<h4>Chapter 504: Ares Project</h4>


    While the foundation as well as the four major continents directed their collective attention to the Resident Evil dimension, a new announcement was put up on the cklight Biotechnology official site.


    The “Ares Project” which cklight Biotechnology had been preparing for three years and invested more than fifty billion U.S. dors into wasmencing soon.


    The name Ares came from the name of the God of War in ancient Greek mythology. Ares was one of the twelve Olympian gods. He represented strength and war.


    The “Ares Project” was also known as the “Mars Scientific Colonization Project”. The details of the project was as follows:


    To dispatch humans to Mars within two years and establish Mars research outpost, subsequently establishing human colonies on the surface of Mars within five years.


    Why did cklight Biotechnology choose Mars?


    Apart from the nines of the Sr System, there was also a vast collection of others. For instance, severals orbiting around Jupiter and Saturn were farrger than any others of the Sr System.


    The Kuiper Belt surrounding the sr system was also home to several dwarfs looming in its darkness.


    However, among all theses, only Mars had an environment closest to Earth.


    Due to its proximity to the sun, the temperature of Mercury during the day reached 427°C and as low as -173°C during the night. With such harsh temperature fluctuations, it waspletely ruled out as a habitable for mankind.


    Venus was the that was closest to Earth except for the moon, but the environment on Venus was as hellish as Mercury. Its atmospheric pressure was at least 90 times stronger than that of Earth and its surface temperature reached up to 470°C. There was no distinctive difference in seasons or representation of a daytime cycle either.


    Meanwhile, Jupiter and Saturn were both gaseouss. The temperature of Jupiter’s Galilean moon, Europa, was also far too low to amodate humans.


    Of all the options, only Mars provided the most optimistic living conditions. Although its diameter was only half of the earth and its mass only 11 percent of the earth, itsndmass was equivalent to the totalndmass of Earth. Its surface gravity was two and a half times that of the moon and two-fifths of the earth.


    The atmospheric density of Mars was only one percent of that of the earth, but it could still achieve the familiar greenhouse effect. The average temperature of Mars was about minus 55°C, but its temperature during daytime in the summer was close to identical to that of the earth.


    Of all the challenging options, Mars stood out among the rest of them as the most ideal for colonization.


    As soon as the announcement was put up, the people who were paying close attention to these developments were the first ones to notice it.


    cklight Biotechnology was the definitive, most influential technologypany of the earth that brought revolutionary changes to the world by ushering in the “Anti-aging Era” and “Bionic Prosthetic Era”. Therefore, it had amassed a cult following of hundreds of millions of followers. This was the new generation equivalent of “Apple fans”.


    This was not any kind of feverish worship that was going to be short-lived. cklight Biotechnology had cemented its reputation with one technological innovation after another.


    From a generation-defining advent like the age-reversal treatment that cured the curse of old age to the cklight vine that saved billions of people in the world. After that came hundreds of cancer-targeted drugs, then the cure to Alzheimer’s disease... cklight Biotechnology hadpletely taken over the biomedicine sector in the Earth Federation!


    This was why plenty of scientists regrly hung around the official website of cklight Biotechnology. This was themunication and discussion hub for thousands of scientists and researchers. cklight Biotechnology also made sure to invest its resources to manage the forum in an organized manner so that the scientists had an ideal spot for their discussions. The forum of cklight Biotechnology had at this point be a sacred hub of scientific knowledge exchange for scientists from all over the world.


    There were six sections on the homepage of cklight Biotechnology’s official website, namely:


    Bio-pharmaceutical, bionic medical, service and security, electronic technology, mineral resources, and military and aerospace. The six major sectors were represented by six colors which were respectively green, white, gray, yellow, ck, and blue. Everything was recognizable at one nce.


    At this time, there was arge shing exmation mark icon on the military and aerospace sectors.


    The giant exmation mark drew the attention of countless people around the world and they immediately selected it.


    A five-minute-video immediately popped up. The title of the video jumped at the screen in the form of an erged, bolded text:


    Ares Project – Mars Scientific Colonization Expedition Officially Commences!


    The first thing that appeared on screen when the video was yed was a futuristic spaceship with two gigantic dual-jet engines installed on both sides of its hull. The spaceship sparkled and glowed with silvery rays. It seemed like a magnificent work of art framed on the disy.


