Volume 20 Chapter 128 The Iron Empire with an Incomplete Technical System

Full text, no ads, Volume 20, Chapter 128: The Iron Empire with an Incomplete Technical System

"Didn't you say this thing can help you lose weight? Why does it feel so heavy in my hand?"

"The air magic stone can only generate upward lift when energy is input. Of course it won't react if you just hold a piece of magic stone. [ ]"

"I see." I nodded and asked, "Does this thing consume a lot of energy?"

"It should be said that it is very low. Anyway, it saves energy compared to the flying method we used before, and the most important thing is that the flying props made of magic stones are very safe, because even if the energy input is stopped, it will not lose its buoyancy immediately. Instead, it will slowly reduce the buoyancy. Previously, the single-person reconnaissance flying suit we made was flying well in the sky and suddenly the magic crystal exploded. After that, the flying prop that lost power did not fall directly, but glided to the ground slowly and tried to fly. There’s nothing wrong with the staff.”

It's true what this muscular man said, but I'm not a layman, so it's not easy to fool me. "You said that this thing will slowly lose buoyancy when it loses energy supply, which means that there are signs of incomplete energy circulation inside this thing. Then can I understand that this thing starts very slowly?"

The muscular man immediately admitted after hearing my words: "Yes. The biggest disadvantage of this air magic stone is that the startup time is a bit long. Generally, it needs to start charging seven or eight minutes in advance before it can fly, and the lift is not achieved instantly. The maximum value will slowly increase bit by bit."

"This thing is quite stable!"

"Unfortunately, it is too stable, so it is not of great military use."

"Who said that?" I waved the air magic stone in front of him and said, "You have made a mistake in how to use the air magic stone from the beginning."

The old man who had not spoken much before heard my accusation that their method of use was inappropriate and immediately retorted: "Who said our method is inappropriate? Isn't it the method of use to rely on the buoyancy of the air magic stone to make the props fly? Is there any other way you can use it?"

"No, since the air magic stone can produce buoyancy, it is natural to use this buoyancy. But you yourself also know that this thing is too slow to charge or release energy, so the aerial flexibility must be very bad. Like this Things cannot be used for military purposes at all, otherwise they will just become living targets flying in the air. But why don't you think about using other power sources to provide maneuverability? Adjust the weight of the aircraft and the buoyancy of the air magic stone to the same size, so that the entire aircraft enters a state of false weightlessness. At this time, if you can rely on the thrusters to adjust the direction and flight height, wouldn't you need to control the air magic stone?"

"Huh? This is a way! Why didn't we think of it?" The old man was stunned when I said it, and the muscular man next to him also started thinking about it. Obviously, they were also considering the feasibility of this method. Of course, the method itself was very feasible, so they figured it out quickly. Use air magic stone to fight gravity, and rely on other propulsion methods to provide power for the rest. In that case, the technical difficulty is not very high, and the most important point is that such an aircraft will be unrivaled by pure air magic stone powered aircraft. mobility, and this is the biggest drawback of air magic stone powered aircraft.

The old man who got the new method was so excited that he almost ran to do the experiment on the spot. Fortunately, he was stopped by the muscular man. Later, after the persuasion of his assistant, the muscular man and the fat man, he gave up the plan to do the experiment first. .

After looking at the Air Materia, I looked at the other equipment in the equipment library with Muscular Man. It turned out that the equipment of the Iron Empire seemed to be highly dependent on Materia, just like modern warfare is inseparable from various kinds of equipment. Explosives are the same as gasoline. Without the magic crystal, the weapons of the Iron Empire are just a pile of scrap metal.

After visiting the equipment depot, we then visited the living facilities in the city and the legendary Imperial Library. However, we felt that the city's construction was okay, but the Imperial Library was a bit disappointing. Although this imperial library sounds quite grand, after being shocked by Essinger's library, in my opinion, the library here is only the size of a township library, which is basically the same as Essinger's large library. There's no comparison.

"How's it going? The library in our Iron Empire is great, isn't it?" As the head of the technical department, the old man looked quite proud of the library in front of him, but he didn't notice that my expression didn't look shocked at all. . Full text without ads

Probably seeing my disdain for the library, the fat man who had kept a low profile before suddenly said: "Just take a look at the library. If you look through all the books in the collection, you won't have to leave for several years." Yes. I think we should go to the port first and take a look at our Iron Empire’s spaceship? We can also have lunch on the ship by the way."

Because the suggestion was made by the military department that the muscular man was in charge of, the muscular man immediately began to support the fat man’s suggestion. The intellectual old man looked quite depressed, obviously not very happy, but two of the three guides present supported him. I had no choice but to agree.

