Earth time, June 2012.
Kunlun Base had long been handed over to Hua Country. After nine months of grueling effort, the Nüwa spacecraft was finally complete.
It was a modified version of the Kunlun Ship originally designed by Huang Ji.
Hua Country's scientists had learned the design philosophy and technology, and had even made improvements according to the actual circumstances.
Naturally, the changes made it worse. Every parameter had been lowered across the board. The various weapons in the original design had been discarded outright and replaced with more precise detection equipment and communications devices.
The overall vessel had also become larger, but its materials were cheaper.
In fact, these changes better suited Hua Country's industrial foundation. Production time was shorter, materials were cheaper, and the total cost had fallen by more than half.
But regardless, this was Hua Country's first independently produced nuclear-powered spacecraft.
It could carry six people and accelerate to a maximum speed of twenty thousand kilometers per second—more than enough to traverse the Solar System.
Now, journeying through space was no longer an unattainable dream.
However, compared with freely exploring the Solar System or colonizing other planets, humanity had a more urgent task to complete... reversing the Sun's abnormal activity!
The Gamma-ray Burst was still more than thirty years away, but the massive solar coronal mass ejection of 2012 was already imminent.
Though it would not be enough to exterminate humanity, it would destroy existing human society. The vast majority of electronic instruments and communications satellites would collapse, making radio communications impossible for at least a year.
Scientists predicted that this eruption would raise Earth's overall temperature by six degrees! The world would enter an era of extreme heat, and the polar glaciers would melt on a massive scale, releasing enormous amounts of carbon dioxide.
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