the goods in just two weeks, which made him seriously suspect that the other party had cut corners.

"After consulting with our engineers, they believed that this earliest version of the system was the best fit for you, and we made specific adjustments to meet your needs."

The Covenant's industrial products and various equipment are updated and replaced at a relatively fast pace, at least during the war. This has led to a situation where non-professionals, and even most professionals, are not very clear about or familiar with the very old and obscure equipment.

"The design was originally requested by the Siberian Mining Company, but after the design and testing were completed, they only purchased a few sets before it was replaced by a more efficient nano-assembly technology, so..."

"So, you found the original in a museum, made some modern improvements, and then delivered it, right?" Old Xia said with a distant look. Although the money he gave was indeed not enough for a customized product, the extent to which you simplified things was a bit too much.

"Rest assured, this equipment perfectly meets your requirements because it was originally designed for use in the I-3 colony, and it even supports manual operation and self-upgrading and iteration."

"But there are no subsequent units conducting research and development on this basis, so what you're saying is nonsense." The premise of self-upgrading and iteration is that someone conducts technical research and development and follows up according to the subsequent plan. However, this thing was not sold much after it was launched and was eliminated. There was no subsequent upgrade plan at all. The so-called self-upgrading and iteration is just a bunch of nonsense.

“This is already the product that best meets your needs. If you require something more complex and efficient…” The administrator on the other end looked troubled, his face practically screaming “not enough money.”

"Okay, let's leave it at that." Simplicity has its advantages, namely, the number of relevant standards and interfaces that need to be learned is reduced by more than half, and the difficulty of batch self-replication and production is also very low. Of course, simplicity also has its disadvantages, namely, slightly complex facilities cannot be produced automatically, and manual production is required.

"Anyway, it's not like I'll be using this." Old Xia thought about it and decided it didn't matter. In the end, it wouldn't be him using it, so a little trouble was fine. Besides, he wasn't the one who designed the production blueprint that conformed to the core of this industrial integration.

A few days later, at the test site, "That's it?" Compared to the Covenant's big-is-good and more-is-beautiful things that they were used to seeing, this thing that could be packed into a large shipping container after being folded up looked far removed from the term "core of industrial manufacturing".

"There's no way around it. The research team said that the superfluid passage can only handle spacecraft or cargo containers with 5 to 10 people or less. They can't send anything larger over there. Besides, the launch pad at the research team's location simply doesn't support docking and acceleration for larger spacecraft."

Even if we crammed 200 people onto a single Ghost Shark, it would take five years just to transport all the current Terrans to the Ark at a super-fast round trip of 10 minutes. Therefore, the Doctor must reduce the number of people on board and increase the number of launch sites as much as possible.

If it's for transporting to the Covenant, given that their jump accelerator can only launch one Specter-class ship at a time... even if the Terrans stopped reproducing, it would still take 50 years to transport the remaining population, and that would be at a rate of one ship every 10 minutes without stopping.

Moreover, the professors naturally didn't raise such an excessive request. Making someone else's research spaceship wait for you here for fifty years, and having to do all the work like 007, would be something even your own father wouldn't agree to.

"Let me see how this thing is installed... Oh, it deploys automatically." Old Xia tapped the panel twice, and the pyramid-shaped device entered deployment mode. A long pole about 15 meters high rose from the top, then four communication antennas opened, and the bottom support fell down, absorbing the surrounding soil and other substances.

"Next is to provide nanomaterials and raw materials. Using pre-made materials can basically make the work twice as effective." Old Xia certainly has pre-made materials here, and the things he is testing and producing are also one of the only three default blueprints.

Although they asked Lao Xia to design the supporting equipment himself, they still provided three default blueprints: one was a Star Alliance standard superconducting battery pack, one was a solar panel, and the other was a storage box for storing raw materials or an automated logistics warehouse.

"They don't even have logistics drones? That's so stingy. Forget it, let Agor's people design a drone instead."

Old Xia scratched his head, and the antenna mast base at the top rose up again, taking on a small cylindrical shape. Then, four drones flew out of the receiving station, pulling four bright, wire-like cables.

As the silvery-white fluid gushed out of the cable, a base quickly appeared on the sand.

