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After dealing with a series of events involving the safety of the entire earth civilization, what Sima Mulong had to do when his consciousness descended on the meteorite star sea this time was almost finished.

After giving the order to the interstellar exploration spacecraft to return, Sima Mulong's consciousness also withdrew from the spaceship, and began to return in the direction of the inner territory of the earth's civilization following the causal network it had woven throughout the earth's civilization.

After all, although the return speed of this spaceship is not slow, but for Sima Mulong, it is extremely slow, it is impossible for him to return with this spaceship, or come quietly by himself, and then go quietly, it seems much more convenient and fast.

In the vast sea of stars, the speed of Sima Mulong's consciousness through time and space is too fast to describe in words, as long as it is on this network, Sima Mulong's consciousness transfer speed is not much different from teleportation, often between a single thought, you can cross endless physical distances, and go back and forth in the territory of the entire earth civilization at will.

Of course, this kind of consciousness descends, as well as the ability to go back and forth, is not completely unconsumed, in fact, even if it is just this kind of consciousness crossing and coming, for Sima Mulong, it also means a great consumption of mana, so in normal times, easily, Sima Mulong would not use his consciousness to travel through time and space to patrol the territory so luxuriously.

It's just that this time to deal with the dangerous situation that is half a light year away, and the entire earth civilization does not have the ability to deal with it, so Sima Mulong has to take action in person, and his consciousness transcends time and space to solve this invisible crisis.

However, since he had already embarked on such a long-distance journey, crossing the long sea of stars and coming to the most remote time and space that the entire earth civilization could involve, and the mana that should be consumed had also been consumed, Sima Mulong was not in a hurry to return immediately.

Since it's so easy to come to this plane to inspect once. Of course, Sima Mulong wanted to understand the actual situation here in detail, see what could be done, and what work was worth improving, so as not to waste the mana consumed by this consciousness through time and space, in a sense. It can be regarded as maximizing benefits.

With the help of the causal thread that spreads throughout the earth's civilization, Sima Mulong can observe the development state of this earth base located in the meteorite star sea from another angle with the help of one causal node.

Compared with the prosperity of people on the earth itself, and even in the moon base and Mars base, in the vast time and space of the meteorite star sea, the existence footprint of the earth's civilization can be described as extremely bleak and low, and the population is sparse to an extreme state.

Population density here. It is no longer possible to use conventional measurement methods on the surface of the earth, such as how many people are per square kilometer, but in the vast space of thousands of kilometers and tens of thousands of kilometers, there is often no sign of a person's existence.

Not to mention the solitude of a single exploration spacecraft, half a light-year ago to explore the interstellar star map, it can be regarded as a military base on the side of the Martian wormhole meteorite star, as well as an interstellar mineral development base. These two earth bases located in the meteorite star sea can be said to be the earth civilization has concentrated a huge amount of manpower and material resources. The alien base that has been painstakingly built is of great importance to the civilization of the earth, and every population stationed here is a carefully selected earth elite from all aspects, and there are even many cutting-edge talents who have come out of the top core colleges such as the first cultivation academy of the empire.

But in general. The population density here is still too scarce, in the vast sea of stars, it is dim and small to the extreme, and there are only more than 1,000 people stationed in total, and the fire of life is faint. Under the impact of the vast time and space here, it is like a candle in the wind, giving people the illusion that they will be disillusioned at any time.

But this impression is really an illusion.

Although in this vast time and space, the number of people stationed in this thousand seems to be a little less, but this is also something that cannot be helped.

As the entrance and exit of the meteorite star side of the Martian wormhole, within tens of trillions of kilometers around the wormhole as the core, there are endless meteorite belts everywhere, and the large clusters of meteorite stars roaring back and forth are as dense as rain, not only the interstellar environment is harsh to a certain extent, but also there are no stars around here, and even the most basic lighting conditions cannot be met.

It is conceivable that in such an environment, if you want to station a large number of people, how difficult it is, just the security work here is extremely technical, without a large number of advanced equipment, the existence of complex life-sustaining bases, this is simply hell on earth, no matter how many people are sent to live, a meteorite crashes over, let alone people, the entire military base will turn into a crater, and completely say goodbye to the whole world.

Unfortunately, although the living environment here is extremely harsh, it is extremely strategic for the civilization of the earth.

Not to mention the existence of a single wormhole channel, it has opened up a new civilization channel for the earth civilization, with a large number of emerging markets, and can establish a commercial trade route with unimaginably high profits after the future earth civilization officially enters the interstellar era and has the ability to carry out the production and construction activities of faster-than-light interstellar spacecraft.

For the overall development of the current global civilization, the most lacking is all kinds of industrial resources, whether it is a variety of metal minerals, non-ferrous metals, radioactive elements, precious metals, or even the most common conventional material resources, in the rapid development of the earth's civilization, the demand is extremely huge.

Now on the earth, not only on the earth, but also in the moon and Mars bases, there are endless kinds of projects that need to be completed urgently, and these projects require the crazy accumulation of immeasurable materials, and the supply gap of various materials is often on the order of hundreds of millions of tons and trillions of tons, and the material gap is amazingly large.

If you want to talk about the construction on the earth's soil, it is relatively easy to say, although the various renovation projects on the earth's soil consume the largest amount of materials. However, because the earth's human resources are abundant, there is no shortage of energy supply, and through in-depth excavation of the earth's native resources, various construction projects in a short period of time are not lacking.

