Technological Regression

Yue Yuan pondered for a moment, then continued, "When a hardworking person and someone who eats and sleeps are treated equally by society, then that society is not far from chaos. If this society is all of humanity, then the seeds of destruction have already been sown.

We cannot allow such seeds to be sown. Therefore, at this new beginning for humanity, a series of preventive measures should be formulated."

Lying flat, slacking off, dragging one's feet—these seem like nothing much, but if you change the term, it becomes a universally recognized problem.

That is: nonviolent non-cooperation.

This is a behavior that can shake the very foundation of the human government, and in this context, it is possible that humanity could self-destruct because of this behavior.

Yue Yuan knew the seriousness of the matter, so he proposed this seemingly absurd plan.

The so-called nonviolent non-cooperation is nonviolence and non-cooperation.

It's the super-evolved version of slacking off, lying flat, and dragging one's feet.

In the past, when there were many people, having a group or even a large group of idlers wasn't a big problem, but it's different now. Yue Yuan never forgets humanity's fragility, and he must do everything possible to unite the survivors.

In Yue Yuan's words, some of the brainless opponents among the attendees gradually quieted down. They began to think about the pros and cons, and began to consider the problem from the perspective of humanity's current situation.

Gradually, the number of supporters became the majority, and the remaining few did not object, but simply cast a few abstentions.

Passing the vote does not mean it can be implemented immediately. After all, it is only a proposal. The specific content still needs relevant legal experts from the Ministry of Justice, and of course, the Ministry of Finance will also be involved in the financial aspects.

Of course, there is the Ministry of Finance.

Although there are so few people, as long as the ideological awareness has not reached the level of everyone being a saint, currency is still needed.

Callisto's new government's monetary system also follows the previous system, except that the institution issuing virtual credit currency has become the newly established Human Bank.

Of course, if there is a great abundance of materials in the future, it will be necessary to implement a communist system for various survival materials, but now is not the time.

The meeting continued.

On the issue of large-scale construction, all the attendees had no objections and all agreed that humanity needed to go full throttle and work hard.

Large construction equipment needs to be expanded in production, and a series of factories such as food processing, machinery manufacturing, material processing, power plants, mining processing, and steel factories need to be built.

There are also the indispensable Aerospace Industry and educational institutions.

Humanity will not forget the stars, nor will it abandon its heritage.

"We plan to build an Orbital Mass Accelerator on a relatively flat piece of land on Callisto," the head of the Engineering Department said passionately at the meeting. "After the steel factories, machinery factories, and electrical and other related factories are established, priority should be given to producing the materials needed for the Orbital Mass Accelerator. To this end, we also need to expand the team of technicians, need more fully/semi-automated equipment, and need more engineering vehicles—in a word, we need people."

"Prospecting for minerals and mining them also requires people. Some jobs cannot be replaced by machines," the person in charge of Callisto's mineral resource exploitation, who had been arranged to do so, no longer remained silent.

"You departments should go back and hold small meetings to figure out the specific issues of manpower, material resources, resource exploitation, and prospecting," Yue Yuan interrupted the back-and-forth conversation at the meeting. He said, "This meeting is mainly to determine the general direction. Regarding this aspect, you can speak freely about your opinions."

As soon as Yue Yuan finished speaking, Gan De, who had been prepared to speak for a long time, was the first to speak. As an astronomer, he needed to introduce the current cosmic environment in which humanity is located to everyone. He said, "According to the latest observation data and the direction of our Callisto's wandering, the nearest star systems to us in the future are Van Maanen's Star, Epsilon Indi A, and GJ9066 Star System, but unfortunately, our Callisto will not pass through any of them.

Even if our Callisto encounters a star system in the future, we won't be able to wait until then. After all, it will take thirty years for Callisto to fly out of the original Solar System range at its current speed.

In other words, Callisto can only be our short-term habitat. If we humans want to survive, we must leave it and find a new star system before Callisto's energy and resources are exhausted."

Someone couldn't wait to ask, "How far away is the nearest star from us?"

"Currently, it's Barnard's Star, which is 6 light-years away from us. Wolf 359 is the next closest, which is 7.7 light-years away from us, but in the future, they will gradually move away from us," Gan De said directly without even looking at the data.

"In the future?" A participating representative hesitated for a moment, then said, "We don't have to wait that long. As long as our industries are restored, we can build one or several interstellar ships and leave Callisto directly. I think it shouldn't be a problem for us to cross a distance of six or seven light-years with our technology."

Yu Nanfeng, a doctor of mechanics, took over and replied, "With our current mature Fission Thruster, we have enough fuel to continue accelerating, and we can reach a maximum of 1% of the speed of light."

"That's enough. Don't forget we have hibernation pods. Let's say it's eight light-years away, we'll be there in eight hundred years," the representative calculated simply.

Yu Nanfeng shook his head, "But we are still in a stellar gas cloud. We can't accelerate the spaceship to 1% of the speed of light, and in such an environment, the spaceship will be subject to resistance and slow down slowly, so we may run out of fuel halfway."

Bring more fuel?

If you bring more fuel, the total mass of the spaceship will also increase, and accelerating the spaceship to 1% will consume more fuel.

If it were not in a nebula formed by a supernova explosion, a speed of 1% of the speed of light plus hibernation pods might allow you to sleep until you reach your destination, but that is not possible now.

"What about Controlled Nuclear Fusion? I heard before I came to Callisto that this thing seems to be almost successful, like it's just missing a puzzle piece?" another person asked.

"Room-temperature superconductivity," Xu Zhenyi, a doctor of materials science, replied.

"Yes, yes, didn't they say that this thing could be developed in a few more years?" The man looked delighted, as if he saw hope.

"Alas," Xu Zhenyi said bitterly, "That was on Earth, not Callisto."

"What does this mean?"

No one answered him, because except for a few, everyone was silent.

Xu Zhenyi had made it very clear that it was on Earth, not Callisto. In other words, the ones who were about to successfully develop Controlled Nuclear Fusion were from the former Earth; Callisto never had this project.

With the destruction of Earth, all the core data and core equipment related to Controlled Nuclear Fusion had vanished.

Although Callisto was known as the space base with the most complete equipment, it was impossible to have a Controlled Nuclear Fusion laboratory, and it didn't even have the core technical data.

It could be said that the technological regression, which was thought to be still very distant, had already happened to the surviving humans.