Deep Space Wandering Fleet

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The construction of the "Earth Era" consumed 2.07% of humanity's GDP every year. Over so many years, the total cost had reached an astronomical 159 trillion federal coins!

This was an extremely large figure, and over time, ordinary people naturally became unwilling to accept it.

Consider this: many people on Earth were still struggling to make ends meet!

Li Cheng sighed again, "The Deep Space Foundation still needed to prepare at least another trillion in funds to pave a path for the 'Earth Era.'"

"In the next 20 years, the Jupiter Industrial Base needed to collect a large amount of nuclear fuel. Its fusion energy would be used to launch long-distance lasers..."

Zhang Yuan nodded, lost in thought.

The Earth Era adopted a dual propulsion mode of light sail and nuclear fusion propulsion.

A light sail referred to light pressure propulsion. When photons hit a smooth surface, they could change direction like a ping pong ball bouncing off a wall and impart corresponding force to the object, thus propelling the spaceship.

However, the light pressure from the Sun was too weak to quickly propel a giant spaceship weighing tens of millions of tons. Only large artificial light sources from the Moon and Jupiter Base could generate enough pressure to move it.

Think about it, the nuclear fuel on Jupiter, though seemingly inexhaustible, still required human cost.

Moreover, this light path needed to be continuously launched for 20 years. The laser launching devices numbered in the tens of thousands and needed constant replacement, which was another massive expense.

One could hardly imagine how, back then, Professor Qi Yuanshan, the "Father of Nuclear Fusion," persuaded those shrewd businessmen and cunning politicians.

Deep space colonization, this super massive project had no apparent benefits.

Not even in hundreds or thousands of years would it generate any profit.

It was quite puzzling.

After chatting for a while, Li Cheng found talking about these matters with the younger generation somewhat dull, "Whether there's enough budget is a matter for the bosses above to worry about. You just focus on doing well in your tasks."

He shook his head, as if something had come to mind, and abruptly stopped eating. He stood up from the dining table, walked into his study, and became absorbed in contemplating some question alone.

Although Zhang Yuan was very curious about this gossip, seeing this, he could only let it be.

After dinner, Zhang Yuan privately complained, "Your dad and my dad are really alike, just workaholics. Suddenly getting an inspiration and then getting all excited, busy writing it down. At times like this, you should never disturb him, or you'll either get a scolding or hear some inexplicable words."

"Exactly!"

Li Zhendong agreed wholeheartedly, "I remember when I was little, I asked my dad why 1 + 1 = 2. Do you know what he said? He actually told me about Peano's axioms, and I was just in kindergarten at the time. I seriously doubted if he had any common sense!"

"Was your sister educated in a similar way?"

"Yes."

Li Zhendong exaggeratedly said, "Once, my sister asked him why the area of a rectangle is length times width. He directly spouted some esoteric stuff about Euclidean spaces and inner products. Fortunately, my mom was a normal person, or else she'd be driven out of her mind by him."

Zhang Yuan also burst into laughter, reminiscing about his dad's eccentric behavior.

At that time, he was playing with a Rubik's Cube on the sofa, and his dad suddenly had a whim and sternly began explaining Group Theory to a seven- or eight-year-old child.

Yes, Group Theory, a subject Gawaro spent a night writing a paper on.

"It's just math from over five hundred years ago, very simple. Once you learn this, kids will look at you in awe!"

Zhang Yuan was overjoyed, "I want to learn; I want to learn!"

"…The group composed of all operations is called the Rubik's Cube group. Obviously, the Rubik's Cube group is a non-Abelian group... If you can decompose it into products of simpler subgroups and then construct generators for each subgroup, you can prove its solvability. It's been proven: All Rubik's Cubes can be solved in less than 20 moves."

During this process, Zhang Qiming was animated, thoroughly enjoying the pleasure of being a teacher.

But in the end, he discovered his son seemed to be staring at him blankly, unable to understand.

Unable to understand?

Zhang Qiming blurted out a curse, "What an idiot!"

He didn't know if he was referring to his son or himself.

Zhang Yuan sighed. These memories, when looked back upon, didn't evoke the resistance they had at the time. Instead, they were nostalgic.

It had been three years since his father's passing, hadn't it?

Time flew by so fast; a blink of an eye, and three years had passed. The deceased were gone, leaving only memories.

Seeing Zhang Yuan in a somewhat gloomy mood, Li Zhendong turned on the TV and switched to the children's channel, where a cartoon called "Bear Out: The Bear Becomes a Sheep" was playing.

"Don't look at me as just a bear..."

It was a very childish cartoon, but the little girl nearby watched it with great delight.

Zhang Yuan then asked, "When you leave, won't your parents miss you?"

"They won't. I still have a sister," he pointed to a little girl in her early teens nearby, speaking without a care, "And we can have several more in the future. Anyway, technology is advanced now; we can have as many children as we want and can afford to raise them."

He continued, "Think about it. If I don't go on the spaceship and instead work on the Moon, visiting home once a year for the Spring Festival, spending three days each time, and accompanying them for two hours every day... Considering 60 years, the time spent with them would only be 360 hours..."

"Now, I stay at home every day, eating and drinking, accompanying them for seven or eight hours a day, summing up to over two hundred hours a month. With the entire vacation, I've already spent most of my life accompanying them, so what regrets are there?"

Zhang Yuan scratched his head. What kind of absurd logic was this?

But listening to it, it somehow made a bit of sense...

Mrs. Li smiled as she cut some fruit for them, seemingly accustomed to Li Zhendong's neurotic remarks, "Zhang Yuan, why don't you stay with us tonight? We have an empty room anyway."

"Alright."

Zhang Yuan nodded, sighing inwardly.

Li Zhendong's situation was quite similar to his own, but the difference was, Li Zhendong's parents were alive, and his family was harmonious.

While he, Zhang Yuan, was the result of a test tube baby, with a father who provided the sperm, and an unknown woman donor from the human gene bank who supplied the egg. To this day, he didn't know who his biological mother was, nor did he need to know...

But who wouldn't love to have a kind and gentle mom?

In university, their grades were quite similar. However, Li Zhendong was an Academic God, goofing around and still scoring over 90 in exams, while Zhang Yuan was just an academic achiever who needed to put in more effort to earn good scores.

This was actually a difference in intelligence...

But it didn't matter!

Thinking this, Zhang Yuan took out his phone and started browsing the "Super Brain" app. When he saw those mathematical symbols, a strange sense of happiness arose in his mind.

There was no need to envy others—learning made him happy, learning made him grow!

As long as he could study, he felt he had the whole world!

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