Two months later.
The nighttime excursion on Mars on Lunar New Year's Eve had clearly eased some of Lü Yongchang's tension.
Thanks to that, the subsequent research and development went much more smoothly.
In just one month, under Lü Yongchang's leadership, the Mining Nano-Robot project achieved a major breakthrough!
Mars Port One.
Three oddly shaped Starships sat quietly in the port.
Their cockpits were small, roughly a third the size of Black Lady One's, so each Starship had only one pilot.
But each had an exceptionally rounded "belly."
Besides a hold for storing ore, that "belly" was packed with trillions of Mining Nano-Robots.
Two gleaming characters were printed on the Starships' hulls.
Hummingbird.
That was the name of this Starship model.
The Hummingbird Starship was only a hundred meters long, absurdly small compared with the Luan Bird Type I.
Yet it was equipped with the same Hall Thrusters and Fusion Reactor as the Luan Bird Type I Starship.
This design also served its operational needs: mining and transporting minerals.
Inside Hummingbird Starship One, a blond, blue-eyed man in a spacesuit sat quietly in the rather cramped pilot's seat.
"Bart, come in."
A teammate's voice called over the radio.
The man quickly pressed the radio button and replied with a serious expression, "Copy. Go ahead."
His two teammates' voices came through in succession.
"Captain, when can we leave?"
"Yeah, Captain, I can't wait to go mining in the Asteroid Belt! What man could resist the lure of a Space Excavator?!"
Listening to their less-than-standard Mandarin over the radio, Bart's eyes took on a wry look.
The stern expression on his face immediately relaxed.
He keyed the radio again and scolded in exasperation, "Huggins! What nonsense are you talking about?"
"What Space Excavator? This is a Hummingbird-class Starship!"
A burst