Legend of the Cyber Heroes
Chapter 887 - 132 Preliminary Sorting

Chapter 887: Chapter 132 Preliminary Sorting

Sometimes, participants in historical events often don’t feel they’ve experienced any significant moments. They may only realize afterward the profound mark their actions left on human history.

In fact, in Xiang Shan’s eyes, he just took a walk on a giant piece of alien debris, achieving nothing at all—a pure burden. When he emerged from the protective suit, he was drenched in sweat. That day, Xiang Shan took a shower and fell asleep.

But the next day, when Xiang Shan went to work at the research institute, he noticed everyone’s gaze toward him was a bit different.

"You can now go back and claim you’re the first person in the country to contact aliens," Liu said to him. He patted Xiang Shan: "Do a good job, your future is limitless."

Regardless of Xiang Shan’s personal fate, this exploration indeed changed many things.

After confirming that there was nothing interactive—whether mechanical or alien—inside the entire "Argon," the Rama Project grew bolder. A large number of Peacekeeping Forces personnel, wearing protective clothing, entered Argon to start operations. Initially, they were meticulously sampling the ground, trying to find potentially existing alien cells. But soon, they discovered that the interior of Argon was terrifyingly clean, all organic matter was purely indigenous to Earth.

They didn’t even need to disinfect it anymore.

Thus, the upper echelons of the Rama Project began organizing the soldiers of the Peacekeeping Forces to work inside Argon, setting up and reinforcing structures, supporting the precarious "Argon," while laying tracks and scaffolding inside, building elevators, and setting up lighting equipment to facilitate exploration.

And the intelligence sorted out during this process was constantly presented to the scientists.

First, there were the steel beams Xiang Shan saw that day. It was indeed a complex structure, like the complicated steel structure of the Eiffel Tower supporting "Argon." This structure was already severely deformed, but all the deformations avoided the pitch-black cylinder at the center—what the builders of "Argon" truly intended to deliver.

This was the result of meticulous design. Based on reconstruction calculations, no matter how Argon landed, those steel beams could absorb kinetic energy through deformation. And no matter how the steel structure deformed, the black cylinder was very unlikely to be affected.

It seems the NASA engineer was right; the builders of "Argon" didn’t consider using a parachute at all.

Perhaps thanks to humanity’s parachute, Argon’s integrity upon landing was much higher than its builders anticipated. Humans were able to glimpse the art of this construction as if building with blocks.

Additionally, there’s another piece of news. There were no cables on the black cylinder connected to the outside. This black cylinder initially did not have the capability to control a rocket engine.

The good news is that there is a hatch on the cylinder.

Currently, humanity has attempted a variety of signal transmission methods, including knocking, to "call out" to the cylinder, but it remains silent, unresponsive. It appears any mechanics inside, if they exist, have already ceased functioning, allowing for further exploration.

The bad news is, there’s still controversy over how to open it and who should open it.

It is said that every advancement here can create ripples in the political arenas of several major nations. Xiang Shan couldn’t understand the process, wondering why, though frontline personnel were doing the labor, those bureaucrats behind-the-scenes had such strong reactions.

Then there’s another piece of news.

Or rather, both good and bad news.

The bad news is that "Argon’s" rocket engine is severely damaged.

But the good news is that humanity can still derive useful technology from it.

And, it’s precisely the "slightly advanced technology compared to contemporary humanity" we need right now.

Argon uses nuclear rockets, with a reactor directly heating the propellant to eject and gain speed.

The structure of its reactor seems quite interesting, something Earthlings haven’t used before. Nuclear physicists from different countries looked at it and exclaimed, "I see."

From the perspective of humanity’s entire scientific history, such a hint could at best be considered "a scientist’s sudden inspiration," and even without "Argon," humanity would discover this structure someday. But the arrival of "Argon" meant humanity could skip the "waiting for inspiration" step and also save costs in development and trial-and-error.

Of course, humanity also discovered symbols on the steel beams inside Argon, directly engraved at some locations on the steel beams.

Ingrid was very excited when she learned this news, but just half a day later, she couldn’t smile anymore.

The symbols weren’t text at all, but something like a barcode, allowing computers to read them easily, used to represent numbers.

"Apart from the fact that Argon’s builders use a duodecimal system, we still know nothing," Ingrid said as she stabbed her fork into her plate, vigorously twirling a forkful of spaghetti.

And those rubble were cleared out as well.

These things contained Uranium-235 of considerable purity, and it’s said that countries with experience handling it were required for proper preservation, needing to quickly move it to this "disorderly country".

"That’s really strange..." Xiang Shan said after looking at the sent information, "The purity of this uranium is too high, and based on the radiation I saw that day, it was not spent fuel at all. This is not how they handle nuclear waste."

High-purity fuel rod elements are not actually very radioactive. Humans can directly come into contact in a short time without any protection. Compared to radiation, the danger is more from uranium being absorbed as a heavy metal or poisoning people. But spent fuel is not like this. Spent fuel elements removed from the reactor can be lethal.

Brand new reactor fuel rods contain very high-purity uranium. But after undergoing fission reactions, the fuel rods are no longer pure. Hundreds of isotopes emerge within, each with different half-lives, and the radiation is far more terrifying. Compared to fuel rods mainly releasing α-particles, this fuel contains more penetrative and harmful radiation.

Based on that reading, there was simply no spent fuel in that large pile of rubble.

"If we consider that ’Argon’s builders’ technology level is not much different from Earth’s, they wouldn’t have stacked spent fuel inside ’Argon’." David, behind Xiang Shan, bit on his straw, "Putting aside other things, humans are very troubled by the issue of ’computer vulnerabilities to electromagnetic radiation,’ and the aliens should be the same."

"Then how should we deal with spent fuel?"

"If it were me..." David’s eyes looked upwards, taking a sip of cola: "Use it as propellant?"