July 2029, Rocket City, Sazhou, Bright Country
Acebe Space Technology Company, led by Michael Max, owned the world's largest-diameter heavy rocket, the Hunter-5 Rocket. It was 50 meters across and could carry over a hundred tons. Most astonishing of all, it was reusable.
Acebe Company seemed to have opened a gateway to space for humanity, and commercial orders came pouring in.
Acebe Company's annual customer appreciation gala was underway. The moment Michael appeared, he became the center of attention. His rousing speech pushed the guests' enthusiasm to its peak.
The buffet dinner began, and the guests mingled in small groups, chatting and laughing with drinks in hand.
The Bright Country Space Administration was naturally Acebe Company's most important partner. Professor Braun and his daughter, Daphne Braun, were among the invited guests. Michael walked over to them with a smile. After greeting the professor, he said to Daphne:
"All the clients here today are fascinating. I'll introduce you to them in a little while."
"Michael, congratulations! The Hunter-5's reusability test was a success. That's amazing!" Daphne beamed, then asked, "My explorer, is the moon or Mars your next destination?"
"It seems there's nothing left for me to accomplish on Earth." Michael gave Professor Braun a meaningful glance, then lowered his voice mysteriously. "I guess I'll have to fulfill the other half of my dream and go to Mars."
Daphne was secretly delighted. Ever since joining the Bright Country Space Administration's Lingshen Star exploration program, her main research focus had been Mars and the asteroid belt.
Daphne's doctoral dissertation was titled The Development and Rules of Space Industry. Space industry, in essence, meant making better use of space resources. From the perspective of engineering challenges and cost savings, developing the asteroid belt was arguably even more feasible than developing the moon.
Michael took a glass of champagne from a waiter's tray and led Daphne and the professor over to the fascinating clients he had mentioned. "This is Masao Asagaya, president of Fusheng Nation's Kyojima Company. Their project with us is quite fascinating."
After introductions and pleasantries, the Brauns learned about Kyojima Company's highly creative project proposal.
Kyojima Company was a well-known construction engineering firm in Fusheng Nation. In 2009, it had begun developing intelligent construction machinery.
With AI computing power increasing dramatically, remotely operated intelligent machines had made tremendous progress.
In 2020, Kyojima Company took on a dam construction project in Fusheng Nation. The entire dam was built using remotely operated AI equipment, with excavators and bulldozers working together at the site around the clock.
Kyojima Company set a world record by completing the first large-scale construction project with no workers on site.
In 2021, Kyojima Company began collaborating with research institutions in Fusheng Nation. Together, they achieved coordinated engineering operations using AI machinery controlled from extreme distances, reaching nearly ten thousand kilometers away.
For telecommunications and remote control, there was no technical difference between ten thousand kilometers and 380,000 kilometers. Clever Daphne immediately understood what Michael had found so fascinating. She exclaimed:
"Mr. President, are you hoping to hire Michael to send AI excavators and bulldozers to the moon to mine?"
Masao Asagaya looked at the perceptive woman who had seen through his plan at once, and smiled proudly.
Daphne Braun thought of her own dissertation, and a hint of worry stirred within her.
The moon's surface was rich in rare metals, whose value would be enormous if brought back to Earth. Its soil was loose, making excavation and sorting far cheaper than on Earth. So even after paying Acebe Company a huge sum for transport, Kyojima Company could still earn unimaginable profits.
That was precisely what troubled Daphne. Humanity would inevitably make use of space resources someday, but how should it do so? What rules should govern commercial development?
Daphne knew it would be very difficult to persuade the president before her to postpone the project based on her own position. Still, she couldn't help engaging in a deeper conversation with him.
Michael gestured for the professor to join him in a quiet corner. He said:
"I signed a nondisclosure agreement. Daphne doesn't know the secret behind Tesla's theory yet, does she?" After the professor nodded, Michael continued, "Could you tell me about the lunar experiment based on Tesla's theory that you mentioned last time?"
The professor began explaining the lunar experiment he had designed.
In 1936, Nikola Tesla submitted his paper Dynamic Principle of Gravity. In addition to the already verified Superluminal Wave Hypothesis, he proposed a new theory of gravity.
Both Newton's classical theory of gravitational mass and Einstein's General Relativity had been derived from observations of objects moving through space.
Objects moved at a constant velocity in an inertial frame, but accelerated toward the center of gravity in a gravitational field.
