Scavengers

Three hundred kilometres per second, what does that speed represent?

The speed of the solar wind is probably about the same as this. In other words, if a massive flare erupts on the sun at this moment and a strong solar wind breaks out, and Hawk escapes into outer space at this time, the solar wind will never catch up with Hawk.

Voyager 1, the farthest-sailing spacecraft ever built, is currently about 17.8 billion kilometres from Earth and 16 billion kilometres from Hawk. If Hawke were to set off on Hope to catch up with Voyager 1, it would take less than two years to catch up. Voyager One, on the other hand, had been in space for a full thirty-eight years.

At that speed, it would take just over two months to fly from Saturn to Earth. In the old days, it would have taken years to get there.

This is the huge technological leap that controlled fusion has brought to Hawke. It is also why Hawke attaches so much importance to controlled fusion.

A civilisation can only be said to be an interstellar civilisation when it has mastered controlled fusion technology!

Now Hawke could proudly announce that humanity had stepped into the interstellar civilization stage. Although the entire human civilisation, only Hawk was left alone.

There had never been such a moment when Hawke felt his whole body was filled with hope.

Hawke lovingly controlled the Hope as it flew around in space, doing all kinds of performance tests on it, until he had all the performance data of the Hope and the fuel was almost depleted, then Hawke manoeuvred it down to the ground.

During this period of testing, Hawker also discovered some problems that he had not considered before, as well as some technical flaws of the Hope. Next, Hawke began the long process of testing and modifying the ship. This was the first interstellar ship that Hawke had built, and it was important that it was as good as it could be.

Time passed slowly, and in the blink of an eye, two years had passed.

In these two years, Hawke's bases on Titan grew to ninety-three, each with its own main output, which, after being transported to the main base by the Wind God helicopter, would be transformed into a variety of construction materials, providing strong support for Hawke's era of construction.

In these two years, the Wind God helicopters have grown to over a hundred, and these aircraft are busily shuttling through Titan's atmosphere, taking on the task of transporting supplies between the various bases. Hundreds or thousands of robots, similar to the Rare Earth Expeditionary Force, reaching their destinations by walking, will no longer be seen.

This is a major technological advancement and represents the increasing strength of Hawke.

The main base has expanded to two square kilometres, and within it, there are various plants and buildings with countless robots moving around - there are now around 100,000 robots in the main base alone. The total number of robots in all the bases on Titan has probably exceeded a million.

These millions of robots, and all kinds of machinery, and all kinds of sensors, are all under Hawk's control and are working in perfect order. It can be said that Hawk's eyes are everywhere on Titan, and any slight movement that occurs on Titan, as long as Hawk wants to know, cannot escape Hawk's perception.

Although he has mastered controlled fusion technology, Hawke has not changed the power source of the base to fusion power. Because methane is almost inexhaustible on Titan, and easy to use, fusion raw materials still need to be collected from Saturn, compared to conventional chemical fuel is cheaper and more practical.

Even so, Hawke was beginning to consider building a fleet of fusion power harvesting ships. Although Hawke only had a "Village" class ship, he had to think about the future.

Moreover, the lack of both titanium and zirconium forced Hawke to find a solution as soon as possible. The best scenario would be to find them on the rest of Saturn's moons, otherwise the search would have to be extended to Uranus and Neptune, and if not, to Mars or the original Earth orbit.

Jupiter, Hawke did not intend to go there yet. The radiation sources there had cast too much of a psychological shadow on him. Of course, in the future, Hawke would certainly build a fleet to capture Jupiter's ghosts like "One", but not now.

"Jupiter Ghosts ... Jupiter Ghosts ... is a good name, let's call those weird radiation source creatures Jupiter Ghosts for short." Hawk pondered, "As for these black bugs, let's call them black bugs."

Within those two years, Hawke had fired three more hydrogen bombs, emptied three methane lakes, and harvested at least fifteen hundred tons of black worm corpses. Of course, with the Hope around, Hawke didn't waste any more time building rockets to launch hydrogen bombs. With the Hope's speed, it was fast enough to escape the impact of the hydrogen bomb before it exploded.

