Chapter 1085: Vast Area

For today's human beings, the solar system is still too large.

The information transmission link in the solar system does not mean that the eight planets are arranged in a row and then an optical cable is built through the eight planets. That is not enough.

Many planets in the solar system will revolve, and their revolution periods are different, and the distances between the closest point and the farthest point are very different. When two planets are at their farthest, there is even a sun and their respective orbital radii between them.

No signal station can cross this distance.

With the means of human beings today, if you want to transmit signals, you have to build several space cities around the planetary orbit as transfer stations.

This is also the main reason why the control of the shelter plummeted outside the orbit of Mars.

"Building infrastructure around the orbit of Mars" is not the same as "building infrastructure around the orbit of Jupiter".

On the inner side of the orbit of Mars, the sunlight is still sufficient, and people can survive with solar energy. For many civilians, if they are dead, they can go to space and deploy solar panels to obtain energy. But in the asteroid belt, this approach does not work. There is not enough solar energy. On Earth, a solar panel the size of a bamboo hat can meet a person's daily daily consumption. But in a space city, this number is an order of magnitude higher. Moreover, with the density of residents in a space city, the city simply does not have space for everyone to deploy solar panels.

At this place, residents are already highly dependent on the reactor inside the city.

This is why Jeanna could say that something might happen near the reactor before, and Chaldea's defense forces were highly nervous.

This is indeed the source of life for Chaldea.

And in Jupiter's orbit, the requirements for infrastructure construction in space cities will rise.

And due to the scarcity of resources, the knights have not built a prosperous space city cluster outside Jupiter's orbit.

Although the knights control the area with prosthesis. But every time Saturn and Uranus and Neptune drift away, the knights have to face a situation of being forced to separate. Sometimes, even the signals between them cannot be connected.

They even need to exchange information with each other regularly using sub-light-speed spacecraft. A spacecraft carries a large amount of storage equipment, then slowly accelerates to a few percent of the speed of light, and then steadily decelerates to reach the target location, transmitting signals to the satellite or space city.

It's too far.

For this reason, the knights even had to build a large number of observation institutions to monitor the fleet of the Shelter. It was a helpless move for the White Ship Yi Cong and the Black Ship Yi Cong to stay in the asteroid belt all year round. They can only intercept the power of the Shelter by discovering the deep space fleet of the Shelter in advance and then intercepting it in the asteroid belt.

Otherwise, the knights, whose group power is already weak, must be separated to defend two planets separated by a great distance, plus a small number of space cities.

"The development of the outer solar system is still too difficult." Listening to Li Liang's window, Jeanna sighed.

Lu Xiangshan nodded: [Humans are still too small compared to the universe. Outside the orbit of Jupiter, there is probably only one celestial body with great development value, Saturn. As for Uranus and Neptune, the development cost is huge, but...]

What is the main development value of Uranus and Neptune?

Mineral veins? That's an ice giant. The "ore" you mined on Uranus will probably be sublimated directly into gas on Earth.

Methane as fuel? It is useful in this era. Tactical missiles and micro-missiles are still needed. But methane is still not enough as a fuel for high-speed navigation in this era.

With the huge amount of giant fuel mined from Jupiter and Saturn, methane is somewhat insufficient. Spending a lot of nuclear fuel to transport methane to a certain number of astronomical units... Just thinking about it makes me feel stupid. Even if there is no natural methane locally, the energy consumed by the direct reaction of carbon dioxide and hydrogen is definitely less than that of transporting methane across the stars.

At this stage, the only thing that ice giants can provide to humans is their ultra-low temperature environment. For high-temperature superconducting technology, this low temperature environment is a natural advantage. In addition, uh, it may only have scientific research value.

In fact, it is indeed the case. At the beginning, there were only a few space stations centered on the scientific research knights on Uranus and Neptune. However, the kings who were enfeoffed there had to develop for their own sake. The military power obtained during the enfeoffment will eventually be exhausted, and they must have their own source of troops and their own production system. Otherwise, they would be subject to the control of the kings of the same level as themselves - those kings who were enfeoffed on rocky planets or gas giants.

The border kings had to transport a group of people from the inner side of the solar system to their own fiefdoms and develop them by force.

Later, the Seventh War God killed the future king of Saturn who controlled Neptune and the Poseidon King who controlled Neptune. King Uranus, who controlled Uranus, was luckier. At that time, Uranus was far away from Saturn and Neptune. Seeing that the situation was not good, he used the excuse of "supporting friendly forces" to lead the main deep space fleet to the Jupiter space domain, and the planetary defense force also followed with a part of the population. After that, the Styx King who controlled the Kuiper Belt all the way to the Oort Cloud region was also directly killed.

King Styx has the largest fiefdom, and is the only king whose fiefdom is measured in light years. The combined territory of all the feudal monarchs in the entire feudal era is not even a fraction of his (after all, it can't even cover the earth's continent). Even the jurisdictions of other kings are much smaller than his. The total mass of the matter in the area ruled by King Styx is dozens of times the mass of the earth.

But to be honest, most of this mass is interstellar dust in the Oort Cloud. The mass of small celestial bodies in the Oort Cloud is only five times that of the earth, and they are scattered in a sphere with a diameter of two light years. The matter here is so thin that the Speed ​​King can drive at low sub-light speed.

The Kuiper Belt is dozens of times the volume of the asteroid belt (that is, a few moons), but unlike the asteroid belt, which is mostly rocky and metal, it is mainly icy celestial bodies.

The protectors forcibly built cities in such a rotten place. These cities were occupied by knights. And the knights really don't have the resources to move all the population and industrial base to Saturn. The cities under the rule of the former Styx King could only develop while waiting for the opportunity of large-scale migration.

Considering that the orbital period of Uranus is 84.02 Earth years and the orbital period of Neptune is 164.8 years, and a hundred years ago during the Seventh Martial God Era, when the knight just took control of that place, Uranus was on the other side of the solar system and Neptune was very close... most cities only got two opportunities for large-scale migration.