"Theoretically speaking, this thing is only suitable for use in environments ranging from -45 degrees Celsius to 105 degrees Celsius, and it may even be damaged in sandstorms and thunderstorms. No wonder it has been phased out."

He vaguely remembered that the second mine of the Siberian Mining Company after its mining operations on Earth were forced to stop was on a lava planet. The temperature in most areas was above 85 degrees Celsius, and the area around the slightly richer lava rivers not only had a temperature exceeding 150 degrees Celsius, but also a sulfide atmosphere. It was only natural that this equipment was phased out.

After the base is completed, the cables are connected to the base, thus forming a simple self-printing structure. Next, you watch as materials are continuously fed in along the cables and transport tracks. On the platform base, a square storage station rises little by little. The bottom is connected to the industrial core and the storage station by a closed conveyor belt, and the top is a take-off and landing platform for drones to pick up and drop parts.

"All minerals and raw materials need to be processed into standard-sized shipping containers. Tsk, the only advantage is that it comes with a small printing station, so you can copy and assemble it yourself. But the maintenance of the nanofluids will have to be done by you. Let me see the standard... It's terrible. The recommended time is manual maintenance every 240 hours, each maintenance takes 2 to 4 hours, and the longest time should not exceed 400 hours."

"Manual maintenance of nanofluids?"

"Actually, it's semi-automatic. You need to manually run the detection program to check the fluid throughout the process to see if there are any errors. Then you need to manually remove the erroneous parts and use the backup storage card you have on hand to overwrite and repair them. In short, it's called a rollback."

"Therefore, this fluid is not upgradable, at least not for you. Even though it does have a self-iterable interface, no one has designed a successor model for it, which means it is essentially not upgradable."

Old Xia thought this was actually good news, as it could effectively prevent them from making random upgrades or deleting the self-limiting system, since Colombia had already demonstrated this once, and a second attempt was not advisable.

The self-replication and assembly process is simple, but Lao Xia doesn't need this function at all now, because his manufacturing equipment can directly mass-produce these industrial manufacturing cores according to the samples and the manufacturing process data sent by the other party.

"By the way, this thing needs to use our quantum chip, but after my 'effective communication' with the other party, they now allow the use of biological computers, and even control it directly using your nervous system. However, that would mean many automated engineering devices would become manual. The good news is that this means your Originium computers and biological computers can also be happily connected and used, and even powered by Terran tradition—burning sorcerers can operate them."

From the other side's perspective, Lao Xia's request was like asking them to design a power plant with an installed capacity of over 100 million watts using a pot-loading machine and a wood gas generator—a truly difficult task. As a result, the already imperfect functionality became... even more imperfect.

It's probably at least an octagonal distance away from the foolproof industrial manufacturing core that Lao Xia requested. However, the only thing worth affirming is that this thing is indeed compact enough to fit in a shipping container and can be directly airdropped into orbit.

Because of its compact size, its buildable range is quite confusing. "It's okay, we can just use them all at once, or just increase the quantity if necessary." The doctor felt that this was not a big problem. At least compared to having nothing at all, and possibly having to start from scratch with stone tools, it was already a powerful weapon.

With the industrial core in place, the design and manufacturing of various facilities were also allocated accordingly. Some were outsourced, some were handled by Kazdel itself, and some could be made do by simply translating existing ancient designs.

The initial blueprints for manufacturing include colony stations, living quarters, planting pods and life support pods, as well as various supporting internal equipment.

For example, Xingyuan had just finished designing a long-distance power transmission device, but before it could be tested, it was assigned to develop a high-efficiency electrolysis device and a power generation device.

Of course, all of this work was packaged as part of the space city project, and this was indeed the view of Xingyuan, Dorothy, and Rhine Life behind them. In the space city, how to supply oxygen and breathing was a problem, so developing a convenient electrolytic oxygen generator was obviously a very reasonable requirement.

According to the cooperation agreement between Rhine Labs and Rhodes Island, these oxygen generation and electrolysis devices will share patents with them. Moreover, the experts and researchers sent by Rhodes Island are also very capable in this field and are not there to take advantage of the patents.

