Hibernation Plan

If only antimatter could start this engine, then humanity had no way to do so right now. But if charged antiparticles would work as well, there was still some hope.

After all, if humanity made further breakthroughs in Magnetic Confinement technology, it might still be possible to separate out some charged antiparticles. But the most crucial thing was to first understand how this fuel storage device operated.

No matter what, they had truly struck gold this time.

Although it could not solve their immediate crisis, Yue Yuan, Liu Miyan, and the others were still delighted.

Over the following days, Liu Miyan continued telling Yue Yuan about the progress they had made during this time. Through their questions and answers, Yue Yuan gradually came to understand the engine's general condition.

Overall, the engine's core components were intact. Parts such as the nozzle had also been repaired by the Engineering Department and more or less restored to their original state.

As for the Force Field Generator, they had yet to gain any in-depth understanding of it. Based solely on existing human theories, they speculated that it was the Warp Engine's core component, responsible for generating the Warp Bubble or Curvature Field.

As for the fuel storage device, humanity currently knew that it was a supporting component for the engine. In other words, fuel had to be placed into the storage device—or fuel pack—before the engine could use it.

Now that they understood this, once they figured out how to use the fuel storage device in the future, the direction for researching fuel replenishment would become clear. It would simply be a matter of how to put fuel into the device. The staff had discovered that both the fuel storage device and the engine had special slots.

Each engine had two slots. Because the fuel storage devices were made of extremely advanced materials, humanity had four fuel storage devices despite possessing only one engine.

If they later discovered that these four fuel storage devices truly contained residual fuel, just as Yu Nanfeng had said, that would be even better.

After offering several scientists some encouragement, Yue Yuan left the Underground Base and returned to his daily work.

Over the past two years, through the joint efforts of the surviving humans, many technologies that had regressed because of the disaster had gradually been recovered. Yet Controlled Nuclear Fusion still showed no signs of a breakthrough in the near future.

Under such circumstances, Yue Yuan had no choice but to revisit the Hibernation Plan that had previously been shelved.

In another year, Callisto's energy consumption would reach the critical point predicted by the experts. If things continued like this after a year, humanity would have only two paths left.

The first was to remain on Callisto for seventy years and gamble that humanity could make Controlled Nuclear Fusion a reality within that time. Success meant survival; failure meant extinction once their energy ran out.

The second was to set out directly once the spaceship was completed, gambling that humanity could rely on its remaining nuclear fission fuel to endure Interstellar Dust, cross the sea of stars, and reach the nearest Star System.

Strictly speaking, there were really only these two paths.

As for the Hibernation Plan, it was an optimized version of the second path. Most people, along with most engineering and research projects, would enter hibernation, leaving only projects related to spaceship construction running.

Experts estimated that if this plan was launched, two-thirds of the population would enter hibernation, while three-fifths of engineering and research projects would be put on pause.

In exchange, they would have a more secure fuel reserve.

Compared with the first path, Yue Yuan favored the improved version of the second.

The first path involved too many uncertainties. Scientific progress and breakthroughs were not something that would definitely happen just because they were predicted to take a certain number of years. Sometimes, even when they were clearly only one last step away, they still could not make it happen. As the leader of a civilization, he did not dare gamble when there was another, safer option.

Of course, there was another hope now: gambling that humanity could figure out how to use that Warp Engine within seventy years, and that its fuel storage device still held enough fuel.

"Looks like the Hibernation Plan is still the safer option." Yue Yuan pulled up the Hibernation Plan on his computer and reviewed it once more before walking out of his office.

After being refined by the relevant experts, the Hibernation Plan was no longer just a simple, broad outline as it had been at the start.

It now included a detailed industrial plan, specifying which people would enter hibernation, which would continue working, and establishing a hibernation rotation system.

Naturally, there had to be rotations. Otherwise, it would be far too unfair to those who kept working.

Just imagine it: you worked tirelessly for decades to build the spaceship, while someone else woke up after a single sleep and directly enjoyed the fruits of your labor, while you yourself had aged by decades. No one would feel good about that.

Of course, the government could forcibly decide who hibernated and who worked. But that would undoubtedly leave resentment in people's hearts, which could eventually become a destabilizing factor in future society.

You could not expect everyone to be a saint. You could not expect everyone to make selfless sacrifices.

So work had to rotate. And for work to rotate, everyone taking a shift had to understand that job and be able to seamlessly take over the ongoing work upon waking.

That made the requirements extremely high.

Therefore, not all humans could take part in the work rotations. Only those who passed functional training could do so.

To this end, the Hibernation Plan also proposed a supporting measure: professional functional training for suitable candidates, including every detail, such as how many workers each expert would train and how many apprentices each engineer would supervise.

Even so, there would still be some people who could not participate. That could not be forced—for example, those who failed the functional training, as well as scientists and experts from other specialties.

To ease these conflicts as much as possible, the Hibernation Plan also stipulated a compensation scheme.

That was, once spaceship construction was complete and humanity entered the Voyage Plan phase, those who had previously hibernated and made no contribution to building the spaceship would be assigned more waking time. The purpose was for them to maintain the various instruments and equipment aboard the spaceship during the voyage, ensuring flight safety.

To support this plan, more than a dozen related laws and regulations would be issued.

They would cover labor compensation, skill certification, social welfare, resource allocation, and many other areas.

Besides this, in order to encourage people to work hard and persevere, the New Government also presented a grand promise: the "White Paper on Application Standards for Lifespan-Related Technologies."

It roughly described the future standards for using lifespan-related medicines after they matured, including provisions such as what kind of contributions would qualify a person to use them.

To keep this promise from looking like nothing but empty words, the "White Paper on Application Standards for Lifespan-Related Technologies" also made special provisions for qualified people who had grown old. If the technology's immaturity prevented those nearing the end of their lives from waiting for it, they could be permitted to enter long-term hibernation and wait until the day the technology matured.

Thanks to Ultimate Ruler of the Multiverse and Nuan Songyan for their rewards, thanks to Fan Xingju for the 2,000-coin reward, and thanks to Voyager You for the 10,000-coin reward.