Space Flight Made Easy
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| For fact: Jupiter has the volume of 1321 Earths. The scale here is a little off. |
Cargo acquired, time to head back to Zibel 3. Space travel is already a little dull. Though there are further upgrades to Icarus that should make things nicer. Higher speeds, more energy to hit those higher speeds, and more inventory capacity to make those trips worth it more. So that's ok. Soon enough I'll have it more automated. Easier to have machines do the work for me.
Back at the base, production is setup for analyzing some new construction techniques. It primarily researches using two of the toughest materials I can create right now, titanium crystals and diamonds. Crystals are quite the unique type of material, and should allow for some very nice technologies soon. I'm particularly eyeing the tech for a ship-based logistics network. Being able to send materials across the world or from world to world in a point-to-point manner will help immensely. Belts are great, but they very much do have their own limitations.
It is the odd case indeed though that I know enough of what I'll need in terms of materials, but yet not knowing how exactly to get it done. Research is still ongoing. And as usual, as soon as I fix one thing, another thing starts lagging behind.
And so it's a good time to start thinking of the next project: building the materials so I can build my logistics towers. There's two types of towers: planetary and interstellar. Both can employ logistics drones that'll transport materials between two towers on the same planet. The interstellar towers also have an additional height for easing the launch of logistics vessels that can go to other planets; at this star or others. Each come with their own set of materials that are still in the research phase that I'll need to develop the basics for. And after that, I can really start designing a better base. More options means a much better possible design.
The nice bit is after this I can develop a base with all the tools, and make something I wouldn't call a "bootstrap base" after its done. Unfortunately, the additional materials will make for some headaches in design. If you'll see, I've got science production in the center. To the east of it was production related to the beginning metal resources. To the west I've had products primarily relating to oil products, carbon, and now some titanium. Now I'll need to mix the two.
I say "now" but realistically I mean soon. More immediate is that my first burst of titanium is gone, and I'll need a lot of computer parts. Which are best sources from Zibel 1. So off I go again! Time for the Icarus to serve as a courier.
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| I decided to go with a white overall paint job with purple highlights |
Luckily for me the two planets are close by in their orbits so this should be a quick jaunt over. I'll bring over some equipment to build processing units and bring back titanium while the constructors do their work. So 2-3 trips total. It's nice that the planets are so close. Did anyone ever tell you to make a list before you go on a trip? Well I forgot. I had everything but the very many smelters I'd need to for the process. Ah well. I'll take a load of titanium back with me when I go to pick them up so it's not a complete waste.
And voila! Processor hot off the press. Almost literally, in a fun turn of events, considering how that term initially came about. You may notice that these lines are nothing like what I have back on the original planet, and there's a reason for that. The bootstrap base is ideal for producing many different types of items, and keeping them close together cuts down heavily on transport belt usage. So it's both efficient from a materials standpoint, but also thinking time.
Here I'm not so worried about either. I have numerous transport belts that I can pick up and reuse eventually, so I'm fine with maybe being a bit wasteful, and I'll only produce a few products here. in this case I have multiple lines of raw resources only going to the eventual goal of producing processors. If I want to produce different items on this planet, I'll do it in different locations around the world. Logistics vessels will vastly change what my planets end up looking like.
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