"Doumiao, Doumiao, aren't you going to study your rock crabs?" Doumiao raised her eyelids and glanced at Xingyuan, who was leaving get off work, and said unhurriedly, "Rock crab farming has been promoted. My mentor told me not to focus on rock crabs and to do something else."

"So what's your new project?" Xingyuan looked curiously at the pool in front of her. Doumiao looked like she hadn't slept well for at least two or three days.

Her research and development work in the energy field was certainly busy, but these mechanical technologies were generally quite routine, especially when she wasn't being asked to do testing and data collection.

However, it's different for pea shoots. Whether it's rock crabs or any other species, you can't just stop them from dying and wait until the next day when you go to work. They can die or disappear in an instant.

Therefore, I couldn't get regular rest or leave work on time. Over time, this naturally led to my current state of being overworked and exhausted.

"Water algae that integrates three functions in one go: water purification, oxygen production, and sugar production..."

"Was it successful?"

"No, we're in the impossible triangle right now." Doumiao looked desperate. Although her mentor had confidently assured her that it was possible and provided a sample of algae, she was only asked to replicate it using Terra's native algae.

However, her greatest achievement was realizing the first two functions: effectively purifying water and producing oxygen. But it was completely inedible, as the starch it produced contained a large amount of harmful substances. She even felt that her senior's project on "how to drink the northwest wind to get full" was more promising.

"Uh, I don't understand at all." Although he was at Rhine Lab, Xingyuan was in the Energy Department, mainly studying Originium Engineering and Originium Energy, which means studying Originium Arts, spells and staves. Of course, he also studied skill transmission, energy transfer, power generation and other projects, but the latter was secondary.

Doumiao ignored her. This social butterfly spent all day wandering around the research institute and had become familiar with researchers from Kazdel and even other countries. However, this guy wouldn't bother her for more than a few days, because next week he would be going to the laboratory on the Ark to bother others.

"Xingyuan, don't you need to keep records and collect data?"

"No need, I've handed over the testing and data collection work to the researchers below." As a senior researcher, she was only responsible for tackling technical challenges and grasping the general direction. The specific details and tedious data collection and analysis work were naturally handled by her researchers, research assistants, and intern research assistants.

Despite her young age, by Columbia's standards, she holds a full professorship, which is practically the highest level of professional title in research institutions. The next level up would be research director or head of a department.

This level basically means they're no longer involved in frontline research work; their main tasks are administration and project management. So, unless Director Dorothy gives the order, she's the highest-ranking person in the Columbia Lab.

Even for this type of challenging task, there are a few senior officers who can share the workload. As long as there are no major mishaps or major problems that require starting over during the testing process, she basically doesn't need to worry about this part.

So far, the test group has not reported any errors, so she can naturally go home from get off work every day, stroll around, spend time in the reading room, and do a series of other things, living a very happy life. This kind of happiness seems extremely detestable in the eyes of Doumiao and other miserable biology students.

In a sense, these girls, who were still pursuing graduate studies, could not possibly have anyone to help them. In fact, their supervisor did not assign them such tedious work, but instead allowed them to take charge of their own research and development projects, rather than starting with writing "development logs." This was already quite commendable and kind of the supervisor.

If we disregard the fact that the projects assigned by their mentor, Lao Xia, are generally beyond the curriculum, it would be something that would make others envious to the point of tears. Such opportunities for training are extremely rare.

While others are still working in research labs, assisting their bosses, writing ledgers, recording data, and doing manual labor in thousands of repetitive experiments, and some haven't even gotten to the core of the project yet, Doumiao has already published results and is even considered an authority in the emerging industry.

"What an infuriating guy! If you have nothing better to do, why don't you help me take a look at these seaweeds?"

How can I help?

“It’s very simple,” Doumiao said with a smile. “It really is very simple. With your expertise and experience at Rhine Life, you can definitely do this kind of work.”

"Speaking of which, Doumiao, I've always wanted to ask, are you the only one in your research lab?"

"No, there are a few senior brothers and assistants, but, well, it really is just me."

"Why not recruit some students? I think the students in your Kazdel biology department are all about the same level."

