Vol 3. Chapter 8: Elven Mystic Eyes (Presumed)
This world is incredibly vast.
Based on the reconnaissance range of light-powered scout planes like Swift, <Ringo> had determined that this planet was significantly larger than Earth.
The recent rocket launch had further improved the precision of that information.
The planet’s diameter was estimated at roughly 20,000 km. For a fully accurate measurement, an artificial satellite would be necessary, but based on ground-based calculations and observations, it was projected to fall somewhere between 21,000 and 22,000 km.
If we assume a diameter of 21,500 km, that would mean an equatorial circumference of 67,500 km, and a surface area of 1.45 billion square kilometers. For reference, Earth’s circumference is about 40,000 km, and its surface area is 500 million square kilometers. That makes this world about 1.7 times wider and 2.9 times larger in surface area.
And without functioning satellites, exploring a planet nearly three times Earth’s size was proving to be an overwhelming challenge.
That’s why even exploration of the Northern Continent was progressing slowly.
Especially in the case of the Forest Kingdom of Levresta, they hadn’t made any meaningful attempts at all. Part of it was an effort to avoid violating Levresta’s airspace—but practically speaking, they had almost no information to go on.
Priority had instead been given to mapping the territory of the United Kingdom of Aphracea.
There was also the simple fact that there weren’t many high-altitude reconnaissance planes available to begin with.
The Swift aircraft were being used primarily as communications relay platforms, so very few were allocated for scouting purposes. The newly deployed high-altitude drones also prioritized microwave relay functions and weren’t structurally suited for surveillance.
“Still, now that our resource output is increasing, I’d like to put more effort into intelligence gathering.”