Hawke also began to experiment with breeding black worms in captivity. After all, something like a black worm was just too useful. That way, later on, after leaving Titan, Hawke could still be replenished with black worm resources. It was something like wood spirits that Hawke had not been able to find a way to breed in captivity. "The One had used up seventy percent of its radiation strength, and it had remained in this half-dead state for some time, and Hawke had been unable to make it strong again by all means.

"Eh, the Rim Saturn artificial satellites have been built, the first batch of eighteen, let's launch them up first." Hawke thought, manipulating the droids and placing these satellites into the Hope.

Hawke was not a big believer in computer programs. Even if a computer program was powerful, it was still dead, how could it compare to the flexibility of the human mind? It was for this reason that Hawke had built the twelve Battlestar satellites to provide signal coverage for the whole of Titan, and now, for the same reason, Hawke intended to provide a signal coverage for Saturn. Otherwise, when Hope flew to the back of Saturn, it would lose contact with Hawke.

There was another advantage to having a signal overlay for Saturn. Hawke's plan was to launch between sixty and eighty Saturn moons, so that, apart from a few signal dead spots, it would be like having signal coverage for almost the entire solar system.

By then, Hope would be free to fly around the solar system without fear of losing contact.

After such a long period of testing, Hawke was already comfortable and comfortable with the Hope. With the command, a light blue flame rose from the bottom of the Hope and it flew rapidly towards outer space.

Including the acceleration and deceleration time, it took about two hours for Hope to reach a distance of 100,000 kilometres from Saturn. After adjusting to a suitable speed and orbit, Hope opened its cabin and the first Saturn satellite was released.

In the distance, the huge, earthy Saturn hovered silently, surrounded by glorious rings of Saturn in all its glory. With the huge Saturn as a backdrop, the spacecraft Hope, looked like a tiny ant.

After releasing this moon, this Saturn moon will start orbiting Saturn under the effect of inertia. It carried some fuel on it, which could be used for orbital adjustments as well as for daily consumption.

Hawke then adjusted the orbit again, left it and, in a second position, released a second moon.

After eighteen repetitions of this, the mission was complete. These eighteen Saturn moons, with orbital altitudes ranging from 50,000 to 2 million kilometres, basically covered the entire planet Saturn and its satellite system. Of course, at the beginning this coverage was only approximate due to the insufficient number of satellites. At a later date, Hawke would launch more satellites to complete the project.

With the mission completed, Hawke manoeuvred the Hope spacecraft closer to Saturn.

This take-off was accompanied by a mission to collect fusion materials such as deuterium, tritium and helium. After two years of depletion, Hawke had little fusion fuel left.

Saturn is more than seven hundred and sixty times the size of Earth, but only ninety-five times the mass. This meant that Saturn's average density was very low, even lower than that of water.

Hawke carefully manoeuvred the Hope spacecraft and stopped at the edge of Saturn's upper atmosphere.

Compared to Jupiter, Saturn had always been very calm. But this calmness was relative. Saturn was home to the fastest storm in the entire solar system, with speeds of over 1,800 kilometres per hour, much more powerful than the storms above Earth.

Hawke cautiously did his atmospheric flow analysis for a long time before choosing a place to fly in quietly.

Hawke was making observations at all times in order to follow the flow of Saturn's atmosphere and adjust his trajectory so as to minimise the danger.

Immediately, a large amount of Saturn gas was pumped in, and then, inside the Hope, after a series of separation and purification procedures, the useful elements were collected and the useless ones were expelled from the ship.

Saturn's atmosphere is mainly made up of hydrogen, but ordinary hydrogen is not cost-effective as a fusion fuel. Hawke mainly collected isotopes of hydrogen, deuterium and tritium, and helium III. The content of these is much less.

But even so, the amount is many times more than on Earth or Titan. Hawk roams comfortably through Saturn's atmosphere, doing his job as a "scavenger". Of course, it was only the surface atmosphere, but inside, Hawke didn't dare to go. It was too dangerous.

It took ten days for Hawke to gather enough raw materials before he steered Hope away from Saturn and back towards Titan.

"Keep building satellites to provide signal coverage for the entire Saturn system, and even the entire solar system, and then start the titanium zirconium capture program! It's time to officially start the Wood Spirit capture program as well."

"Sky Court IV, wait for me! I'm coming soon!"