The predecessor of Fire Moth's Space Administration had been the United Nations Space Administration. In this era, Fire Moth had gradually expanded from a special military organization into a bloated political institution that controlled politics and the economy, though the territory it ruled kept shrinking. The United Nations Space Administration had also been taken over by Fire Moth. The United Nations' original emblem had depicted a rising rocket carved into a blue Earth. After the United Nations Space Administration became Fire Moth's Space Administration, its emblem changed as well, becoming a moth with spread wings resting upon the Earth.
The social economy was in free fall, yet compared to the United Nations era, the Space Administration's duties had become even heavier. In wartime, everything had to give way to technology and the military, while the massive lunar project had pushed the Space Administration's funding to its peak.
Siberia had been sparsely populated in both the Previous Era and the Current Era. Fire Moth's launch site had originally been in Kazakhstan, but as Honkai's affected range continued to expand, it had been relocated into Siberia. The climate fifty thousand years ago had made Siberia even colder than it was now, so the threat of Honkai Beasts was nearly nonexistent.
It was already winter in the Northern Hemisphere. At dusk, dark clouds covered half the sky. The orange sunset could not pierce the clouds or reach the rocket below them. Heavy clumps of snow fell straight to the ground, just as Xie An's nephew Xie Lang had said: "Like salt scattered through the air," blanketing the entire earth.
By the time the Last Glacial Period began, ten to twenty thousand years before the Previous Era, the climate had temporarily stabilized. At one point, even North America's great ice sheet had melted due to warming temperatures. Even so, the climate then had still been far colder than in later generations.
The blizzard raged. Through the snowflakes, the colossal object standing in the human world revealed one corner of itself. The setting sun shone upon the silvery snow, whose reflected light illuminated half the rocket's body. The Space Administration's emblem gleamed brightly. It carried the core module of a space station. This module was the space station's prototype and its most fundamental component. All later modules would be added onto it as their starting point.
A space station was essentially built like stacking building blocks. The first module launched could be considered the first block, serving as the foundation. It was called the core module. That was the core module's function—it was the most fundamental part of the entire space station. All subsequent modules would be added starting from it, which was why the core module was usually located at the heart of the station. For the same reason, its structure generally reserved docking ports for later modules.
The weather had little effect on the launch mission. Even in the United Nations era, space rockets had already been capable of all-weather launches. Taken to an extreme, they could even be launched underwater.
The supervisor entered the command center. A massive screen displayed the rocket's status at every stage, countless figures fluctuating within safe ranges. Beneath it sat row after row of electronic displays, watched by technical specialists with tension, excitement, and utter concentration.
The supervisor turned to a staff member beside him. "Has the safety inspection been completed?"
"Completed."
"What about the liquid oxygen and fuel?"
"Almost done. The personnel can withdraw shortly."
"Begin as soon as it's finished." The supervisor sat down and waited for the fueling to conclude.
"Report: fueling is complete." Another staff member entered and saluted the supervisor.
The supervisor returned the salute. He picked up the microphone on the desk and read through the items one by one.
"Flight dynamics control, guidance control, overall control..."
"Normal."
"Telemetry electronics module external control, guidance and navigation control..."
"Normal."
"Countdown: 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1."
"Ignition sequence initiated."
Smoke surged forth, sweeping across vast stretches of land. The rocket's exhaust blew away the snow, and silver snow fell over the earth as the white rocket flew into the sky.
The rocket pierced the dark clouds that even the sunset could not penetrate. In the hearts of everyone present, its blazing exhaust was far brighter than the sun thousands of miles away. It was an arrow loaded with humanity's hope and hatred, fired into the heavens to slay the unjust and unrighteous god. At the same time, it was one of humanity's few remaining rays of light in this era.
The former Central Africa Space Center was now the African Main Base. Its area had tripled, covering nearly two thousand square kilometers. The expansion had mainly added manufacturing plants and research centers. The old launch site and rocket factory had not been demolished; instead, they had been fully restored. The giant Deep Space rocket had also been moved into storage. Deep Space would not be launched in this era. It was already too late—it could not escape the pursuit of the Herrscher of the End.
Although the rocket launch site and rocket factory had never been put to use, things were different now. Over the next few months, the launch pads here would no longer stand empty.
The morning sky was clear for miles, yet a sunshower fell. Raindrops of moderate size struck the engineering robots' bodies, causing countless silver ripples to shimmer across them. The wind was light. An orange rocket stood on the launch pad, as large as the Saturn V lunar rocket. It carried an energy module, a section equipped with a large-scale Honkai energy reactor.
The engineering robots were carrying out the final inspection. Once it was complete, the inspection platform lowered them back to the ground. As soon as the engineering robots responsible for filling the liquid oxygen also withdrew to the standby workshop, the rocket could launch.
Thick smoke billowed from beneath the rocket. A thunderous roar echoed across the entire launch site as the rocket gradually lifted away from the top of the launch tower. Orange fragments peeled away from its body as it rose into the sky beneath the gaze of the golden sun, reaching the blue horizon and finally the edge of Earth's cradle.
It was the first spacecraft not built and launched by humans, and it definitely would not be the last.
How could the Eleventh Law-Ruler be killed? The method was very simple: convert gravitational potential energy into kinetic energy. There had once been a concept heavily promoted by self-media called the "Space-based Weapon." Yet it was an extremely impractical weapon. Setting aside the technical challenges, its destructive power alone fell far short of conventional weapons, and it was tremendously expensive.
But in the Honkai World, this weapon became far more viable. Technical difficulty and cost remained obstacles, but the existence of Soul Steel guaranteed the destructive power of Space-based Weapons. During the Second Honkai Eruption of later generations, Sirin, the Herrscher of the Void, hurled Soul Steel from outside the atmosphere toward Earth. One piece crashed into the Mariana Trench, triggering a tsunami that affected the entire western Pacific. Another struck Moscow, causing destruction across 31% of its area. This showed that as Soul Steel fell from outer space to the surface, the atmospheric material loss remained within acceptable limits.
PS: It's here.
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