Galaxy Domination Guide
Chapter 63 057 Ruyi City Spaceport

Bai Zhongqi, in the Star Alliance's initial formation plan, hadn't yet intended to include countries other than Country C, but this point could not be made clear to Country C, to prevent them from using it as a bargaining chip with Iridium Star.

Choosing to talk with Academician Ding rather than Zhong Zhiyan was also a deliberate decision by Bai Zhongqi. Apart from the fact that Academician Ding had a deeper understanding of the situation, approaching Academician Ding in the visiting delegation would not attract the attention of other countries, after all, it was just an old man going to the restroom.

After returning to the dining room, Academician Ding kept clutching his pocket, which contained the smart device Bai Zhongqi had given him, and he dared not take it out to avoid drawing attention.

Even with his colleague Zhong Zhiyan, Academician Ding dared not reveal anything before they returned to Earth.

Apart from Academician Ding, the visiting delegation had, in fact, not seen the Iridium Star Chancellor Bai Zhongqi, which left many feeling a bit disappointed. In addition to witnessing many of Iridium Star's technological achievements, there had been no substantive diplomatic progress.

The restrained goodwill shown by the people of Iridium Star also greatly vexed the diplomats of these countries, as they were still unable to determine what intentions the Iridium Star held.

No matter what the people of Iridium Star were thinking or what they planned to do, the Earth's nations actually had very little resistance. All they could hope was for the Iridium Star folks to be a little more presentable, not to upend the established interest groups on Earth in one fell swoop and to give them a bit of soup and a face to save.

After seeing off this group of visitors, Bai Zhongqi was far from idle. He had already fully adopted the role of Chancellor of an interstellar empire and was wholeheartedly planning and executing the expansion of this interstellar civilization.

Before Bai Zhongqi, a holographic image of Earth's gravity well orbit was being displayed, distinctive in that beneath it, there was an interface from the "Galaxy Domination Guide" game. After Bai Zhongqi logged into the new save file, he mostly issued orders to specific Iridium Star devices, and he hadn't yet operated as a macro-level game player.

Having decided to use Earth as the starting point for Iridium Star's conquest of the galaxy in this universe, Bai Zhongqi was bound to place great emphasis on the development of Earth. The establishment and existence of the Star Alliance served this purpose.

In the game, the empire's development of a planet usually involved simple commands, such as exploring and exploiting the planet's resources, which for Bai Zhongqi, was just a matter of clicking a button on the screen.

But this was a button he now dared not press, knowing that if he did so, countless automatic engineering ships, mining robots, and other equipment would land on Earth, completely disregarding the humans and nations on the planet, and carry out their operations on their own.

This was obviously not appropriate, although the same tactics applied to the Moon were not problematic. Bai Zhongqi had already dispatched mining units to the Moon, which was now providing the empire with a steady supply of metal minerals.

To Earth, metals in the lunar soil might not be economically valuable when mined, but Iridium Star, with its mastery of atomic-level material manipulation, could easily separate lunar soil into various elemental components or combine them into chemical compounds.

Another abundant resource provided by the Moon was high-quality Helium-3, a mineral not scarce on many planets, and its use as fuel in controlled nuclear fusion was among the most technically mature and cost-effective in civilian energy sources.

The strongest energy source for Iridium Star at this time came from the use of antimatter. Manufacturing antimatter energy devices was not difficult to speak of, but the collection of antimatter was the most challenging part.

The antimatter in the Iridium Star Fleet was mostly supplied to the two major ships, while the core power sources of the remaining ships were actually the latest generation of high-energy-density, well-utilized fusion nuclear energy. With thousands of years of expertise in this technological field, Iridium Star had made considerable achievements.

It was no exaggeration to say that with enough materials, it was not particularly difficult for Iridium Star to create a stellar body.

The mining units operating on the Moon were directly under the empire, or as they would say on Earth, state assets. Before Bai Zhongqi's appearance, a large proportion of planetary mining was contracted to powerful interstellar mining consortia, and the benefits of mining directly-belonging stellar bodies were generally counted toward the revenue of that administrative star's government.

Bai Zhongqi had set up the "Lunar Mining Development Co., Ltd.," a company without a single employee; all of its operations were conducted by artificial intelligence, bionic humans, and robots.

Since Bai Zhongqi's appearance, the so-called state ownership of the United Empire of Iridium Star had effectively been labeled as private property of the Chancellor because Bai Zhongqi held the Supreme Command, with direct control and use rights over these properties. Bai Zhongqi had no intention of pretending to supervise himself; he wasn't that pretentious.

With a seemingly endless supply of materials, Bai Zhongqi could also proceed with his strategy for the construction of planetary orbital facilities. According to the Star Alliance framework, the Star Alliance didn't own any assets; the member nations were the owners of the assets, thus preventing Iridium Star's property from becoming everybody's.

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The first project Bai Zhongqi planned was to build a large spaceport connected to Ruyi City, the space metropolis. Ruyi City itself already had a space dock, though on a smaller scale.

Bai Zhongqi's vision was for Ruyi City to become Earth's most important space hub for materials and passengers from other planets, who would transfer at the Ruyi City spaceport before taking transport ships down to Earth. This was quite natural, as many large interstellar freighters or warships were not designed for use within an atmosphere.

The massive energy waste and impracticality of such ships descending into and ascending from an atmosphere made it clear that large ships should dock at spaceports for loading and unloading, rather than landing on the planetary surface.

In the future, Ruyi City would see very frequent flights from space orbit to Earth, and both logistics and passenger flows were expected to increase significantly. Considering this trend, expanding the spaceport was an inevitable move. The expansion was not complex; it actually involved constructing a large spaceport outside Ruyi City capable of docking with it.

This wouldn't affect Ruyi City's own mobility, as it could disconnect from the port area if necessary and navigate as a spacecraft once again.

Bai Zhongqi's short-term goal was for the Ruyi City spaceport to reach a daily throughput capacity of 50 million tons, and the basic construction could be completed within four working days. The spaceport itself didn't require power, as it was primarily a platform for material loading, unloading, and ship docking.

There was no need for very high structural integrity, nor was it necessary to install a shield system, so the engineering difficulty was low and the construction speed fast.