"...Because I haven't graduated yet." None of the graduate students under Lao Xia have graduated. No one has passed the research projects and exams, at least not yet. So, none of them have received their degree certificates yet, even though some of them are almost big shots in the biology department.

This has led the Kazdalen Agricultural College to consider whether to issue their degrees early and allow them to supervise students, otherwise... professors and doctoral students in other departments would feel very embarrassed, and their own master's graduates would feel even more embarrassed.

"There's no need to be so rigid. You could recruit some assistants or something. Besides, you should have plenty of funds."

"Indeed, such miscellaneous tasks could be assigned to assistant researchers."

Because it's truly devoid of any technical skill, it's simply about monitoring these seaweeds, measuring oxygen release every hour, taking samples after they mature, testing starch content and residual toxic substances, measuring water quality hourly, and manually adding pollution markers (simulating pollutant markers).

After completing the above work, record it, then put the new variety in, and repeat the above process. This cycle can be repeated countless times, while the bean sprouts are responsible for hybridization, genetic modification, and a series of technically demanding tasks.

Furthermore, as the number of species increases, the number of seawater cultivation tubes that need to be monitored in each cycle will also increase, and the amount of pollution markers added during the cultivation process will also increase and need to be replaced.

In short, it doesn't require much technical skill; anyone with hands can do it. But it's a necessary job, so boring it's tedious. The daily work of ordinary researchers and assistants in Xingyuan's own research lab is similar to this—the only difference might be that at least they won't develop superhuman arms there.

As for the bean sprouts... each planting bucket weighs over 100 pounds. Even with tools, one would eventually develop incredibly strong arms. In fact, when she rolled up her sleeves, her arm muscles were clearly streamlined and well-developed. It felt like she could pull the crossbow without any effort, even though it used to require a booster.

"But where can I find such a qualified research assistant? And my research here is quite important. Forget it, I'll go to the school when I have time and see if I can find some laborers." Doumiao also felt that if things continued like this, she definitely couldn't handle it all by herself, so she should honestly find someone to help her.

Chapter Ninety-Three: Praising the Last Princess

Chapter Ninety-Three

Kazdel, the conference room. A square object sits on the table. It is made of a semi-transparent material, somewhat like frosted glass, and has a peculiar blue color. The surface has non-slip grooves, and gold alloy plates are inlaid at the four corners and edges, making it look like some kind of work of art or decoration.

"What is this?" "Something specially developed for you. All the facilities and related systems will use it as a material, except for a few that require special materials and components." Old Xia said, pointing at the thing with his finger. "The relevant material specifications, manufacturing standards, and supporting design standards will be issued. To be honest, this thing is not difficult to manufacture."

How do I use it?

"When placed inside the printer's material compartment, it can be used to manufacture low-level chips, carbon-based building materials, some electronic devices, and most non-high-temperature resistant parts and materials. The main component is carbon, the outer shell is mainly made of gold alloy, and it also contains a small amount of copper plasma metallic substances."

"These are all encased in this standard diamond cube, with the outer layer covered by a relatively wear-resistant and shock-absorbing gold alloy." Moreover, the square structure makes it very convenient to stack and transport. Although it is slightly heavy, it is still a material that can be manually handled in batches when necessary.

"To put it simply, it's just a piece of synthetic diamond containing a certain amount of metal and treated to prevent it from shattering due to impact. When it's disassembled, some of its binding energy is released, just like how a lot of energy is required to manufacture it. This released energy is used to charge the device itself, so theoretically, this thing can be considered an integrated product of battery and material."

The material ingots designed for the early Covenant colonization program were later abandoned before they even left the laboratory due to the instability of the energy release. However, Xia made a tiny improvement to the design, really just a tiny improvement.

"I put the Originium dust into the high-pressure furnace during manufacturing and pressed it directly into this diamond block, so it looks blue. I never thought that charged Originium particles would be blue."

The reason for the blue color is simple: the overcharged Originium components released particles that exceeded the speed of light within the carbon medium, thus forming Cherenkov radiation. This radiation was refracted through the diamond shell and emitted a faint, dim blue light. To avoid dangerous radiation, Lao Xia added a lead-gold alloy shell to the outside, which was also part of the assembly material.