Chapter 1091 - SS Heavenly Temple
Wang Qiang took a deep breath; he calmed the excitement and anxiousness pumping in his chest. He peaked outside the window at the red-stained land.
The plan was to spend the rest of his life on this new planet.
“Stop gasping or we’ll be out of oxygen soon.” The man sitting across from him joked.
There was a friendly laugh in the chamber, and the nervous atmosphere dissipated.
More than 80 million kilometers away, the blue planet was no longer visible here. Although the moment they set foot on the colonization ship, they were ready to dedicate this life to the aerospace industry. But when they recalled life on Earth, the twenty colonists couldn’t stop reminiscing about life on the homeland.
No one knew what would be waiting for them.
They weren’t only the pioneers to colonize Mars, but they were also the first to set foot on this land. No matter how many space agencies conducted observations on this planet before, no one dared to declare they knew 100% of the planet before a human set his footprint on this foreign land.
However, the thought of colonizing new land for human civilization brought them some comfort.
The colonization ship entered the synchronous orbit and stopped directly above the landing point. The captain could order landing sequence with an order from the command center.
Wang Qian relaxed and sank into the cushion of the seat. He closed his eyes and planned to take a nap.
However, an hour passed after he opened his eyes again.
“All personnel, the command center has issued a landing order, and the colonial chamber will be separated from the colonization ship in ten seconds. Enter the landing stage. Countdown, 10, 9, 8…”
“So fast.”
When Wang Qiang opened his eyes, he heard the countdown. Without being mentally prepared, he felt anxious. But the colonization ship didn’t give him a chance to be flustered as the countdown quickly reached to zero.
With a slight jitter, the SS Heavenly Temple was divided into two, and the 200-meter-long chamber began to separate from the hull.
Looking from far away, the entire colonial chamber resembled a flat cuboid. Under the traction of six ion engines, it fell toward the red-stained land.
Mars’s orbit was only 17,000 kilometers in distance, while its gravity was only four-ninth of that on Earth. The density of the atmosphere was thin. The landing difficulty was slightly higher than on the Moon, but it was much easier than the Earth.
While the chamber maintained a downward sloping posture, the moment it came in contact with the atmosphere, six engines ignited with powerful propulsion rays. They dragged the chamber and stopped the acceleration of the fall.
The high-temperature ions surrounded the chamber tightly. From a distance, it looked like a blue meteor.
In the air, there was an arc. The two-hundred-meter-long flat cuboid, like a giant foot, descended from the sky and made an imprint on the land.
BOOM!
With a muffled sound, the red sand was send into the air by the collision.
The thick thigh-sized steel needle popped from the bottom of the chamber and nailed into the red sand directly into the rock formation tens of meters deep. They firmly pinned the chamber onto the desert and acted as the “foundation”.
After deployment on land was completed, deployment still continued.
The colonization ship with its chamber detached was still orbiting in the synchronous orbit. In the next ten years, it would serve as a satellite to provide communication, meteorological observation and crisis warning for the colony.
At this point, the chamber deployment process was finally completed.
The vibration outside stopped, and the lights in the cabin lit up.
When light returned to his field of vision, Wang Qiang frantically looked around and breathlessly looked at the captain sitting on the left-hand side across from him. He was thrilled.
“Did we succeed?”
The expression on the captain’s face was the same. Even if he wasn’t an animated person, he was moved by the excitement and sense of glory from the bottom of his heart.
Not just the captain, but all twenty colonists felt the same glory.
They received training for nearly a year, and they practiced day and night for this very day.
“Yes, we succeeded!” With a deep breath, the captain controlled his overflowing excitement and ordered in his trembling voice, “All personnel pay attention. Release the security lock. Sacro, go check the oxygen system. Lu Yang, go to the power room and turn on our nuclear fusion generator; we don’t have much energy in the battery.”
“Yes!”
“Understood!”
After the two men unlocked the safety lock, they leaped down from their seats and walked quickly outside the room.
The security lock was also unlocked. The captain stood in the middle of the buffer cabin and moved his sore arms. He looked at the colonists who had already lined up and ordered: “Yang Yuhan, deploy the exploration drone and conduct a detailed investigation of the geological conditions within a ten-mile radius. Liu Rui, Wang Qiang, prepare for patrol. Chris, you and I will go to the main control room. The rest of the personnel, immediately enter your positions. Time is tight and it is necessary to complete deployment of the planting unit within four hours. This is critical to address our food problem!”
“Yes!”
The colonists shouted in unison and acted immediately.
After all the orders were executed, the captain didn’t leave the buffer cabin immediately. Instead, he reached out to the holographic screen and switched the communication channel to Earth tens of millions of kilometers away. With his fingers trembling, he sent back news of success to his previous home.
“Calling the ground command center, we succeeded!”
…
“…we succeeded!”
When the voice was transmitted back to Celestial City more than 80 million kilometers away, the entire command center erupted in cheers, celebrating the moment in joy. People whistled, threw their arms in the air, hugged together, and celebrated this great moment.
Looking at the colony in the center of the screen, Jiang Chen was more excited than anyone.
If the Moon was an energy base, then Mars was the arsenal of the future “Earth Federation.” Mars was a large iron ore and the endless desert wasn’t silica on Earth but iron oxide!
To be more direct, if they took a shovel to any place on Mars and tossed the sand in a blast furnace, a pound of steel could be produced.
If they wanted to build a galactic ship larger than SS Seagull, they would need a million tons of steel. The minerals on Earth and asteroids would just barely be enough. But if they wanted to build an “invincible fleet”, it wouldn’t be impossible with the Mars colony for steel production.
As an important part of Jiang Chen’s space program, the future “Mars Industrial Park” would bear more than 80% of the shipbuilding capacity of the Earth Federation.
The Earth would finally gain a fighting chance against the imminent invasion.
In order to celebrate this historic moment, Jiang Chen announced in the heat of the moment: “All employees involved in the Mars Colonization Program will be rewarded 500,000 Xin New dollars per person regardless of their position! This money will come out of my pocket!”
The big red envelope pushed the cheering in the command center to a new peak…