115: Chapter 115 Experiments on the Moon Palace

The progress reports for the phased array cannons, the blueprints for the energy system piping, and the structural diagrams for the hull's functional zones made for a tedious layout process. Chu Ge pursued efficiency while maintaining meticulous attention to detail.

Time soon marched into July.

Summer had arrived in Yanjing. It wasn't particularly hot in the office, but Chu Ge was working up a sweat in his short sleeves. The computer's CPU fan whirred, emitting a faint hum as it ran.

Chu Ge would turn on a fan when it got hot; it wasn't that the office lacked air conditioning.

He simply wasn't used to the dry, stuffy feeling of air conditioning. At times like this, having the window open and the fan blowing allowed him to concentrate better on his work.

As he finished drawing the final set of structural diagrams, Chu Ge let out a long breath.

"I never knew drawing blueprints could train your lung capacity. After all these years, my lung capacity might be ready for a Guinness World Record."

Chu Ge muttered to himself while tidying up the data for the completed living zones, completely forgetting to credit System Big Brother.

Just as Chu Ge was about to take the archived materials to Academician Chen, a knock came from the door.

"Come in!"

"Little Chu."

"Elder Chen, I was just about to head over to your place, and here you are. It's perfect..."

Before Chu Ge could finish, a group of people filed into the room. He looked up and realized he didn't recognize any of them.

"Little Chu, this is Director Li of the Biological Research Institute, and this is Director Wang of the Aerospace Department. Behind them are their elite team members. In particular, this is Lin Feng, who is about to go on a mission to the Moon Palace Space Station."

"Hello, Academician Chu!"

Lin Feng stepped forward and extended his right hand. Chu Ge shook it; these were Huaxia's astronauts, true heroes.

Chu Ge shook hands with the various leaders, and then Academician Chen arranged for everyone to sit down.

"Academician Chu, we came specifically to express our gratitude. Sorry for the intrusion. Actually, 'gratitude' is just an excuse; everyone really wanted to meet the genius Academician who currently has the highest popularity in all of Huaxia, haha."

Director Li’s eyes were bright and spirited, and his voice was resonant and magnetic, giving off a refined and elegant impression.

"It's no intrusion at all. I was about to go stir-crazy and was just thinking of finding a chance to get some fresh air."

Chu Ge replied with a smile. Although he usually couldn't afford to worry about such things, he still felt a bit lonely during his occasional moments of downtime.

He had been in seclusion for an entire month. He rarely saw anyone from the Research Institute, except for Li Gang and a few deputy chief engineers from the kunpeng who had come to discuss technical issues a few times. The rest of his time was spent drawing blueprints.

Fortunately, it was almost finished. Chu Ge felt that if he had to draw for another month, his brain would turn into nothing but mush.

Endless winding pipelines and circuit diagrams—acting as a human printer was no easy task.

"Haha, Little Chu is carrying a heavy burden right now. I've barely seen him a few times this past month. Is the project in its critical phase?"

Academician Chen asked with concern.

"Yes, but it's almost over. It's fine, it's just that some blueprints are quite troublesome and require intense focus to complete in one go, otherwise it's easy to make mistakes."

As Chu Ge spoke, he sized up the comrades from the Aerospace Department. He couldn't quite figure out the purpose of Lin Feng and the others' visit.

"Haha, Academician Chu, look at me. Everyone was so excited to see you that they forgot to thank you. The Gene Medicine that Academician Chen passed to the Biological Research Institute has begun mass production."

As Director Li spoke, he took some documents out of his briefcase and handed them to Chu Ge.

"So fast? I thought it would take several months or even a year?"

"Normally it would, maybe even years. But with the new synthetic compound you provided, we handled it as a special case and synthesized the new medicine very quickly. After several batches of animal testing, it officially moved to Phase II clinical trials. The results are excellent, almost exactly as described in your report."

Once Director Li mentioned his specialty, he really opened up. After flipping through a few pages of the materials, Chu Ge set them down and listened intently as he explained the Gene Medicine's experimental process.

"Given the miraculous effects of the medicine, we immediately thought of the astronauts who are about to rotate. You know how hard our astronauts work. The space environment is a state of weightlessness. According to our years of research, if an astronaut stays up there for a year, the rate of calcium loss in their body is 40%."

"It's even more severe for female astronauts because of menstruation. Besides that, other bodily functions also degrade, especially the muscular system. Due to the lack of constant weight-bearing support, muscles gradually atrophy."

"In the past, our astronauts had to rotate about every three months. Even then, they couldn't walk when they returned to the ground and required a long period of recuperation and exercise."

Chu Ge knew the gist of this, but not in such detail. Humans certainly cannot stay in outer space for long periods; short-term is okay, but even then, specialized training is required both before and after a mission.

According to the system's database, the Gene Medicine was primarily for adapting to the outer space environment, specifically mentioning harsh electromagnetic environments, cosmic rays, and the like. It hadn't mentioned physiological reactions to weightlessness, so he didn't know if it would help with that.

"So, Director Li, is this Gene Medicine useful for that? I discovered it by chance and found it has a great effect on improving cell tolerance and can trigger some genetic mutations. As for physiological functions in weightlessness, I haven't tested that."

Chu Ge answered honestly. He hadn't considered the weightless environment because the aerospace carrier kunpeng, future space stations, and space bases would all be equipped with artificial gravity devices. They could generally produce a gravity effect of two-thirds of Earth's, so there was no need to consider the adverse effects of weightlessness.

"It's useful. According to our experiments, it can significantly reduce calcium loss. Furthermore, the nutrients, oxygen, amino acids, and other basic elements required for cellular activity are proportionally reduced. You can think of it as our cells becoming 'lazier,' yet it doesn't affect normal work or research activities. It's simply a miracle."

Director Li spoke excitedly; only he knew what this kind of genetic modification meant.

"In the future, we can stay in space for long periods without worrying about physical health. We can even build space bases in the future, and we won't have to worry about astronauts suffering mental breakdowns because there are too few people."

Besides physical reasons, the other reason space stations couldn't be manned long-term was psychological. The space is small, and staying in such a lonely, monotonous environment for a year is already quite a feat.

"Haha, Director Li is right. In the future, our space stations, space bases, and the kunpeng will have thousands of people working together. The living areas will be like urban neighborhoods, fully equipped with all kinds of facilities and plenty of mental stimulation."

Academician Chen chimed in from the side. Hearing this, Lin Feng suddenly perked up. A 'space base'? That had been his dream since childhood. Although he had already achieved a version of it, what Elder Chen described was clearly on an entirely different level.