What the hell is a private enterprise?

Chapter 529 Detecting Gravitational Waves?
The Empire's economic weekly and the tech world were booming, celebrating the discovery of a huge market, and McDonnell Douglas also made a small appearance during this period:
Following the successful maiden flight of the first MD.11G, McDonnell Douglas announced that the modified aircraft had corrected all obvious defects and undergone hundreds of optimizations, and was confident in its ability to market it to the global market.

At this time, in addition to the two aircraft in Qiongzhou, China Eastern Airlines, Air China, and China Southern Airlines also began to place orders, directly dividing up the expected 100 aircraft capacity.

Although these are not actual orders yet, they have given other countries that are watching the situation somewhat confidence that McDonnell Douglas is finally showing signs of emerging from the shadow of the merger.

But beneath the vibrant facade lies Prism Building working tirelessly for 48 hours straight.

All the important scientists in the United States who were involved with relativity, especially those who had studied wormholes, were summoned to the Prism Building.

This still attracted some attention from the outside world, but the official explanation was that the Empire was working on a new particle collider project and it was reasonable to summon scientists.

These anomalies did not arouse suspicion, but instead drew cheers from the physics community.

But this is not the case for top scholars.

After a thorough and repeated investigation, the possibility that the monitoring lines were compromised by hackers or replaced internally was ruled out.

Meanwhile, Navy, disguised as a submarine cable company, conducted an on-site investigation and confirmed the disappearance of the Birmingham.

Furthermore, based on the passive sonar records previously deployed in the surrounding area, they were able to determine from the faint fluctuations that an unknown submarine had passed by.

This was all the information the navy could obtain, and through analysis of the still photographs, experts concluded that the siltation was obstructing the view:
If the Birmingham were to suddenly move from the seabed to another location, the resulting cavity would be instantly filled by the surrounding seawater, causing the water flow to stir up the surrounding silt.

Of course, this speculation is based on the premise that the Birmingham really "disappeared suddenly." In reality, creating turbulence wouldn't be too difficult, so this is just the most far-fetched possibility.

But the most important issue now is figuring out where the Birmingham went:
"All GPS signals have been lost. Of course, we can't receive them when it's underwater either. We can only say that at least now the Birmingham is in a place where GPS is not covered, or in the deep sea, or in some kind of shielding facility."

Of course, Bin's backup plan included more than just GPS. It also included an automatic signal transmitter hidden in the outer layer of the nuclear reactor at great expense. It would obtain depth information through the safety devices of the reactor and the outer shell. Once it surfaced again, it would detonate explosives to break through the outer shell and launch cables as antennas to transmit long-wave signals. These signals could be received by the Empire's long-wave radio stations from anywhere on Earth.

Several longwave monitoring stations have been keeping a constant watch since the HMS Birmingham was confirmed missing, but there has been no news yet.

However, Gross, with his sunken eyes, seemed to have expected this:
"First of all, the Lost Empire would definitely take into account that nuclear submarines already have a lot of security measures and will deploy shielding devices accordingly. In addition, wormhole space may also shield them."

Wormholes are distorted portions of spacetime, where conventional laws of physics may fail, and it's normal for them to suppress electromagnetic signals.

What can we do?

Johnson asked:
"First, we really want to know how to master wormholes. Second, and most importantly, we need to confirm that Hans has indeed mastered wormholes, and their exact locations."

“I know, gravitational waves,” another physicist, Edward Witten, stepped forward to explain:
"Whether it's a wormhole or not, suddenly teleporting an item away will definitely involve spacetime fluctuations and will generate gravitational waves. As long as we monitor the gravitational wave fluctuations, we can know whether a wormhole has been created or is functioning, and then we can find a way to locate it."

Gross: "You mean LIGO?"

Since Einstein proposed the hypothesis that gravity is caused by the curvature of spacetime and proposed gravitational waves, the scientific community has been debating the existence of gravitational waves. Finally, in 91, Caltech and MIT collaborated to start the construction of the first gravitational wave observatory (LIGO) based on laser technology.

Discovering gravitational waves is no easy task. Calculations show that the gravitational waves generated by the Earth's orbit around the Sun have a power of only 200 watts (yes, watts). Listening to them requires extremely high-precision equipment; otherwise, even if they exist, they cannot be heard.

Construction of LIGO began in 92, and the design and construction are still being adjusted this year. It is expected to be put into use in 99.

Witten's idea is to have the federal government fund the project to accelerate its deployment and use.

When the topic of gravitational waves came up, these cutting-edge scholars immediately launched into a heated discussion, the content of which far exceeded the Prism Building's comprehension, forcing Johnson to stop them:

"Gentlemen, funding is a minor issue. I just want to know if there's a solution using only gravitational wave antennas?"

"Yes, that's it."

All the scholars nodded in agreement, and Johnson, without asking any further questions, politely asked these men of extraordinary knowledge to leave.

Rams, who had calmly witnessed the whole thing, finally stood up and gave Wayne an order:
“We must proactively obtain information. The C2 anti-aircraft tower must be breached immediately at a speed the enemy cannot imagine, kill everyone, and then search for information in the ruins. If we delay any longer, we may really have nothing left.”

"But if we encounter a swarm of aircraft again... our F100 unmanned wingman is still under development, and pilots are unwilling to go head-to-head with the vacuum tubes and risk their lives."

Wayne looked troubled, but Rams immediately told him:
"Then let's keep increasing the allowances and subsidies. The Empire doesn't care about your casualty figures; the Empire only wants wormhole technology!"

Even now, Rams doesn't really believe in the mystical "wormholes," but he does see an opportunity in them:
Moving a submarine from one place to another, does that, in turn, mean that the Empire's army can be deployed anywhere instantly?
If the Empire were to master this technology, it would be a hundred times more powerful than the Mushroom Egg, and only then would the Empire truly control every corner of the Earth.

The empire's strength is undeniable, but it is all built on two navies built at enormous cost. Without them, it can only retreat to the continent and continue playing the isolationist game.

If we can master space teleportation, it wouldn't be unreasonable to reduce the size of the navy by two-thirds. How much money can we save?
Even if we spend $1000 billion on space teleportation research, it's only half of last year's military spending, which is incredibly cost-effective. We can save at least the same amount every year in the future.

More than the worried physicists, Rams hoped that this technology actually existed.

The losses suffered in the South Mei were simply a matter of cost-effectiveness, caused by timidity. Now, with the golden words of Acting President Rams, the generals can deal with the pressure of casualties without restraint.

Just kidding, when has the Empire ever been afraid of dead people?
On the surface, Wayne still insisted that Charles implement the step-by-step strategy and mobilize air defense equipment to Pakistan, but in reality, he was secretly planning a surprise attack!
(End of this chapter)