Chapter 19: The Final Preparations Before Entering the Shelter
The Federation’s proud missile defense system’s ability to intercept the meteors is unknown to Chen Xin; he only knows that this time, nine times out of ten, the meteor is really going to come down.
Although the female host on TV, who was excitedly talking about Lucia’s spacecraft guiding nuclear missiles to destroy the meteor, is still trying to maintain her composure while saying the same thing, her expression has now become very serious, even with a hint of tension and panic.
After all, more than twenty nuclear missiles were originally prepared for a meteor with a diameter of four kilometers. Although there was a suspicion of overkill, it was enough to block the meteor’s impact.
But now, Lucia’s task with more than twenty nuclear missiles remains to intercept the meteor. However, the target they need to intercept has changed from one four-kilometer-diameter meteor to three five-kilometer-diameter meteors, and these three meteors are under gravitational pull, moving in a chaotic three-body motion, dramatically increasing the difficulty of the interception mission.
In this situation, even if Chen Xin’s knowledge of astronomy is not very professional, he feels that the chance of Lucia successfully intercepting all three meteors is slim.
They might be able to knock out one or two, but taking out all three is incredibly difficult for the Lucia responsible for guiding the nuclear missiles at this moment.
In the previous broadcast, to boost public confidence in this nuclear interception, the host specifically explained that the trajectory of all the nuclear missiles had been calculated and adjusted to ensure that all the nuclear missiles could arrive at the interception point at roughly the same time, and then be terminally guided by Lucia’s spacecraft to achieve a one-time precise hit.
But this also meant that Lucia could only aim, and then launch all the nuclear missiles in one wave.