Star Rider

Alcon's Journal #8 -- DSF 3137

DSF@e3f3fa522abd35294f17dea955f618cb

The seat in the shuttle is much more comfortable than in the cable car, and food is provided before takeoff. This is our last meal under normal gravity before leaving our home planet, with a gravity acceleration of around 0.88G. The huge blue planet beneath our feet constantly reminds us to hold onto something to prevent ourselves from floating away. It's as if here, gravity truly takes on its literal meaning. Once we step onto the exploration spacecraft, the gravitational bonds of our home planet will disappear, replaced by artificial centrifugal force. We probably won't feel the pull of our home planet again for at least two years.

After the rest, the shuttle leaves the platform of the Earth orbital ring and accelerates forward and upward towards the "Ark 11" heliocentric orbit space habitat located between Mars and Earth, which is the launching point for our exploration spacecraft.

This journey takes about a month. A few days after takeoff, the artificial intelligence assistant Cube on the spacecraft reminds us that we can see one of the three detectors of the LISA project through the right window, while the other two are not visible to us, as they are located in front and below us. Looking in the direction indicated, I only see a small bright spot moving. This famous gravitational wave detection system has been in operation and continuously observing for more than 30 years before being retired. The currently studied curvature propulsion is based on the theory and observation results of this system. According to predictions, it will take more than a decade for the available curvature engines to appear. LISA has been replaced by two sets of equilateral triangle gravitational disturbance detection systems, which are larger and more accurate and use heliocentric orbits. These two sets of equilateral triangles form a huge hexagonal system array named "Beacon I" and "Beacon II". In addition to gravitational disturbance detection, this huge heliocentric system is also used for information relay among various spacecraft, space habitats, and the home planet within and beyond the solar system.

As the distance from the home planet increases, I had real-time video conversations with my mother every day in the first few days. As transmission time became longer and longer, real-time conversations became impossible, and we could only communicate through video transmission. It seems that my mother has become more cheerful at Mrs.Bryan's home. Although she still shows anxiety and stress when encountering visitors or strangers, she has gradually regained her interests in gardening, baking, and painting. She even started playing AR exploration games with Mrs.Bryan's. I also introduced my living quarters, the stars outside the window, and demonstrated various magic tricks in zero-gravity environments to my mother in the video. Seeing my mother laughing happily in the video, I feel that everything seems to be heading in a positive direction.

We will only stay in Ark 11 for two weeks, and time passes quickly. The intensive final training and familiarization with space life makes us busy all the time. Soon it will be time to go on board the spacecraft.

Passing through the gravity transition zone that borders the living area and the port, the 27 DSF crew members walked through the corridor one by one, and we finally saw the 24 spaceships quietly docked in the harbor, among which 23 were exploration ships and one was a towing ship. Except for the crew of four on the towing ship, all the exploration ships were designed for single pilots. In fact, there was a time when DSF also used unmanned spacecraft, but after several interstellar exploration companies used a large number of canned probes to fabricate data and identify asteroid ownership, the Deep Space Exploration Act required human crew members to land and identify the asteroid. Once again, human greed for profit defeated idealism.

Therefore, the originally fully automatic unmanned deep space exploration that could be achieved according to existing technology was forced to return to the need for human footprints to define it. For a while, all exploration ships needed to be redesigned to incorporate life support for exploration astronauts. Due to cost considerations, the industry unanimously designed these exploration ships into minimized single-person life support systems. This reminded me of the ancient seals. We drivers are the human seals that stamp on these small celestial bodies. The company must ensure that we are alive before we can perform the "sealing" action to declare sovereignty.

I saw the spaceship assigned to me, "DSF 3137". This is a bat class second-generation mass-produced exploration spacecraft. The exploration ships of many companies are basically the same design, with a fusion engine and hydrogen-helium compatible propellant engine compartment and anchoring device at the tail, a reinforced structure and six centrifugal multifunctional cabins around the reinforced structure core, as well as a counterweight arm and backup antenna. The head is equipped with a laser and radar detection device and a spectroscopic analyzer for exploration/command module.

After completing my biometric features and name registration according to the operating procedures, the AI navigation system of 3137 was activated, and the system prompted me to give it a name. Considering the possibility of calling the AI in emergency conditions, it was recommended to use a name with no more than 2 consonants. After thinking about it, I entered "Mars". The system prompted: "The name of the AI conflicts with the name of a registered known planet, which may cause the AI to misunderstand your instructions under extreme conditions. Are you sure you want to use it?" Extreme conditions? I inexplicably wanted to laugh. I wanted to see what strange misunderstandings would happen under extreme conditions, so I confirmed to use "Mars" as its name.

"Hello Alcon, I am your assistant Mars, nice to meet you."

"Hey Mars, nice to meet you too! By the way, what extreme conditions were you talking about? Will you throw me to Mars?"

"Hah, it seems like you have a good sense of humor. Do you mind if I increase my humor level too?"

"No problem."

"Okay, I'm done adjusting. The extreme condition I was referring to is that I can't understand what you are saying. Hah!"

In my mind, I always thought of it as a mechanical program, but this answer is quite interesting. It even adds "haha" to make the humor level of the whole sentence more complete. I'm not worried about its flying and exploration assistance professionalism. It's good that it can maintain this humor level during boring exploration voyages.

Mars then introduced me to the various systems of the spacecraft and recommended a 4-hour time cycle based on my physical characteristics, that is, a cycle of 4 hours of sleep and 4 hours of awake work. The life support system of the exploration spacecraft is relatively simple. In addition to the oxygen needed for breathing, food has been simplified into capsules to ensure minimal payload. The only reusable item is purified water, and there are only two types of beverage formulas available: tea and coffee. The entertainment system is a highlight. Mars' media memory stores almost all the music and movies on the mother planet, and astronauts can choose some games that the company has already ordered or purchase extra games on their own to join Mars' system for entertainment. Because they are far from the mother planet and cannot play with people on the mother planet, Mars' learning ability can quickly learn and simulate multiple players joining the game. Many long-distance pilots are top game players, and their onboard AI assistants have also been trained to become top ranked players.