I heard that I wanted to visit the spaceship before, and I immediately became excited. Speaking of which, Iron Empire's technology is actually not very special. I just compared it with the technology of my guild and roughly determined that Iron Empire's technical level is not much higher than ours. The only few technologies that I value are basically basic. They all focus on the aspect of energy conversion, and apart from energy conversion technology, the only thing that interests me about Iron Empire is the technology for utilizing air magic stones. Although the muscular man briefly introduced the mining and utilization of this air magic stone before, such an important technology cannot be completed by just hearing about it. It does not count without actually seeing it or even experiencing it personally.

Since the airport is quite far away, we did not walk there. Of course, this time the other party did not let me take a flatbed truck but got me a pretty good automatic car. The shape of this car is very similar to a European carriage, but it has no horses to pull it and runs entirely on its own power. In addition, the operating technology of this thing adheres to the consistent style of the Iron Empire. Just like the previous flatbed car, it can be controlled with just one joystick. .

When I took this automatic car and arrived outside the airport, I found this port very interesting. In fact, this is not a simple airport as I imagined, but a multi-functional hybrid port. Although it is located underground, the space at the port is quite huge. At the entrance of the port is a large set of stairs, through which you can enter the upper waiting area and lower area on the port ground.

The muscular man first took me to visit the lower area. This place is much lower than the city ground, but the space is still huge. Only one-third of the ports in the lower area are land, and the other two-thirds are water, with many ships docked on them. However, these ships are obviously different from ordinary ships, because their decks are very narrow, and the size of these ships is not very large. Another strange thing is that these ships have no masts, so they appear lower than ordinary ships. Much shorter.

"Are these submarines?" I just glanced at the ships in front of me and discovered their common features. Sealed cabin, no mast, high-mounted propeller, and roof collision angle. If this thing is not a submarine, I really can't imagine why they have these settings.

Sure enough, the muscular man said with appreciation: "President Ziri is indeed a sensible person. This is a submarine warship. It can directly attack the enemy underwater, and can also surface to fight."

I nodded to show my understanding, and then asked, "But why do you want to build a submarine out of wood?"

"Eh? If you don't use wood, how can you use other materials?" The old man who had been unhappy because he was pulled out of the library asked.

"Can't we use metal? In terms of ductility and pressure resistance, metal has better properties, right?"

"Use metal? Are you kidding me?" the old man said disdainfully: "The structure of ships on the sea is simple, and metal can be used to make do. The structure of the submarine itself is very complicated. If it is made of metal, the weight will increase by at least one-third. This submarine floats Get up?"

"But the submarines in our guild are all made of metal.

I feel very buoyant. "

"What? Are you really making submarines out of metal?" The old man thought at first that I was talking nonsense because he didn't understand, but when I said that our guild does have metal submarines, he immediately lost his composure. "Do you really have a metal submarine?"

I nodded and said: "Of course, and there are more than one. There is also a diving mothership, which is almost as big as your port. Isn't it still floating and sinking freely?"

"But it can

How did you cast such a large hull? "

"Casting? Isn't that just casting?"

The old man knew that I didn't understand, so he quickly explained: "I'm asking you how to shape the hull. How can you cast such a large hull at once? Do you have a smelting furnace bigger than the port? Besides, even if the casting is completed, you How to forge it?"

"Why do they need to be molded at once?" I asked in surprise: "Can't they be cast separately?"

"Cast separately? Then is your submarine spliced ​​together?"

"Yeah, what's the problem with this?"

"Isn't your boat leaking?"

"Leaking? Why is it leaking?"

"But metal is not as soft as wood, and the structure during the casting process cannot be too precise. There will definitely be gaps between the castings. How do you deal with these gaps?"

"The gap? Just weld it and it'll be fine."

"Welding...?" The old man looked at me in surprise and asked, "What is welding?"

"Don't you know how to weld?"

"Welding technology?" The old man shook his head and asked, "What does this welding technology do? Is it specifically used to plug leaks?"

"It's not specifically designed to plug leaks, but it can be used to plug leaks. To put it simply, welding technology is a technology that connects two pieces of metal into a whole piece. If your welding technology is good enough, the strength of the welded position can even exceed that of one-time casting. The parts come out. However, the technical requirements in that case are too high, and we can generally only ensure that the strength of the welded joints is slightly lower than that of the castings, but it does not affect the use anyway."

"It's incredible that there is such a technology!" The old man kept sighing after hearing my introduction about welding technology, but I didn't think it was anything. The welding technology itself is not a particularly exaggerated thing. Secondly, our guild has been using it for a long time and we have long been used to it.

After observing the appearance of several submarines from a distance, I asked to go inside and take a look. Muscular Man and the others all knew that the purpose of showing me around this time was actually to cooperate with us, so they were very happy to hear my request. I agreed.

After boarding the ship, I discovered that these submarines were actually not as big as I thought. Although the hull does not seem to be small from the outside, since the hardness of wood cannot be compared with metal, in order to ensure the strength, Steel Empire adopted a method of thickening the shell to meet the needs, and the direct impact of this method is to The interior space of the hull occupies a large area. The boat looks very big from the outside, but once inside, you will find that it is actually very narrow inside.