Nikola Tesla redefined inertial frames and gravitational fields. He believed that all forms of motion originated from the distribution of energy density.
When energy density was evenly distributed throughout the environment, it formed an inertial frame. If a high-energy-density "source of gravity" existed, the energy distribution around it would be uneven, spreading outward in spherical form, with its intensity decreasing in proportion to the square of the distance.
Whether in an inertial frame or a gravitational field, the laws governing an object's motion were these: as it moved, it maintained a constant velocity when the energy density of its surroundings remained unchanged. Moving from a region of lower environmental density to one of higher density made it accelerate; moving in the opposite direction made it decelerate.
Nikola Tesla's theory of gravity could be summed up in one sentence: an object's motion was caused by uneven energy density in its surroundings, and through motion, the object approached and remained on a line of equal energy density where its absorption and emission of energy were balanced.
More abstractly, an object's motion was a reflection of the distribution of energy density in its surroundings.
An object moving at a constant velocity had to follow a line of equal energy density. Its path could be a straight line in an inertial frame, a circular orbit, or a circular orbit around a gravitational field.
An object undergoing accelerated motion had to cross lines of differing energy density. The gradient vector of those lines determined the direction and magnitude of its acceleration.
A child's marble, an apple falling to the ground, a rocket soaring into the sky, an electron's energy-level transition, and Earth's orbit around the sun all followed these laws.
Michael blinked in astonishment at the professor before him and said, "Tesla believed gravity wasn't emitted by mass or caused by the curvature of spacetime, but was a phenomenon produced by uneven energy density. That would overturn all of physics!"
The professor nodded deeply. "I also found Tesla's theory of gravity utterly incredible—completely absurd, really. That's why I designed an experiment."
In 1968, as Bright Country's lunar exploration program advanced rapidly, scientists discovered that small spacecraft passing close to the moon's surface deviated from their calculated trajectories. Unless manually corrected, they would crash into the moon.
In 1972, after the Helios 16 mission ended, astronauts released a small satellite into lunar orbit. They found that its trajectory kept rising and falling, indicating that the moon's gravity was highly uneven. Eventually, it crashed.
Decades of observations and calculations finally revealed the answer: gravitational acceleration varied across the moon's surface. Contrary to common sense, gravity was weaker than average at lunar peaks and stronger than average in low-lying areas.
Scientists explained that these lunar lowlands, known as lunar seas, had formed from asteroid impacts. After an impact had carved out a deep basin, the lunar mantle beneath the surface rebounded and bulged upward, increasing the mass of the inner layers beneath the impact site. Scientists had given this additional mass the descriptive name "mass tumor."
The moon's largest mass tumor lay in the southeastern corner of an impact crater called the Sea of Rains. The basin was very deep, reaching six kilometers below the lunar reference level.
"Michael, if we used a large amount of material—say, the space junk filling near-Earth space—to fill in that six-kilometer-deep depression in one corner of the Sea of Rains, do you think gravity would increase or decrease?" the professor asked.
"Of course it would increase. According to scientists, there's already a mass tumor beneath the Sea of Rains. Adding more mass on top of that would obviously increase gravity in the area." Michael looked at the professor in puzzlement, finding this way of disposing of space junk quite interesting.
"No matter how absurd Tesla's theory of gravity may seem, we have to acknowledge it as a scientific hypothesis, because it can be falsified. Of course, it can also be proven true," the professor replied.
Professor Braun had designed the "mass tumor" experiment according to Nikola Tesla's theory of gravity. If gravity did not increase after the Sea of Rains was filled in, but instead returned to normal—meaning it became even lower than the gravity supposedly caused by the mass tumor—that would be inexplicable under every existing theory of gravity. It would also be ironclad proof that Tesla's theory of gravity was correct.
The professor regretfully explained to Michael that although his experiment was promising, turning the moon into a landfill for human space junk would spark a major environmental ethics controversy. As a result, the proposal had been shelved.
The shrewd Michael seemed to grasp his meaning. "Are you hoping to use Kyojima Company's bulldozers to fill in that corner of the Sea of Rains?"
The professor smiled too. "Yes. Bulldozers."
Poem assembled from lines to close the chapter:
What wonder to gaze within the moon, — Su Ting, Tang Dynasty
As the two ends wax and wane. — Liu Shen, Yuan Dynasty
Only then do I know, beneath the rocky valleys, — Yan Zhengju, Ming Dynasty
Tomorrow night, its round form will shine. — Shi Jujian, Song Dynasty
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