Super Island Tycoon

If we want a spaceship to accelerate directly to the speed of light, the energy required would be infinite, which is why objects cannot surpass the speed of light.

Therefore, a spaceship cannot achieve faster-than-light travel by direct acceleration.

Although direct acceleration over the speed of light is impossible, there are ingenious methods to bypass the limitations of relativity and achieve faster-than-light travel.

This is how the Curvature Engine was developed; it’s a device for achieving faster-than-light travel.

Once a spaceship is equipped with the Curvature Engine, it can surpass the speed of light in space.

While this appears to violate relativity, it is indeed a feasible technology.

In fact, the Curvature Engine does not violate relativity because it achieves its effect through indirect means.

The concept of the Curvature Engine might seem lofty, but the principle is quite simple.

The space in which the entire universe resides is not flat; it is filled with various folds, the sizes of which constitute the ”curvature.”

When the curvature is zero, the space is completely flat; the greater the curvature, the bigger the folds in space.

The Curvature Engine is a technology that utilizes the folds in space to propel a spaceship.

If we can alter the curvature of space, we can increase the folds in space, effectively shortening the distance between two points.

On a sheet of paper, drawing two points, the shortest path is not a straight line between them but folding the paper so the points touch.

While the Curvature Engine cannot make two points coincide, it can significantly shorten the distance between them.

Thus, the Curvature Engine isn’t genuinely surpassing light speed; it

folds space, thereby shortening the intermediate distance.

In essence, the Curvature Engine doesn’t increase the spaceship’s speed; it merely shortens the space the spaceship occupies.

If a spaceship needs to reach a place one light-year away but travels at half the speed of light, it would take two years to get there.

But when this spaceship activates the Curvature Engine, the space folds increase fourfold.

The journey of one light-year becomes the equivalent of a quarter light-year for the spaceship.

This way, the spaceship only needs half a year to reach a destination one light-year away.

All in all, the spaceship’s speed surpasses light speed, reaching twice the speed of light.

In truth, the spaceship’s speed hasn’t increased; it remains half the speed of light. The distance being reduced to a quarter allows the overall speed to increase fourfold.

The Curvature Engine essentially shortens the distance in space, allowing the spaceship to exceed the speed of light.

The Curvature Engine is a device that increases the spaceship’s speed by altering curvature to increase space folds.

Thus, the Curvature Engine does not violate relativity; it merely circumvents its limitations.

Of course, the Curvature Engine’s capabilities go beyond this, with a fourfold speed increase not being its limit.

The better the Curvature Engine, the greater the space folds, resulting in a more significant speed increase for the spaceship.

The super-civilizations capable of crossing the entire universe possess very advanced Curvature Engines.

Their Curvature Engines can increase speeds by tens of thousands of times, allowing spaceships to easily achieve speeds of thousands of times the speed of light.

However, such an advanced Curvature Engine is beyond Jiang Cheng’s capability to manufacture; it’s something only top-tier cosmic civilizations can handle. The Curvature Engine Jiang Cheng intends to build is not that advanced.

This time, Jiang Cheng plans to research a Curvature Engine that can shorten space by twenty times, meaning it can increase a spaceship’s speed by twentyfold.

In his design, Jiang Cheng’s spaceship travels at half the speed of light.

So, with this Curvature Engine installed, the speed can reach ten times the speed of light.

A speed of ten times the speed of light is sufficient for now, at least within the solar system.

By then, traveling from Mars to Earth would take only a few minutes, akin to grabbing a quick bite at a local eatery.

Ten times the speed of light is enough for Jiang Cheng to explore nearby star systems, for instance, Proxima Centauri, which is roughly five light-years away from the solar system.

At this distance, traveling at ten times the speed of light would only take half a year.

That is to say, when Jiang Cheng sends a spaceship to Proxima Centauri, it would only take half a year to get there.

However, a spaceship with ten times the speed of light would still take too long to reach places thousands of light-years away.

But by the time such a long journey is necessary, Jiang Cheng might have a better Curvature Engine.

Jiang Cheng just needs to develop better Curvature Engines later to further increase the spaceship’s speed.

So, the Curvature Engine is the most crucial technology for interstellar civilizations; it pertains to the problem of flight speed.

To increase a spaceship’s speed, the only path is through the Curvature Engine; the spaceship’s inherent speed has little room for improvement.

Most civilizations design their spaceships to travel at about half the speed of light.

It’s not that this speed can’t be increased, but going beyond half the speed of light requires too much energy for further acceleration.

The faster the speed, the more energy needed for acceleration; this is an unavoidable fundamental law of the universe.

Accelerating to half the speed of light maximizes energy efficiency, so spaceships are typically designed this way.

Thus, the limitation on a civilization’s spaceship speed revolves around the technology of the Curvature Engine.

When Jiang Cheng decided to first develop the Curvature Engine, he immediately got to work.

However, before developing the Curvature Engine, Jiang Cheng needed a lot of construction materials.

The Curvature Engine requires a vast amount of materials, many of which are rare.

The rarest of these materials is platinum, essential for constructing the Curvature Engine.

This is the real reason Jiang Cheng is mining platinum on Mars, and it’s the material he needs the most of right now.

The primary use of platinum is to produce the Curvature Engine, a material in high demand even for advanced cosmic civilizations.

Thus, Jiang Cheng has been laying the groundwork for large-scale platinum mining on Mars in advance.

During the development process of the Curvature Engine, Jiang Cheng is likely to waste a lot of platinum.

The technology of the Curvature Engine is extremely complex; manufacturing numerous units may still not be successful.

Once platinum is used in the Curvature Engine, it cannot be recycled or reused.

Therefore, Jiang Cheng’s upcoming experiments will essentially be a process of considerable platinum wastage.

During the Curvature Engine’s R&D process, platinum is merely a consumable.