On Luoshen Star, Li Qingsong's heart turned cold.
The probe's true close-range observation had lasted only a short time. But even that brief observation had been enough for him to understand many things.
His opponent was powerful.
This was evident not only from their ability to build larger spacecraft, but also from their propulsion technology.
Human Civilization had already mastered ion propulsion technology and applied it on a relatively large scale.
The principle behind this technology was to first ionize the propellant—the material ejected to propel a spacecraft through reactive force—then use electromagnetic fields to accelerate the propellant ions to extremely high speeds before ejecting them through the exhaust nozzle.
Because the speed of those propellant ions was extraordinarily high, even reaching ten or twenty thousand kilometers per second—far beyond the several to dozen-odd kilometers per second of chemical-fuel exhaust—a unit mass of propellant could provide vastly greater reactive force than chemical propulsion, resulting in higher propulsion efficiency.
But this technology had significant limitations. Though its specific impulse was high and its propellant utilization rate was extremely efficient, its overall thrust per unit time was minuscule.
Put simply, one unit of chemical fuel could accelerate a one-ton object from zero to ten meters per second in one second, but it could only keep this up for three seconds, giving a total acceleration of thirty meters per second.
Ion propulsion, however, using the same mass of propellant, could at most accelerate a one-ton object from zero to 0.01 millimeters per second in one second, but it could continue for an entire year, resulting in a total acceleration of 315.36 meters per second—far exceeding chemical-fuel propulsion.
In the human world, ion propulsion technology was fundamentally incapable of meeting the demand for rapid maneuvering of massive objects. It was used only for things