    It was the designated spacecraft of the Ares Project. The spaceship that would send humans to Mars, it was the Ares.


    The picture of Ares only appeared for several frames before it was cut out. The video continued with the slow, somber tone of a man speaking.


    “Human beings have existed for millions of years since their first appearance on Earth. We have dreamt of great visions for millenniums.


    “In ancient times, when humans gazed upon starry sky, they always imagined what the stars and moons were made of. Were they astral embodiments? Were there othernds out there? What kind of tales were there in the ces above...


    “We conjured stories and fables such as the story of The Goddess Chang’s flight to the moon and The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl. We’ve written myths and stories of space travel...”


    A profound montage of different folklores and mythologies started to y on-screen following the tempo of the narrator’s narration...


    “Mankind first embarked on their venture into the stars in the sixteenth century. It first started with simple observations using inventions such as telescopes. It was not until the 1960s that humansnded on the moon for the first time...”


    Suddenly, a man dressed in a medieval robe appeared on the disy. Under the moonlight, he polished the lens of a telescope using his robe and suddenly paused mid-motion. He then slowly raised his head and pointed the telescope at the moon outside the window. He had an expression that seemed like he was mesmerized by what he saw through the lens...


    A deep and heavy ordion sound yed through the speakers after that. It was a somber, grave tune that represented a significant starting point in history.


    “Every time mankind takes another step forward in space discovery, it’s marked as another significant milestone in the history of space travel...”


    The video shed and showed the scene of the first human rocketunch, then the firstnding on the moon. The ck and white pictures intertwined into one another and despite the poor resolution of these pictures due to the era in which they were produced, it was clear that history was being made at these points in time.


    “But there has never been such a day as now when mankind hase this close to other extraterrestrials...”


    The narrator suddenly altered his tone. The background tunes of the grand piano suddenly picked up momentum as well. Like a pebble dropped into a still pool, the ripples were starting to form and spread across.


    The spaceship that appeared during the first segment of the video appeared on screen again. It was coated in a paint of bright silver and a string of texts detailing its statistics appeared on the screen.


    “Ares. Length: 52.3 meters. Width: 21.1 meters. Height 15.5 meters. Weight: 780 tons. Fitted with four engines and powered by two nuclear engines.


    “The spacecraft is divided into three floors including the bridge, medical bay,boratory, and six living rooms. It can carry 16 passengers.


    “The spacecraft can also carry about 200 tons of cargo and about 20 tons of fuel...”


    The video started to show a clip of the Ares taking off. Columns of radiant blue lights burst out of therge reactor engines mounted along both sides of the spacecraft.


    Propelled by this tremendous force, the spacecraft started to rise and elerate gradually...


    This clip was a digital render but it was extremely realistic to a point where one would easily confuse it with the real thing unless they were informed beforehand.


    “We’re entering a new era. Where you and I stand now is the footnote of one era. This moment that we’re witnessing is the new exmation point that will usher the new era. From today, mankind will officially enter the era of cosmic immigration...”


    The trombone red aggressively, mixed with the rowdy cheer of an excited crowd, the volume of the male narrator was slowly rising as well!


    “From today, the status of mankind will officially leap from being what was once ‘native dwellers’ to ‘interster travelers’!


    “From today onward, the earth that we call home will no longer only be home, but be known as the origin of human civilization!


    “From today on, we’ll enter a new chapter of the book of mankind. Join us as cklight Biotechnology brings all of us into the new age and rewrites history as we know it!”


    The background music picked up in momentum and volume, bringing the video to an exmation point as it approached the end. After that, the music slowly died down and soon faded out.


    In the end, the only music that lingered was a low, dragged-out hum that seemed to drain away all other sounds in the world.


    The end of the video was marked with a giant ck sentence stamped on top of a white disy – registration for being a colonist of Project Ares begins on 1 July 2028!


    Within an hour of the release of this video, the traffic of cklight Biotechnology’s site skyrocketed from around a hundred thousand to tens of millions of times per hour. Even the website’s server crashed momentarily due to the sheer amount of traffic that overloaded it!


    The same video was also reposted across tons of major websites and media outlets, immediately spreading the news to the world.


    [The new age of mankind? cklight Biotechnology hasunched an extraterrestrial colonization program. Earth will no longer be the only home for mankind] – The Wall Street Journal.


