Chapter 731: Uses of platinum

Although it is not possible to directly accelerate beyond the speed of light, some clever means can be used to circumvent the limits of relativity and achieve the goal of exceeding the speed of light.
This is how the curvature engine is produced, and it is also a device that achieves super-light speed flight.
After a spacecraft is loaded with a curvature engine, it can travel faster than the speed of light in space.
Although this seems to violate the theory of relativity, it is indeed an achievable technology.
In fact, the curvature engine does not violate the theory of relativity, because it is achieved through lateral means.
The curvature engine may sound very tall, but the truth is very simple.
The space in which the entire universe is located is actually not flat, but full of various folds. The size of these folds is the curvature.
When the curvature is zero, the space is completely flat, and the greater the curvature, the greater the wrinkles in the space.
The curvature engine is a technology that uses space folds to drive a spacecraft.
If we can change the curvature of the space, we can increase the folds in the space, which is actually equivalent to shortening the distance between two points.
Draw two points on a piece of white paper, the closest distance is not a straight line between the two points, but directly fold the white paper so that the two points directly touch together.
Although the curvature engine cannot make the two points coincide, it can greatly shorten the distance between the two points.
So the curvature engine is not really surpassing the speed of light, but folds the space, thus shortening the distance in between.
To put it bluntly, the curvature engine does not increase the speed of the spacecraft, but only shortens the space in which the capable spacecraft is located.
If a spacecraft needs to reach a place a light-year away, but its speed is only half the speed of light, it will take two years to reach its destination.
But when the spacecraft started the curvature engine, the folds of the space increased four times.
For the spacecraft, the distance of one light-year has become a quarter of a light-year.
In this way, it takes half a year for the spacecraft to reach its destination a light-year away.
After all, the speed of the spacecraft surpassed the speed of light and reached twice the speed of light.
In fact, the speed of the spacecraft is not getting faster. Its speed is still half the speed of light, but the distance is shortened to a quarter of the original, making the overall speed four times faster.
The curvature engine actually shortens the distance in space so that the speed of the spacecraft exceeds the speed of light.
The curvature engine is a device that increases the space folds by changing the curvature, and finally increases the speed of the spacecraft.
So the curvature engine does not violate the theory of relativity, it just bypasses the limitations of the theory of relativity.
Of course, the curvature engine can do more than that. Increasing the speed by four times is not the limit of the curvature engine.
The better the curvature of the engine, the larger the space wrinkles, and the more the spacecraft will eventually increase its speed.
Those super civilizations that can span the entire universe have very advanced curvature engines.
Their curvature engine can increase the speed tens of thousands of times, allowing the spacecraft to easily reach thousands of times the speed of light.
But Ye Su can't make such an advanced curvature engine. It's something that can be played by the top cosmic civilization. The curvature engine Ye Su wants to make is not that advanced.
The curvature engine that Ye Su plans to study this time can shorten the space by twenty times, which means it can increase the speed of the spacecraft twenty times.
In the design, the speed of the spacecraft made by Ye Su is half the speed of light.
So after installing this curvature engine, the speed can reach ten times the speed of light.
Ten times the speed of light is also sufficient for the time being, at least enough in the solar system.
At that time, between Mars and the Earth, it only takes a few minutes to arrive. This speed is about the same as eating at a food stall at the door.
Ten times the speed of light is enough for Ye Su to explore nearby galaxies. For example, the nearest neighbor to the solar system is only about five light years away.
This distance travels at ten times the speed of light, and it only takes half a year to reach it.
In other words, Ye Su will send a spaceship to Proxima Centauri, and it will be there in only half a year.
However, a spacecraft that is ten times the speed of light, it takes too long to go to places thousands of light years away.
But when it takes time to travel so far, Ye Su may have a better curvature engine.
Ye Su only needed to develop a better curvature engine to increase the speed of the spacecraft again.
Therefore, the curvature engine is the most important technology of interstellar civilization, which is related to the issue of flight speed.
The only way to increase the speed of the spacecraft is the curvature engine, and there is no room for improvement in the speed of the spacecraft itself.
Basically, the speed of all civilized spacecraft is about half the speed of light.
It's not that the speed cannot be increased, but that after the speed exceeds half the speed of light, too much energy is needed to continue accelerating.
The faster the speed, the more energy is needed to accelerate, which is the basic law of the universe that cannot be bypassed.
Accelerating to half the speed of light is the most energy-efficient option, and the spacecraft is basically designed like this.
So it is the curvature engine technology that limits the speed of a civilized spacecraft.
When Ye Su decided to develop the curvature engine first, he immediately went to work.
But before developing the curvature engine, Ye Su still needs a lot of manufacturing materials.
The curvature engine requires a lot of materials, many of which are rare materials.
One of the rarest materials is platinum. The curvature engine requires a lot of platinum to be manufactured.
This is Ye Su's true purpose of mining platinum on Mars, and it is also the material that Ye Su needs the most.
The biggest use of platinum is to make curvature engines. This material is in great demand even for high-end cosmic civilization.
Therefore, Ye Su will plan ahead on Mars and mine platinum on a large scale.