087. Orion Pn

  All members of the Akaban Squad fell silent for a few seds.

  Then, they spoke in unison:

  "Madman."

  A team member grumbled:

  "Leaving aside the corrosion from the Camity Cloud, Azure Star is all ice fields and blizzards. Where are you going to get a rocket unch site? Where are you going to find enough fuel and a space shuttle? The unch ditions are extremely stri!"

  "Moreover, even if you pn to bee Gamma-tier and your body withstand the first ic velocity (7,900 meters per sed, about Mach 23.2), you still have no way to break through the corrosion of the Camity Cloud—no material resist the Camity's erosion. You would be ied and bee a deformed monster."

  "No one reach space. For hundreds of years, we've only been able to unch satellites into the atmosphere. Even the Red Arrows couldn't do it. How could you?"

  "The downfall of Azure Star's old era was caused by coveting space, which led to the disaster of the Camity... Do you want to repeat that mistake?"

  It wasn't even a question; their first rea was to stop and forbid Li Aozi from thinking this way.

  Sixty pert of Azure Star's problems could ultimately be solved by opening a path to space, but one hundred pert of the time, they couldn't get past the Camity.

  They tried, again and again, and failed. No nation had the ce, eic strength, teological level, or bravery to send its brightest talents into the Camity Cloud, only to watch them rot away, eroded or ied, turning into deformed monsters.

  For both the citizens and the nations, repeated failures in space exploration had made people fet their dreams of the stars. Many people went their whole lives without ever seeing the sun.

  Some even believed there was never a sun to begin with, that darkness gave birth to humanity and life—ridiculous, anti-intellectual, and pathetic. Human short-sightedness and capacity for fetfulness were truly terrifying.

  People would fet the protectors who risked everything for them just days ago due to their current grievances, even fetting the threats entirely.

  For hundreds of years, many people had bee aced to a world ruled by Camity and cold. They had no idea what sunlight, rain, blue skies, white clouds, or lush grassnds were and instead mocked the stists who recorded history.

  "The sun and stars are just scams to get funding. All that history is fake. I'm living fihout the sun. Why should I fund your space attempts? Stop fooling me."

  "You say the old era reached spad satellites were unched into low Earth orbit? That's nonsense. Acc to Johns Hopkins research, if there were really a sun and universe, shouldn't Camity have been riddled with meteor strikes by now?"

  "Why worry so much? Even if space travel were possible, it would only be the elites, not you, a oner. Worry about yourself instead. Your boss is calling for voluntary overtime."

  Perhaps it wasn't just the Camity.

  Many phenomena, inferiority plexes, narrow-minded views, aive emotions also blocked humanity's path to space, robbing them of the ce to look up.

  "…I could have ehe darkness, had I not seen the light."

  Li Aozi calmly accepted their advid reproaches:

  "I will go to space, and I won't need any spacecraft."

  "That's just nonsense! Even if you could fly, how would your body reach the first ic velocity to enter orbit? And how would you accelerate to the sed ic velocity (11,200 kilometers per sed, equivalent to Mach 32.91)? What about the Camity problem?"

  "That's easy. Acceleration isn't the issue. For me, it's just about solving the Camity."

  "So how do you pn to do it?"

  Li Aozi said:

  "The Beitiao Group possesses a hydrogen bomb from the old era—'Guangqi Arisa,' with an explosive yield of about 140 million tons. It's Tianhuan's national treasure."

  The members of the Akaban Squad were stunned.

  "Imagihis: sihe Camity shrouds everything above the stratosphere and blocks all of Azure Star, it must also be blog sor storms, gamma rays, and nearly all thermal energy from reag Azure Star. So, in reverse, the radiation from a hydrogen bomb explosion could naturally be blocked by the Camity Cloud."

  Li Aozi expined further:

  "Simute it: a hydrogen bomb with a yield of 1.4 trillion tons of TNT would have a fireball radius of about 138.02 kilometers, with a theoretical destructive area of 770.73 kilometers—though we should be servative. The hydrogen bomb could be affected by the Camity's 'entropy disorder,' redug the efficy of the tritium fusion during mass-energy version."

  "sidering that, the actual fireball might reach 100 kilometers, and the shockwave could exceed 500 kilometers—still, that would be more than we could hope for. Also, the thiess of the atmosphere is about 1,000 kilometers, but the Camity mainly trates betweeratosphere and mesosphere, c a 50-kilometer region above the surface, with a thiess of 30 kilometers. That's the limit for current human aircraft."

  "However, between 60 kilometers and 1,000 kilometers in the ionosphere, where charged particles domihe density of the Camity decreases, and its corrosive effect weakens. Once you reach 300 kilometers above the surface, you'll be pletely free from the Camity's influence."

  "Simply put, if we detonate a hydrogen bomb at 60 kilometers in the mid-atmosphere, the thrust from the explosion will be enough to accelerate me to the sed ic velocity, and the heat and shockwave will temporarily destroy the Camity Cloud within a 120-kilometer radius."

  "At that moment, my acceleration will reach 350G (3,430 meters per square sed), which is enough to unch me out of the atmosphere. With the shockrovided by the hydrogen bomb explosion, the vacuum of space will allow for tinuous acceleration without air resistahe nuclear pulse will keep pushing me forward, and while I don't o go too fast, ohirtieth of the speed of light will be suffit for my purposes."

  "The biggest problem with this pn is the o sider materials, astronauts, and load-bearing capabilities—but there's o worry about any of that. You don't o be ed about gravity or spaceflight endurance because I am the master of gravity. The universe is my domain."

  "The only trouble lies on the ground. The theft of the Hojo Family's hydrogen bomb will undoubtedly cause nationwide panid I will be hunted by Tianhuan's four active Gamma-tier pursuers."

  "Everything else is trivial."

  The moment, everyone looked at Li Aozi with utter horror.

  "Hey, you don't mean to…"

  "Yes."

  Li Aozi calmly decred:

  "I will detonate a hydrogen bomb and unch myself into space."

  "In a sense, you could say I'm blowing up the p."

  To soothe everyone's nerves, Li Aozi reassured them:

  "Don't worry. It's not my first time doing this—I've got some experience."

  FAL