    [The onlypany in the Earth Federation that has what it takes to legitimize space colonization. cklight Biotechnology has sped out the development of technology by another fifty years] – BBC News.


    [Movie or real life? cklight Biotechnology’s “Ares Project” drawsparison to popr cult ssics like “Alien” and “Prometheus Project”. How far away are humans to space colonization? ]- Tencent News.


    [Will cklight Biotechnology be the single most influential body in the history of mankind?] – Sina Express.


    [Space travel, to infinity and beyond! We’ve waited decades for this, Buzz Lightyear’s ims are no longer a pipedream!] – YouTube News.


    The people were once again in a frenzy!


    As early as two years ago, cklight Biotechnology had developed rocket technology and sessfully sent a manned spacecraft to the moon. This also marked them as the third faction to send humans to the moon over thest century, trailing after Northern America and the North Sea Continent. cklight was the first private enterprise to send humans to the moon.


    As a token of respect and support, the Earth Federation passed the application of cklight Biotechnology and allowed cklight to be the firstpany in the world to have space colonization qualifications.


    However, Chen Chen was not content only with this. Over the next two years, cklight Biotechnology regrly flew rockets into space and to the moon where they would establish the first inteary research station on the moon for their crew of scientists. It was also open to scientists from all continents in the world to allow for further space research conducted outside of Earth.


    By this point, there were nearly fifty researchers stationed on the moon all year round. cklight Biotechnology had designated spacecraft with charted routes to the inteary research station to transport supplies for the researchers bi-annually.


    The reason why cklight Biotechnology could regrly transport between space and the earth was not merely due to their significant budget nor was it due to borrowed technology from SpaceX. It was due to the development of their “inertial confinement fusion reactor” technology.


    It was a nuclear reactor that could convert fuel into energy only with the use ofsers. After the reactor was miniaturized, it was rendered into an engine with nuclear power thrust.


    At one point, Chen Chen used the inertial confinement fusion reactor to charge the USB drive. However, the power generation of this was inferior to theter developed super tokamak reactor.


    However, due to the incredibly intricate design process of the super tokamak reactor, Chen Chen decided to let out this technology to the four major continents. With the coborative efforts of cklight Biotechnology and the major continents, they were able to achieve a breakthrough in this stem of technology and sessfully put it intomercialized use.


    Meanwhile, the inertial confinement fusion reactor remained the optimal choice for recing thrust engines for spaceships. It allowed for spaceships to travel to others that were once considered unreachable at an extremely efficient fuel usage.


    Just as Chen Chen had once dered – the day the inertial confinement fusion reactor was fully developed was the day that mankind’s interster travel couldmence properly.


    Since the day Chen Chen made that deration, cklight Biotechnology had secretly invested insurmountable amounts of time, effort, and research force into developing the inertial confinement fusion reactor. In the end, the engines for the Ares spaceship finally came to fruition.


    The inertial confinement fusion engine was essentially a reduced version of the inertial confinement fusion reactor. Superconducting material was used to design a spherical shell where another tiny sphere formed with a mixture of deuterium and tritium was injected into the reaction chamber 2 million joules were ignited with a concentration of 192 electron beams onto a deuterium-tritium pellet with a measured diameter of less than few tenths of a millimeter. Eachser was activated at a regr interval of an average of three-billionths of a second. This triggered extreme high temperature and pressure that subsequently triggered a significant nuclear fusion reaction. This process generated enough thrust for the spacecraft to operate.


    Based on data obtained from the experiment of the Ares spacecraft engine, the velocity generated could reach up to 7 percent the speed of light in vacuum conditions. With a total weight load of 500 tons, it could reach a maximum speed of 38.6 million meters per second, which was close to matt speed.


    The engine would detonate what was two hundred and fifty 0.001 gram nuclear per second and maintain this continuously...


    Since such innovation was too abrupt, cklight Biotechnology held off on disclosing the existence of the inertial confinement fusion engine to the outside world. He only imed that the Ares used nuclear engine technology and was preparing to lead mankind’s firstnding on Mars to establish a scientific research station. This led to a hurricane of public reception.


    cklight Biotechnology continued to remain a silent stance when countless people on the Inte raised questions regarding this mentioned “nuclear engine technology”.


    If cklight Biotechnology chose to maintain its silent disposition, not a single person in the world could force them to reveal their secrets...