Chapter 323: Current Situation of the Outer Planets_1

Jiang Yu and his group toured Saturn City, as well as the surrounding space cities and colonies, and were quite satisfied with the construction process.

Over a hundred million immigrants had been settled in, but their living spaces were still a bit cramped.

Jiang Yu had visited their accommodations, where typically eight unmarried individuals shared a room about the size of a college dormitory.

Married couples were allocated rooms of about ten square meters, squeezing in a family of three or four.

These places reminded Jiang Yu of the tube-shaped apartment buildings he had seen in movies.

The next step was to expand their living spaces, and two new districts had already been constructed, where the living space for a family was significantly larger, basically three bedrooms and a living room.

Even those without families could get a single-person apartment with a private toilet and a private kitchen.

With these two new districts serving as models, everyone's work enthusiasm was very high, all hoping to move into the new areas sooner.

What satisfied Jiang Yu the most was that, thanks to Gu Cheng's efforts, the market within the Saturn Civilization Circle had begun to flourish.

Many people had worked long enough to be granted citizenship by the Solar System State by the Governing Council and had started to receive their salaries.

Additionally, by attracting foreign investments, Gu Cheng first drew in some retailers.

At the same time, the limited metal and industrial output from the Jupiter Civilization Circle were all traded for daily necessities brought back for sale.

With money in the residents' hands and goods in the city, the market naturally started to flourish.

Jiang Yu asked Gu Cheng to organize his economic strategies, as he planned to try promoting them in Uranus and Neptune as well.

After leaving Saturn, the journey suddenly became distant, with the distance from Saturn to Uranus about the same as from Saturn to the Sun.

When astronomers first discovered Uranus, it effectively doubled the size of the Solar System.

Uranus is also a Gas Giant Planet, but its size is only about 15% of Saturn's.

Due to the methane in its atmosphere, this Gas Giant Planet emits a beautiful blue color, like a sapphire floating in the starry sky.

Most of Uranus's moons are made of ice, leading to numerous space cities within the Uranus Civilization Circle.

However, building space cities requires a large amount of metal, which almost entirely relies on imports.

Now the entire Solar System State faces a metal resource crunch, so Uranus has been planned to accommodate only thirty million people, and despite having the smallest population, the construction progress here is far behind that of the Saturn Civilization Circle.

Here, the living space for residents is even smaller than in the Saturn Civilization Circle.

To accelerate development, the Governing Council has invested in many hydrogen and helium mines on Uranus, aiming to make it the second energy base of the Solar System State.

Many citizens of the Solar System State only learned about the vastness and abundant resources of the Solar System State after watching reports of Jiang Yu's inspection tours.

But previously, no one had developed these resources.

Now, the Solar System State, in recent years, has focused all its efforts on developing the outer planets of the Solar System, and today, almost everything beyond Saturn's orbit is the territory of the Solar System State.

Although the Solar System State didn't gain much of the Moon's territory back in the day, it has nearly included the three outer planets in its domain.

Fleet International still hasn't prioritized development here, and in the future, they might never have the opportunity.

Such is the nature of national fortune; often a single major mistake requires paying a price tenfold or a hundredfold to rise to power.

Fleet International also wanted to be involved in this division, but their economy was not promising and they were short on manpower.

Of course, the main reason was that the conditions on the outer planets were too harsh, requiring huge investment, and the return period was very long. No one was willing to invest in these places.

To them, the resource-rich Jupiter Civilization Circle was enough for humanity to plunder for thousands of years, so there was no need to make such an effort to develop the outer planets yet.

The investment model of the Solar System State's Governing Council was different; they invested with strategic foresight in construction beyond Jupiter's three civilization circles, prepared for no return on investment within twenty years.

After leaving Uranus, the number of warships protecting Jiang Yu suddenly doubled!

That was because many space pirates were active beyond the Uranus Orbit.

Before the Solar System State developed Neptune in earnest, that place could be described not so much as humanity's frontier base as a den of robbers.

Most of those who lived in the Neptune Orbit were criminals or exiles.

Another part consisted of people who did not want to live like pigs and sought some excitement in this lawless land.

Inspired by the "Dark Campaign," their small pirate ships were all equipped with subsonic hydrogen bombs.

Upon discovering merchant ships or cargo spacecraft, they would immediately launch subsonic hydrogen bombs; and if successful, they could capture an intact spacecraft.

People on the attacked spacecraft, naturally, would not survive.

The space pirates would then demand ransom from the ship's owning company, or simply sell it to another company.

If the initial attack failed, the space pirates would use the small ships' maneuverability to make a quick escape.

The first administrators of Uranus and Neptune were military personnel, who had fought space pirates numerous times.

But space was too vast, and they were never able to completely eradicate the pirates.

After the Solar System State began operating Uranus and Neptune, all civilian ships had to form fleets and could only travel with a warship escort.

This was extremely inconvenient. Fortunately, the Solar System State was continuously producing a vast number of small spacecraft and small warships, so for the moment, there were enough warships for escorts.

It's in these regions that the business model is very much like futures trading: you never know when a merchant vessel will show up, and when they do, they come in droves.

Neptune's administrator was You Ze. This position would be crucial in the future. Letting someone else manage it made Jiang Yu feel uneasy.

The first thing You Ze did after arriving at Neptune was to request more military personnel to ensure the immigrants' safety.

Even in the face of extreme resource scarcity, You Ze tightened his belt and built two military fortresses first.

That effectively squeezed the space pirates completely out of Neptune.

Following that, You Ze faced the problem of a shortage in metal resources, as Neptune and Uranus were not only similar in color but also in their satellite situations.

Cargo spacecraft setting off from the Jupiter Civilization Circle and the Main Asteroid Belt took more than a year to reach here. Yet, Neptune needed to accommodate seventy million immigrants, which clearly couldn't be aided by remote solutions.

Therefore, You Ze applied for many mining platforms and started "nearby" metal resource collection in the Kuiper Belt.

Now, as the number of mining platforms increased, Neptune's demand for metal resources could be largely self-sufficient.

The industrial chain that You Ze had sacrificed residential construction to establish was now playing a huge role. There was no need to transport industrial products from far-off Jupiter and the Main Asteroid Belt here. The settlement of the immigrants had been basically completed!

When visiting Poseidon City, Jiang Yu also encountered the former officers from the "Bronze Age"!