Hynix Returns

As Sun Cheng looked at the fourth ship undergoing outfitting in the dockyard, some of the gloom in his heart lifted.

"In another month, Ship One should be ready for flight testing!"

Four Explorer-class Cargo Ships were already the construction limit Base Two could currently sustain.

Even though these spacecraft, capable of carrying hundreds of thousands of tons of cargo through space, were merely medium-sized vessels, their cost was still astronomical.

Not to mention the vast quantities of metal and rare earths required to build them inside and out, the propulsion system alone for each ship cost roughly enough to purchase a Ford-class Aircraft Carrier. They were genuine resource-devouring behemoths.

They not only consumed resources, but also required an astonishing amount of manpower.

One only had to look at the various robots busily outfitting Ship Four. More than a hundred technically specialized Decepticons had to control at least ten thousand robots working simultaneously.

Still, there were pros and cons. The Explorer-class Cargo Ships were indeed worth the enormous price Sun Cheng had paid.

A cargo ship capable of traveling freely through space and carrying more than two hundred thousand tons of goods at maximum capacity was immensely valuable.

Earth's resources could barely be considered abundant for humans who had yet to enter an interstellar civilization.

However, the vast majority of Earth's resources were nonrenewable.

Moreover, many rare metals either existed in very limited reserves on Earth or did not exist at all.

At the very least, Sun Cheng knew of dozens of rare metals that originated from the cores of dead stars.

When planets exploded, they would break apart into meteorites and be launched into the universe, then captured by the gravity of young star systems or planets, gradually forming Asteroid Belts or continuing to drift aimlessly.

Such metals might