Chapter 94: Serious Failure
After docking, the more than 60,000 tons of cargo transported within the spaceship were slowly transferred to the surface of God-Enemy Star using the dual-purpose spaceship.
Apart from a small amount of supplies that God-Enemy Star could not produce locally, all this cargo consisted of large mining equipment.
Equipment specifically for mining uranium ore!
As the secondary pressurized thrusters gradually matured, his future demand for fission fuel would surely increase significantly.
Loshen Star must be scoured, and God-Enemy Star cannot be let off; it must also be scoured!
As the tens of thousands of tons of cargo were unloaded, various products from God-Enemy Star, which had been transported to the port in advance, were then moved into the cargo ship.
After refueling, this large cargo ship started its journey again, flying towards Loshen Star at a speed several times faster than the other cargo ships.
Not long after this cargo ship left, the second cargo ship using the secondary pressurized thruster arrived, unloaded its cargo, replenished fuel, loaded supplies, and embarked on its return journey.
Spaceships came and went, went and came. The newly equipped secondary pressurized thrusters were tested repeatedly during this process.
Every time a cargo ship returned, Tom would conduct a comprehensive inspection of them at the spaceport to confirm whether there were any malfunctions, their working condition, and so on.
Under this mode, Tom once again collected a large amount of information and summarized many detailed improvement plans.
This continued for a period of time. Although these new thrusters frequently had minor malfunctions, there were no major failures.
This situation did not make Tom happy; instead, he felt a subtle sense of worry.
He did not believe that this first generation of secondary pressurized thrusters had already reached maturity.
Tom was not that arrogant.
Why did he rush to put it into use?
Wasn’t it to expose its hidden dangers and defects as much as possible, so he could eliminate them in advance and prevent them from erupting when he initiated a large-scale relocation?
As a result, only some minor, insignificant malfunctions, small defects, and small hidden dangers have been exposed?
Are you testing me with just this much?
Could it be... that the hidden danger or malfunction is deeply hidden, so it cannot be exposed in a short time?
Tom thought for a moment and simply built another 20 cargo ships of the same model, also putting them into the round trip route between Loshen Star and God-Enemy Star.
If the probability of a certain malfunction is fixed, to make it erupt, you either extend the operating time or increase the number of operations.
So, dozens of 80,000-ton cargo ships constantly went back and forth—even if there wasn’t that much cargo temporarily, they had to go back and forth, never letting them idle. Even if they were carrying basic minerals with no time sensitivity requirements, they had to be fully loaded and constantly sailing.
Under these circumstances, a situation that Tom had long anticipated finally occurred.
A cargo ship suddenly exploded during the acceleration phase, and the entire spaceship was blown into two sections!
It exploded!
The spaceship finally exploded!
At this moment, Tom became inwardly and outwardly excited.
The Deep Space salvage fleet, which had been prepared for a long time, immediately set off, rushing to the spaceship explosion site, fully loaded with various search and salvage equipment.
At the same time, the real-time operating data of the spaceship, which had always been preserved, was immediately retrieved by Tom, who began to check it one by one, searching for the possible cause of the malfunction.
After more than a month of busy work, Tom finally identified a deeply hidden design flaw.
Unlike the previous minor malfunctions and hidden dangers, this design flaw even involved the overall structure of the engine!
To solve this hidden danger, Tom even had to overturn more than 70% of the first-generation engine’s structure during the research and development of the second-generation engine.
The hidden danger was so severe, the malfunction so great, and the effort required to solve it so extensive, yet Tom felt no heaviness or worry, but rather full of joy.
"This is exactly what I wanted... It seems that increasing the operating frequency and the number of spaceships is indeed the best way to expose defects.
Hmm... I still have to keep running! Even if I’m just carrying rocks, I have to run!"
While busy with the design and research and development of the second-generation engine, Tom controlled the dozens of heavy cargo ships in space to continue their busy shuttling.
Time flowed slowly as Tom anticipated. After another month, finally, the second relatively serious malfunction appeared.
A cargo ship experienced a thruster malfunction and could not start when it finished its inertial navigation phase and was about to begin decelerating.
According to the current trajectory calculation, this heavy cargo ship weighing over 80,000 tons would directly collide with Loshen Star at a high speed of dozens of kilometers per second!
"Good! It has indeed been exposed, hasn’t it?"
While Tom controlled the Clone located on the spaceship to begin inspection, he also made a second preparation.
Several tugboats quickly took off, secured the cargo ship with cables, and slightly diverted its trajectory.
Thus, it could graze past Loshen Star without colliding with it.
With the imminent crisis averted, more Clones carrying more equipment came into space and began inspecting the cargo ship directly in space.
After some busy work, Tom finally discovered that the source of this major malfunction was actually a small gasket.
This gasket had been subjected to high-energy radiation bombardment for a long time, causing changes in its molecular structure and some unpredictable changes in its properties. It was originally non-conductive, but under certain special circumstances, it could conduct electricity, which caused internal disorder in the engine, leading to the malfunction and ultimately preventing ignition.
This also indicated a worse possibility.
If this gasket could change in this way under harsh working conditions, what about the other components?
"Another deeply hidden, extremely serious hidden danger. Fortunately, it was discovered in advance. Otherwise, if it erupted when I conduct the official migration, then..."
Tom was full of relief.
He directly conducted a comprehensive inspection of all tens of millions of components that make up a secondary pressurized thruster, identifying all components that could malfunction due to similar reasons.
Once the hidden danger was found, there was nothing to worry about; it could simply be resolved.
Thus, after two more relatively serious malfunctions erupted successively, finally, for a full six months, no malfunctions of the same level occurred again.
Tom then finalized the blueprint for the second-generation thruster and immediately put it into production.
This second-generation secondary pressurized thruster not only completely solved the hidden dangers and malfunctions of the first generation but also had smaller volume and mass, and higher overall fuel utilization efficiency!
The thrusters of the existing cargo ships were directly removed and replaced with new ones, and a new round of large-scale testing began again.
After two years of testing, Tom finally confirmed that this second-generation secondary pressurized thruster was truly stable.
Then... it’s time to go.