Before Huang Lala's immigration fleet arrived, another large fleet arrived at the J galaxy first.
This is a supply fleet that departed from the galactic border supply station. Its purpose is to provide material supplies for Bai Yi's current galaxy transformation process.
The fleet's flagship was an Obelisk-class cargo ship, its square hull having undergone a special structural design, housing millions of cubic meters of oversized cargo containers. Before the fleet set out, these containers were completely filled with cargo.
Most of the cargo was a strange substance called element zero, or zero element for short.
Zero-point energy is ranked zeroth in the periodic table, before hydrogen. Its molecular structure lacks electrons, and its atomic structure consists solely of four neutrons, hence its name, the tetraneutron. For a long time, this structure was considered unphysical. It wasn't until the Galactic Alliance's technological advancements in zero-point energy that this once-hypothetical particle was officially created.
While zero element is, to some extent, a neutron, zero element polymers possess a stability unmatched by conventional neutron matter, maintaining their stability in a vacuum without the aid of external forces. Therefore, the term "zero element" generally has a specific designation within the Galactic Alliance.
In industry, element zero has excellent mechanical properties, but its polymer was first used in the military, and the final product was the world-famous element zero armor.
Before the advent of Zero Armor, military spacecraft primarily employed carbon fiber structures and nano-ceramic armor, with key areas protected by neutron armor or charged armor. While both armor types offered comparable defensive capabilities to Zero Armor, their shortcomings were evident.
Neutron armor is extremely heavy, and simply forging a main armor belt would add tens of millions of tons of mass. Therefore, a starship using this armor as a defensive structure would appear fat and clunky.
When these spacecraft are in combat, they will basically be mixed into fleets composed of spacecraft using other defensive means, because when a fleet group collectively uses neutron armor and turns off its engines and space anchors, the starships may even collide with each other due to each other's gravity.
This is unacceptable on a chaotic battlefield, where no one can guarantee that their engines and space anchors will still function normally under battlefield conditions.
While rechargeable armor, a rising star, strives to avoid the quality flaws of its predecessors, it introduces new energy consumption issues. The defensive power of rechargeable armor depends entirely on the intensity of the energy it receives, and the output margin of the reactors of ships below the battleship level is insignificant compared to the energy required for recharging. This directly results in the defense of small ships using rechargeable armor being even inferior to that of ordinary nano-ceramic solutions.
Zero armor, crafted from element 0, perfectly solves both of these problems. As a derivative of traditional neutron armor, while significantly heavier than ceramic armor, it's only 1% as heavy as neutron armor. Furthermore, once molded, it requires no additional energy. Thanks to these properties, ships constructed from zero armor can combine exceptional defense with a degree of maneuverability.
However, to this day, due to the limited production of zero element, there are still very few such spacecraft in the galaxy.
Limited production capacity meets unlimited demand, which together have created the current embarrassing situation.
However, Bai Yi obviously didn't want the zero-element material to build a spaceship. He had a greater use for it.
By simply coating the inner wall of a planetary reactor with a thin layer of zero-element polymer a few millimeters thick, the erosion of the inner wall by the zero-point radiation generated when the reactor is working can be completely shielded.
As soon as he got these materials, Bai Yi immediately put them into the warehouse and stored them solemnly.
These things are all precious treasures. Every gram is worth hundreds of thousands of quantum yuan, and they are in short supply.
Of course, the main reason is that he currently has no way to synthesize these elements.
The production of zero element is an extremely complex and precise process. Although there is a matching blueprint in Border Guard, with his current industrial level, he still has a long way to go before establishing a production line.
But he didn't need to worry, because the transport fleet sent this time had an absurd amount of zero-element materials stored. As long as Bai Yi didn't waste them, he could even use these materials to build another planetary reactor.
He didn't know the Galactic Alliance's intentions. According to common sense, the value of Zero Element was far greater than its stated price. Beyond industrial and military applications, demand for Zero Element was also increasing in major laboratories, with Zero Element being the driving force behind a growing number of scientific breakthroughs.
So why did the alliance suddenly send so many materials to me?
Bai Yi did not find the answer to the question in the data link of the Obelisk-class freighter, and the commander of the fleet was a retired general. This commander, who had just retired from the front line, was just following orders and was not interested in what cargo he was transporting.
Well, since no one else could answer, Bai Yi could only speculate on his own.
He guessed the situation must have reached a critical point. This wasn't just a blind guess; it had a basis. Through the Border Guard's internal network, Bai Yizi had learned that several Border Guard bases in this star region had received the same supplies, demonstrating the Galactic Alliance's importance to this region.
Although he didn't know what this importance meant, Bai Yi knew that everything was related to those unfathomable crystal storms.
After collecting the delivered zero elements, he began to receive the planetary reactor parts unloaded from the industrial building. All the construction companies on the planet became busy.
Ever since the completion of the New Mars surface metallization project, the planet hadn't been this busy. Parts of various sizes were constantly being transported from space to the surface, and then transported to the planet's interior. At the planet's very core, the tunnel boring machine originally used to hollow out the planet had been dismantled, and the scattered parts had been collected and piled up according to their categories.
They will be recycled in the construction of planetary reactors to continue to produce their waste heat.
The outer wall of the planetary reactor, 600 km in diameter, completely replaces the planet's core. Because it's hollow, the planetary reactor, while denser, is lighter than the solid iron core of New Mars. However, this loss of mass is offset by the planet's outer layers of charged armor, which will create a more even density distribution across the planet.
This uniformity is extremely beneficial for the construction and operation of subsequent planetary engines. A planet with a relatively uniform density distribution and structural strength coefficient is more likely to maintain stability during full engine operation, avoiding the tearing of the surface continental shelf.
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