Piling up all sorts of materials to create a Flying Star out of thin air would be like a fairy tale to an ordinary civilization—something they wouldn’t even dare to imagine.
The industrial and organizational capabilities it required were simply too immense.
And now, Li Qingsong had actually accomplished it.
Li Qingsong saw that due to its enormous mass, this planet, entirely man-made by him, had even begun to exhibit some characteristics of a large, natural celestial body.
This Flying Star already possessed a surface Gravity that could not be ignored.
At this moment, a Clone in a Space Suit, under Li Qingsong’s control, arrived on the planet’s surface.
He stood on top of a shipping container without any external assistance.
Normally, in the zero-gravity of space, any slight disturbance would have caused the Clone to fly off the planet.
But now, even as he walked continuously across the surface, he remained firmly held to it.
This was because the planet’s surface gravitational acceleration had reached about 5.31 millimeters per second squared, which was approximately 1/1800th of Earth’s Gravity!
The Clone moved forward. When faced with a chasm ahead—actually a gap between stacked shipping containers—he suddenly jumped.
The leap carried him over a dozen meters high. After flying across the chasm and reaching his apex, he began to fall back down at an acceleration of 5.31 millimeters per second squared, ultimately landing back on the planet’s surface instead of flying off into space.
This was because the planet’s escape velocity was about 23 meters per second.
Without reaching that speed, no matter how high the Clone jumped, he couldn’t escape the Flying Star’s gravitational field.
The Clone ran quickly across the planet’s surface, inspecting it as he went.
His running speed grew faster and faster, first five meters per second, then ten, then twelve. Now, he reached a speed of 18 meters per second.
Then, with another leap, the Clone’s body was left suspended about 30 meters above the Flying Star’s surface.
This time, he didn’t fall back down.
Because a speed of 18 meters per second was this planet’s orbital velocity.
Without any other interference, the Clone would forever orbit this Flying Star at 18 meters per second, completing one revolution in less than 5 hours, just like an artificial satellite orbiting Earth.
After circling the planet twice, the Clone activated the Thrust Device on his Space Suit and descended back to the surface.
Gravity is the weakest of the four fundamental forces.
Its strength is so low that an ordinary person can easily counteract it.
For instance, an ordinary person on Earth casually picks up a pen—a very common occurrence. But from the perspective of a gravitational field, this is an ordinary person using their own strength to effortlessly counteract the Gravity of an entire planet pulling on that pen.
This just goes to show how weak Gravity is.
And now, by piling up matter, he had actually created a gravitational field strong enough to affect macroscopic objects. The sensation filled Li Qingsong with a sense of wonder.
Li Qingsong even observed that, due to its own gravitational field, the Flying Star he created had formed an extremely thin "atmosphere."
Of course, it was only an atmosphere in the microscopic sense.
Some stray interstellar gases had been briefly drawn together by the Flying Star’s gravitational field, creating a higher density around the planet than in the surrounding space.
According to Li Qingsong’s calculations, the gas density on the planet’s surface was about twice that of the surrounding space, reaching approximately 20 atoms per cubic centimeter.
It would be wishful thinking to expect such a thin "atmosphere" to generate any significant atmospheric pressure. However, if one were to insist on calculating it, Li Qingsong had done so: the atmospheric pressure on the planet’s surface was approximately 10^-32 pascals, or about 1/10^37th of Earth’s atmospheric pressure.
However, another indicator was far more significant.
After traveling through a passage to the core of the Flying Star, the Clone controlled by Li Qingsong felt a distinct atmospheric pressure.
Due to the planet’s own Gravity, the materials composing it exerted an inward compressive force. As a result, the gas at the planet’s core was compressed, creating an atmospheric pressure about half that of Earth’s.
An atmospheric pressure of this level was already sufficient to support human life.
And so, inside a chamber at the planet’s core, the Clone removed his Space Suit and began breathing, sustained entirely by the "natural" atmospheric pressure.
Li Qingsong had him look up and see the long, deep tunnel, the layer upon layer of stacked shipping containers, large tanks, and more.
A peculiar feeling arose within him.
’Over two hundred trillion tons of matter, relying on the Gravity from its own mass in this zero-gravity space, has actually squeezed out an area with stable atmospheric pressure. How marvelous...’
Switching his perspective to another Clone, Li Qingsong looked down from on high at the Flying Star before him, his heart filled with emotion.
’So this is the extent of my industrial power when I go all out...’
’A real, honest-to-goodness planet. A completely man-made planet that’s in no way inferior to natural asteroids, not even the larger ones...’
The mass that made up this planet consisted almost entirely of the various materials Li Qingsong needed.
It wasn’t like an ordinary asteroid or large planet, where the vast majority of the mass was unusable.
For example, to smelt steel, Li Qingsong would need to mine iron ore, put it through a series of complex refining procedures, and ultimately discard up to two-thirds of the ore’s mass to extract the steel he needed.
The same was true for other minerals.
Those discarded "impurities" were just trash to Li Qingsong. Not only were they useless, but separating them also required enormous amounts of energy and numerous industrial facilities.
But on this Flying Star, every single mineral stored here had already been purified and smelted, existing mostly as pure elements and alloys.
Gases like hydrogen, protium, oxygen, and nitrogen had also been purified and separated in advance. All sorts of components had already been manufactured and stored, ready to be used directly when needed, without any further processing.
Even if Li Qingsong were to fully exploit a natural planet, the maximum usable mass he could obtain would not exceed 10% of the planet’s total; the other 90% would have to be discarded.
But this Flying Star, built specifically according to Li Qingsong’s will, was composed entirely of mass he could use—and use with extreme convenience. Not a single bit would be wasted!
Now, the "luggage" for this long voyage was ready.
It was time to pack it all up.