From the moment the engineering plans for the round-trip lunar rocket were finalized, everyone understood one thing.
This was no longer something the Science Kingdom could accomplish with its own manpower alone.
A five-stage rocket, tens of thousands of precision parts, a closed-loop propulsion system for the journey to the moon and back, and a spacecraft hull capable of withstanding pressure in space-each was a cutting-edge engineering feat far beyond the current era.
To complete it without a single mistake, they had to bring together humanity's finest minds from around the world.
And the only link that could connect all those forces was the internet.
Senku stood before the engineering drawings, his fingertip tracing the densely packed circuit layouts, his gaze unwavering.
The first step was to establish a foundation for global communications.
The most crucial protective layer for the undersea fiber-optic cables required no advanced synthetic materials. They already had the ideal natural resource at hand.
Eucommia rubber.
Everyone immediately split into teams and headed into the vast wild Eucommia Forest. They gathered eucommia leaves and tree bark in bulk, repeatedly filtered out impurities, and finally extracted high-purity eucommia rubber.
This natural rubber had outstanding properties: it was waterproof, insulating, and corrosion-resistant.
It could also withstand deep-sea pests and seawater erosion, making it perfectly suited to the extremely complex undersea environment. It was the best cable-sheathing material available to them.
Once the cables had been produced in bulk, their outer layers were tightly encased in thick, supple eucommia rubber, keeping seawater away from the electrical current.
Next came the immense task of laying the cables.
They plotted the optimal transoceanic route. The main line entered the sea off the Sakura Kingdom's coast, crossed the vast ocean, and ran all the way to the continental United States in the Americas.