However, this is only in the short term, if you look at it in the long term. With the continuous development of the earth, the increasing number of population, and the increasing shortage of various mineral vein resources on the earth in the future, it is inevitable that we will be limited by the shortage of resources in the future, and we must ask for further development resources from the outside.

Compared with various projects on the earth, there is no shortage of resources in a short period of time, and many projects of the lunar and Martian projects have to be subject to the bottleneck of external resource supply from the beginning.

The resources of the planet. Although in the short term, a part of all kinds of resources can be provided for the construction of various space projects, but the resources on the ground have to be transported to space, and this kind of consumption is too much to bear.

Although with the continuous maturity and improvement of various space transportation technologies and the continuous improvement of various space transportation systems, the cost of supplying materials from the earth to space is constantly decreasing. The cost per gram has been reduced to almost less than a hundred dollars, but. The cost of such transportation, compared with various conventional ground transportation, is still too exaggerated and difficult to last.

If the transportation of external materials for various Mars projects and lunar projects depends on the materials on the earth to support, it can be said that the earth is also powerless to support it.

So all the problems come together in the end. The further development of the earth's civilization has reached the point where it needs to be supplemented with further, external cheap resources.

If there is really no way, there is simply no way to find a cheaper way to import external materials, then. Under the method of relying only on the export of materials from the earth, it is not that the earth's civilization has no possibility of further development, but this development speed is undoubtedly greatly squeezed, and it is many times slower.

However, now that there is a Martian wormhole, a meteorite star sea on the other side of the wormhole, and an almost endless meteorite resource here, this kind of cheap external resource input will undoubtedly have the possibility of becoming a reality.

Although the meteorite resources of the meteorite star sea, it is not easy to successfully utilize, it is far beyond the orbit of Mars, through the Martian wormhole, and it is also necessary to capture meteorites, so that the meteorites can be continuously transported to the space orbit of Mars and the moon through the Martian wormhole, and after further decomposition, screening, smelting, etc., it will finally be used as a raw material for various industrial production links to produce the urgently needed resources for the construction of various civilizations.

However, you must know that without the strong constraints of the planet's gravity, the cost of transportation in space is extremely low, and the moon base at this time already has a fairly complete industrial production capacity, even if it is a large and simple version of the interstellar exploration spacecraft that sails at a distance of light years, it is already capable of producing, not to mention that it is a cargo spacecraft limited to the internal star system within the solar system, and the production is not too simple, to put it nicely, it is a high-power space engine plus an iron shell, plus a set of life support system, anyway, it is to transport meteorites, as long as it can give the meteorite an acceleration, forming a muzzle velocity towards Mars or the Moon, even if the meteorite rolls on its own, it can slowly roll over.

With such transportation advantages, if you calculate it comprehensively, the comprehensive cost accounting of this space mining transportation is much cheaper than the mining cost on the earth, which is only equivalent to the mining cost of shallow surface mineral deposits, and the development of earth civilization so far, it can be said that most of the shallow surface mineral deposits have almost been excavated, relatively speaking, even the cost of mining and smelting mineral deposits inside the earth is not a small amount.

Therefore, the development of meteorite resources in the meteorite star sea is already a new mineral development industry chain with quite lucrative profits and low costs, even if the environment in the meteorite star sea is complex and the environment is bad, it cannot withstand the determination and perseverance of the earth civilization to ask for resources from the meteorite star sea.

In this case, the number of thousands of people sent by the earth civilization to this side of the meteorite star sea is already limited by the production efficiency of the meteorite transport ship and the cost constraints of the population stationed here.

You must know that the life safety of everyone here is guaranteed to the greatest extent, and they enjoy the scientific and technological support of all aspects of the earth's civilization science and technology system. The average daily consumption of each person here is much greater than the consumption of a thousand people on the earth, and even taking into account the loss of transportation in a long time and space, the various benefits enjoyed by everyone here are far from what ordinary people on the surface of the earth can imagine.

It can be said that everyone who exists here is completely piled up with money, and this is only the material consumption of a single person's survival, and if you add the corresponding military expenditure, the consumption of various military materials, and the consumption of various materials here every day is an unimaginable number, even with the current production capacity of the earth's civilization, it is impossible to expand the number of people stationed here on a large scale in a short period of time.

It's really because of the population stationed here, the consumption of resources is too great. Of course, the main reason is that the production of meteorite carriers is limited, and it is difficult to exchange more people for more meteorite transports, so there is naturally no motivation.

And such a long-term continuous consumption, of course, it is impossible to only have losses and no gains, in fact, it is exactly the case.

In addition to the three hundred garrisons stationed in the military base, who are responsible for the security early warning, air defense and disaster relief and other purely consumable work in the surrounding area, the other six or seven hundred stationed populations are all interstellar miners in the interstellar era, each of which can create a lot of value, not only to earn back their own cost consumption, but also to create value thousands of times.

Except for a small part of these interstellar miners, who are crew members who rotate to drive meteorite carriers, the vast majority of the others are responsible for various meteorite exploration, data measurement, comprehensive solution analysis and planning, etc., responsible for the surrounding work of meteorite transportation, and make all necessary preparations for meteorite transportation.

Such peripheral things seem trivial and complicated, but for the transportation of space meteorites, they are all indispensable, and they all have their special value and significance, which can maximize work efficiency, reduce work loss, and obtain the greatest profit. (To be continued.) )