Rebirth: Starting from Lighting Up the Tech Tree

Chapter 170 Space Branches

After the appointment notice for the deputy director was issued, Zuo Cheng spent about three days in relative peace.

During these three days, he attended two internal meetings, signed seven contracts, made more than a dozen phone calls, confirmed the preparations for the C round of funding with Han Lu, discussed the assembly schedule of the second-generation satellite with Li Guodong, and had a cup of coffee with Yu Ying on the small balcony of the research institute, talking for about twenty minutes.

Everything is proceeding according to plan.

On the fourth night, the research institute staff worked late into the night. Yu Ying and Li Guodong were processing the parameter verification of the second-generation satellite, Shen Yiming's AI team was aligning the interfaces for cross-branch fusion, and Qiu Pei spent three hours in his office staring at the orbit simulation.

Zuo Cheng sat in the conference room on the top floor, looking at the night view of Hangzhou.

Outside the window, the city lights stretched from my feet all the way to West Lake in the distance. Red aviation warning lights flickered slowly on the tops of several tall buildings. Further away, the sky was a deep blue, cloudless, with a few stars faintly visible.

He knew that direction was roughly towards Dunhuang. Ten verification satellites were currently orbiting in a geosynchronous orbit at an altitude of 36,000 kilometers, pointing towards a microwave receiving array on the ground, transmitting solar energy with an efficiency of 87.3%.

How much time has it taken to get to where I am today, from the moment I put the NX-07 sticker on it?

He didn't calculate it carefully, but he had a vague feeling in his mind: it was very long, and very fast.

Just then, the system panel lit up.

It wasn't a gradual increase in brightness; the entire interface suddenly brightened, like a computer screen returning to normal brightness from power-saving mode. Zuo Cheng's phone vibrated slightly, and then he felt something flowing in his right palm—warm, like the temperature of blood, but not blood.

He opened the system interface.

"The space photovoltaic branch has been activated."

These words appeared in the center of the screen, the font was larger than usual, and a faint halo spread around them before slowly dissipating.

Zuo Cheng stared at the words without saying a word.

A list of blades pops up.

Six new blades, one by one, light up: Solar energy harvesting in space. Microwave energy transmission. Satellite attitude control. Space radiation protection. Energy storage system. Ground receiving array.

With each time a light illuminated, Zuo Cheng could feel his cognition expanding in a certain dimension—not that he suddenly knew something, but rather that things that were originally vague became clearer, and some of his previous judgments based on intuition gained a more solid underlying logic.

When the solar space harvesting blades were activated, he thought of the time he derived the upper limit of triple-junction gallium arsenide decay on the whiteboard. He had said at the time that the derivation was "not necessarily correct," but now he knew why it was correct.

When the microwave energy transmission blades are activated, the underlying mechanism of the 87.3% data set is suddenly complete—it's not just engineering optimization, but a physical path to the optimal solution.

Finally, there is the ground receiving array.

When that blade lit up, the 500 antennas of the Dunhuang receiving station transformed into a more complete system in his mind, and he suddenly had a new idea for the layout of the Golmud Phase II and Bayannur Phase III projects, which was better than the existing plan.

The system prompts keep popping up:

"The sixth branch is activated, rewarding you with +120 points."

Current score: 517 points.

"Branches activated: 6/12."

"Technology increase: ×1.3."

"Cross-branch integration capability: New paths have been unlocked. Potential integration areas: aerospace communications × space photovoltaics, AI × space energy transmission."

Zuo Cheng read through all the prompts one by one, then put his phone on the table.

He leaned back in his chair, listening to the faint sounds of keyboards and hushed discussions coming from inside the research institute. The city lights outside the window tinged the edges of the night sky with orange.

The six branches have dried up.

Telecommunications engineering, aerospace communications, the Internet of Things, AI, unmanned systems, new energy vehicles, and now, space photovoltaics, which were activated today, make up a total of six branches. In the overall technology tree diagram, the number of branches that have been lit up has expanded from the initial two to the current six, like a tree that is growing, with most branches already flourishing and a few still waiting.

There are still six lines that haven't lit up.

Zuo Cheng thought of the six corresponding fields. One of them was commercial spaceflight.

They have already laid the foundation in this direction—the successful launch of the verification satellite, the cooperation on the Long March 2C rocket, and the strategic agreement with the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation. The distance between space photovoltaics and commercial spaceflight is not as far as it seems from the outside; the key is to reduce launch costs and push the economics of a single launch to a new level.

Musk did this with reusable rockets, reducing the cost of a single launch from $100 million to $60 million, and it continues to decrease.

China still has enormous room for improvement in the launch costs of commercial spaceflight.

This is the next goal.

Zuo Cheng sat there for about ten more minutes, looking out the window.

Zuo Cheng sat there for about ten more minutes, looking out the window.

He quickly went through the past five years in his mind. The first year: a two-bedroom studio, five people, the first Sky Dome contract, three million. The third year: winning the bid for Sky Dome Phase III, Lin Jianhua's veto power was overturned 6-1, and he slept very well that night. The fourth year: AI branch activated, Yu Ying's defense was excellent, the research institute was unveiled, and the verification satellite entered orbit, 87.3%.

A line, from the winter of his rebirth to this spring night, with countless hurdles he thought he couldn't overcome.

But we made it through each time.

The six branches of the technology tree resonated gently within him, like a newly polished instrument being calibrated for the first time. Six branches remained unlit, but he no longer felt they were unattainable.

Then he stood up, walked to the third floor of the research institute, and knocked on the door frame of Yu Ying's office.

Yu Ying looked up and glanced at him.

"So late," she said.

"You didn't leave either."

"Two more sets of data to run," Yu Ying pointed to the screen. "Another half hour."

Zuo Cheng walked in, pulled up a chair, and sat down next to her. Yu Ying turned one of the screens towards him to look at the data. The two of them discussed the simulation results for a few minutes. Zuo Cheng pointed out a problem with the parameter settings, and Yu Ying ran it again, and it converged this time.

"Okay," Yu Ying said.

The two sat in the office for a while longer without speaking. Outside the window was the night sky over Hangzhou. The lights on the third floor of the research institute were still on, and something was flashing in the distance—perhaps the sky in the direction of Dunhuang, or perhaps just his imagination.

Zuo Cheng said, "We need to take a serious look at commercial spaceflight next."

Yu Ying didn't ask him why he suddenly brought this up; she simply nodded and said, "I know."