Ian had always known that heading for the stars had never been a romantic affair.
In people's imaginations, traveling into the universe seemed sure to bring countless dazzling sights, thrilling adventures, and unimaginable wonders.
But in reality, all of that was false.
How could it be otherwise? Where could such a good thing exist?
Having truly been to space, Ian knew well that even the journey from Earth to Jupiter was unbelievably long. And throughout it all, there was nothing but boredom upon boredom. Most of the time was spent waiting inside hibernation pods.
Whether aboard a spacecraft or a rocket, all humans could see in space was a field of flickering points of light. There were no colorful nebulae, no visible movement of stars, no way to tell where one was or what exactly one was supposed to do.
Humans were, in the end, creatures who lived on land. To make them understand the beauty of space and adapt to a life intolerable to planetary lifeforms, their bodies and minds first had to be completely remade. They had to become NewTypes.
Even the Earth Federation where Ian had lived in his previous life had undertaken massive space development only to consume productive capacity and give people something to do.
After all, figuring out how to reach the starry void faster and better was, at times, an enormous comprehensive problem. Solving those problems alone could improve people's lives.
For example, the ultra-high-capacity compressed batteries developed for interstellar navigation, reusable hundreds of thousands of times, along with their supporting nuclear charging units, had neither accelerated the Jupiter route nor fundamentally increased the endurance of shipborne drones. Yet they had indeed solved energy problems for many civilian facilities on Earth.
After all, everything had to be people-centered. If people were not truly