The first to be relocated were the neutrino telescopes.
Li Qingsong had built a total of 16 neutrino telescopes. The largest of these housed 10 million tons of pure water in its internal tank, while the smallest held 4 million tons.
This meant that the pure water tanks alone had diameters ranging from 200 to 300 meters.
This wasn’t actually a huge problem. For simple transportation, Li Qingsong could have easily disassembled them, storing the components and the pure water separately. It wouldn’t have been difficult.
However, getting them to operate during the migratory voyage was a different, more troublesome matter.
This was because neutrino telescopes have a crucial characteristic: they must be shielded from all other types of radiation as much as possible. Only the highly penetrative neutrinos can be allowed to pass through for detection to be successful.
On a planet, Li Qingsong had achieved this shielding by building them deep underground, relying on thick layers of rock.
But in space, what could Li Qingsong use for shielding?
While spaceship armor certainly offered excellent radiation resistance, how thick would it need to be to match the shielding effect of several kilometers of rock?
It was important to remember that the shielding requirements for a neutrino telescope were far stricter than those for a living organism. The slightest interference would render the entire instrument useless.
After some thought, Li Qingsong decided to build an unprecedentedly massive spherical spaceship.
The radius of this spherical spaceship was 1.7 kilometers. This meant its widest point—its diameter—was only 3.4 kilometers. This might not sound like much, but it was actually larger than the biggest Space-Air Carrier.
A Space-Air Carrier was only 6 kilometers in length and width, with a height of just 600 meters.
The internal volume of a Space-Air Carrier was approximately 18 cubic kilometers, whereas this spherical Scientific Research Vessel boasted an internal volume of a staggering 20.5 cubic kilometers!
Its total mass also surpassed that of a fully loaded Space-Air Carrier, reaching around 500 million tons.
Li Qingsong placed the main structure of the neutrino telescope—the pure water tank with its extremely high demand for radiation shielding—at the core of this massive spherical ship. He then designed the vessel to function as a cargo freighter.
This way, surrounding the core water tank in every direction, there would be approximately 1.4 kilometers of armor, isolation layers, equipment, and most importantly, various materials with excellent anti-radiation properties, such as gold, silver, copper, iron, chemicals, and so on.
By using the cargo itself as a shielding layer, he created a sufficiently pristine environment for the neutrino telescope at the core, allowing it to function normally even in the vacuum of space.
Since there were 16 neutrino telescopes, Li Qingsong had to build 16 of these spherical freighters. Furthermore, because the telescopes varied in size, operational goals, and detection orientation, each of these spherical freighters required a custom design.
With the neutrino telescope problem solved, the next challenge was the Particle Colliders.
Here, Li Qingsong once again ran into some difficulties.
Particle Colliders came in two shapes: annular and linear. The annular ones were relatively straightforward—at worst, he could just build a ring-shaped spaceship for them.
The linear Particle Colliders, however, were much harder to deal with.
They were simply too long.
The longest one measured a staggering 30 kilometers!
Until now, the largest ship Li Qingsong had ever built was merely 6 kilometers long. This was a fivefold increase in length.
But there was no other choice.
It could be disassembled for transport, but when it was time for it to operate, it couldn’t just be left exposed to interstellar space while traveling at a fraction of the speed of light, could it?
A ship had to be built to house it.
Having no alternative, Li Qingsong had to design a "bamboo pole" shaped spaceship. He equipped it with its own power and defenses, and even included equipment rooms, observation decks, a Supercomputing Base, and personnel support facilities to fully contain the Particle Collider.
Because the ship was so long and thin, its Thrust Devices required a special design. The propulsive force had to be kept perfectly uniform.
A normal ship, with its robust mechanical structure, could handle slight inconsistencies in thruster output; the strength of the hull would compensate for the issue.
But if the thrusters on this "bamboo pole" ship were even slightly out of sync, it might just snap in half.
After a long series of tests, modifications, and more, Li Qingsong finally solved the problem, but not without considerable effort.
The annular colliders, by comparison, were far less trouble.
With the colliders dealt with, the next item on the list was the Gravitational Wave Detector.
The Gravitational Wave Detector was even more problematic than the Particle Colliders.
The Particle Colliders were either linear or annular, making their structures relatively simple. The Gravitational Wave Detector, however, was L-shaped.
It had a horizontal arm and a vertical arm. Both arms were several kilometers long but were connected at only a single point.
Traditional Gravitational Wave Detectors don’t actually require arms; a few Laser emitters connected by laser beams are sufficient.
However, through his extensive research, Li Qingsong had gradually discovered that to increase detection accuracy to the required level, even the vacuum of interstellar space was insufficient. He needed to use artificial means to create an even higher vacuum.
This necessitated a tube to connect the Laser emitters.
Only a physical tube could maintain the extremely high internal vacuum needed for the Laser to travel without any interference, thus achieving maximum precision.
These two tubular arms had to maintain a perfect 90-degree angle and could not warp in any way. Any deformation would have a massive impact on detection accuracy.
This massive, fragile Detector was a real headache for Li Qingsong. After testing dozens of methods, he finally settled on a right-triangle-shaped ship design. He mounted the two perpendicular tubular arms along the two legs of the right-triangular ship, finally solving the transportation problem for the Gravitational Wave Detector.
Once he had solved the environmental and transportation challenges for these most difficult large-scale scientific instruments, the rest, while still extremely complex, were much easier to handle.
And so, one after another, massive custom-built ships emerged from the shipyards. High-temperature labs, high-pressure labs, telescope arrays, radio telescopes, and more were all moved aboard their respective vessels.
Now, the originally allotted 30-year period was just a few months from its end.
Li Qingsong’s fleet was fully prepared, ready to set sail at a moment’s notice.
’Before I go, I should leave you all a little surprise,’ Li Qingsong thought, issuing another command.