Although one Jupiter plane requires four clones to operate, plus the transfer platform, the transfer fleet from Jupiter to the satellite, etc., the total number of clones required reaches about 600,000. It seems like a huge team, but compared with the previous series of processes such as mining and refining of nuclear fission fuel, the manpower required is still greatly reduced.
That would require tens of millions of clones to maintain. Now, not to mention the rest, the manpower alone has been reduced to a dozen times the original amount.
The reduction in losses in other areas is even more incalculable.
After the Jupiter aircraft entered the atmosphere of Jupiter, the first batch of transfer platforms named "Xuanniao" by Li Qingsong were also put into use.
The "Xuanniao" is also an intra-atmospheric aircraft, but unlike the Jupiter aircraft, it has a larger mass and volume.
Overall, it looked a bit like an aircraft carrier from the Earth era, with a huge helipad and runway at the top, flat and smooth. Below the helipad were numerous facilities and living spaces for clones.
Its total length reaches 1 kilometer, its width reaches 200 meters, and its total mass reaches hundreds of thousands of tons, which is dozens of times larger than an Earth-class battleship.
Such a huge behemoth is suspended in the upper atmosphere of Jupiter, relying on a huge fan driven by a nuclear fusion reactor to blow endless amounts of Jupiter's atmosphere downwards to maintain its own suspended state.
Li Qingsong built 500 such "Xuanniao" aircraft, and then distributed them in the mining area according to a roughly uniform geometric structure.
Therefore, these Xuanniao aircraft became the distribution points for Jupiter aircraft.
A Jupiter plane completed a flight in the lower atmosphere of Jupiter and collected enough deuterium. It would increase its thrust and climb to the Xuanniao platform at an altitude of 30,000 meters on Jupiter. According to the tradition of the Earth era, Li Qingsong regarded the place in Jupiter's atmosphere where the pressure is the standard atmospheric pressure of the Earth as the "surface" of Jupiter, and landed on this long runway.
After landing, the Jupiter aircraft will move to a suitable parking position, and then there will be two passages connected to the Jupiter aircraft.
One channel is connected to the gas storage tank of the Jupiter aircraft, which collects the deuterium gas collected by the Jupiter aircraft for temporary storage. Another channel is connected to the cockpit of the Jupiter aircraft for the clones to enter and exit. At the same time, it will also collect the garbage, excrement, etc. in the Jupiter aircraft, and then replenish it with fuel, water, food and other supplies.
The clones that have been flying the Jupiter plane for a whole day will leave the plane and enter the Xuanniao platform for repairs. The clones who are taking over their shift will then enter the Jupiter plane and take off again with the Jupiter plane that has completed the supplies and collected the deuterium, and dive into the lower atmosphere of Jupiter to continue collecting deuterium there.
Li Qingsong deployed 500 Xuanniao platforms. There are 100,000 Jupiter aircraft, so on average one Xuanniao platform has to serve 200 Jupiter aircraft.
On average, a Jupiter plane returns to the Xuanniao platform every 24 hours.
So on average, about eight or nine Jupiter planes land or take off every hour, and the huge Xuanniao platform is a busy scene.
But this is not all the work of the Xuanniao platform. In addition to the Jupiter plane that continuously delivers deuterium, there will also be heavy transport ships landing from outer space to transport the deuterium away.
Every day, the Xuanniao platform collects about 108 tons of deuterium gas. Excluding its own losses, there will be about 3,000 tons left in a month.
So every month, a huge spaceship would enter the port, bringing in supplies and taking away the 3,000 tons of deuterium gas, which would be transported to the main distribution center on Ganymede for further distribution.
They will either flow into the power plants on Ganymede via the space elevator, or take short-distance spacecraft to other satellites, or take long-distance heavy cargo ships to other planets.
Mercury, Mars, Uranus, Neptune, Saturn, Vesta, Ceres, and the list goes on.
Deuterium gas from Jupiter supports Li Qingsong's entire industrial system and supports the industrial operations of the entire solar system.
But this doesn’t come without a price.
The reason is still that the environment inside Jupiter's cloud layer is too harsh.
Even weaker thunderstorms on Jupiter are hundreds or thousands of times more powerful than the strongest thunderstorms on Earth.
Not to mention supersonic hurricanes, which occur every day.
There will be hail on it, but the largest hail on Earth is the size of a watermelon, which can kill a person at most, but it has no destructive power beyond that.
But it’s different here on Jupiter.
Hailstones as big as stones can also reach extremely high speeds under strong winds, and can even reach supersonic speeds, comparable to cannonballs.
And the number is so huge that once it happens, it will be overwhelming and there will be nowhere to hide.
If a piece of hailstone like this hits you, it would not just kill a person, it would be a tragedy with the plane destroyed and people killed.
The key is that Jupiter's cloud layer is too complex, and weather forecasting is at least 10,000 times more difficult than on Earth. Even if Li Qingsong built a supercomputer specifically for weather forecasting and ran a specially trained weather AI "Dragon God", the forecast accuracy is very low.
So things like this often happen: a Jupiter plane is flying well and everything is calm, but the next moment, the Jupiter plane suddenly sinks without warning and falls directly into the depths of Jupiter, where it is swallowed by the thick atmosphere and the plane is completely destroyed and everyone on board dies.
That was wind shear, a sudden change in airflow or density that made it impossible for the Jupiter plane to fly normally.
Or the weather may be clear one moment and overcast the next, with lightning bolts falling from the sky like tree roots, leaving nowhere to hide. Once struck by lightning, the Jupiter plane would also be destroyed immediately.
Or the next moment, there might be dense, countless hailstones flying at supersonic speeds, which would directly smash the entire plane to pieces.
There were countless similar drastic weather changes. Even with Li Qingsong's current technology, an average of 10 Jupiter planes would crash every day due to weather reasons.
However, the Xuanniao platform is located at high altitudes where the air is thin, so it is not so dangerous.
That’s not all the danger.
In addition to the changeable weather, Jupiter's strong magnetic field causes communication and equipment failures, which also results in an average of one Jupiter plane crashing every day.
And another environmental problem that Li Qingsong couldn't solve: gravity.
The gravity of Jupiter is too high. Whether it is the clones in the Jupiter plane or the clones in the Xuanniao platform, they will suffer from the gravity of about times that of the Earth at all times.
A clone weighing 70 kg weighs 175 kg here, which means that each clone carries a sandbag weighing 100 kg while doing various tasks.