The first thing we arrived at after entering the boat along the hanging ladder was the driver's cab. The design is similar to that of an ordinary submarine, but apart from the driver's cab, there is almost no room for movement inside the submarine. Going from the cockpit to the stern of the ship is the huge propulsion cabin. Apart from the huge mechanical body, there is only a narrow passage that can barely allow people to squeeze through. For example, it doesn't matter if people from the Iron Empire are thin and small. If I'm wearing armor like this, I can only stick my head out and take a look. If I want to remove it, I have to take off the armor.

The bow direction is slightly better than the stern direction, but it is also very crowded. 90% of the entire bow space is occupied by a bunch of giant compressors. Their main job is to control the submarine's ascent and descent. The remaining 10% of the space on the bow is the ship's weapons bay, but it is not filled with fish, but a weapon that surprises me.

"Could this thing be a sonic cannon?" Although I didn't see the outer structure of the boat, I could recognize at a glance the working principle of the weapons on the ship from the structure inside the ship.

When the muscular man saw that I guessed that this thing was a sonic cannon, he immediately wanted to give me a detailed introduction, but I interrupted him before he could open his mouth, because I didn't want to know the specific properties of this thing at all, and the reason was ——The ships in our guild are all made of metal.

Everything has two sides. The warships in our guild are basically metal hulls. In terms of sturdiness, they are definitely much stronger than the ships of the Iron Empire. However, metal has advantages, but wood also has advantages. Advantages of wood. This sonic weapon is fine if it is installed on the Iron Empire's ship, but if it is installed on our ship, as soon as the cannon is fired, I don't know if the enemy will be fine or not. Our own ship will definitely be scattered first. Metal is hard enough, but its ability to absorb vibrations is too weak. In comparison, wood is much better. The directional shock wave generated when the sonic cannon is fired will cause high-frequency vibrations in the hull itself. The wooden ship itself is a soft connection, so the vibration will be consumed during the transmission process, but the same cannot be done with the iron ship. This vibration will cause the hull to It will disintegrate due to resonance, so if we install a sonic cannon on a metal ship, we must first study how to eliminate the shock. However, at least so far, we are still in a semi-blank state in terms of technology in this area, so I am a little interested in this sonic cannon. nor. Besides, sound waves attenuate very quickly, so the range is definitely not far away. In our current naval battles, we often bombard each other from seven to eight kilometers away. Weapons like sonic cannons that don’t even have a range of 100 meters are basically a decoration.

After interrupting the muscular man's introduction, I took the initiative to go to the power cabin for a walk. After taking off my armor, I squeezed into the mechanical room under the leadership of the ship's maintenance workers, and then listened to the other party's introduction. Based on the repairman's introduction, I can conclude that the Iron Empire's thrusters use a completely different propulsion method from ours.

The guild's underwater propeller uses magic array technology, which relies on water magic to suck in water, then pressurizes it, and sprays it out from the stern at high speed to generate propulsion. In this process, there are no propellers or impellers in the water. operation, so it is much quieter than ordinary propellers and is very efficient. Especially at high speeds, power will not be lost due to the speed of the water flow itself. However, precisely because the propeller from Atlantis used by our guild does not have a propeller rotating mechanism, it cannot be converted into a land-based engine because it has no rotating parts at all. In comparison, Iron Empire's thrusters lag far behind. This kind of propeller still uses a propeller for propulsion, which is noisy, has a complex structure, and the rotating shaft has to withstand huge torque when working, so the failure rate is quite high. However, the magic conversion furnace used in their thrusters is much more advanced than ours. This is obviously the specialty of the Iron Empire. It seems that their technology will have obvious advantages as long as it touches the conversion of magic energy.

After visiting the internal structure of the submarine, we returned to the shore to visit the submarine's voyage and return. This port is actually much lower than sea level, so it cannot be directly connected to the outside seawater, otherwise the seawater will pour back and flood the port. Iron Empire uses the same principle as the torpedo tubes on submarines here. They built several thick pipes between the port and the sea outside, with sealing caps on both ends. When a ship wants to go out, first adjust the water level in the pipe to be equal to the water level in the port, then drive the submarine into the pipe and close the sealing cover, then extract the air in the pipe and inject water into the pipe, wait until the pipe is completely After being filled with water and then opening the sealing cover on the other side, the submarine can sail directly into the sea. When a submarine is about to return, this procedure is reversed, so as to ensure that the submarine enters and exits the port without allowing sea water to pour back.

After leaving the submarine port, we returned to the height of the city ground, and then visited the surface port here. The height of this port is the same as the sea level outside, so ships can enter and exit directly without locks. Compared with the wooden-hulled submarines in the submarine port, the ships in the surface port look like many more. Metal ships are the mainstream ships here. Because there is no water pressure problem, the sealing of surface ships is much simpler than that of submarines. Even if the Iron Empire does not have welding technology, it can be done with some homespun methods. However, after visiting it, I still felt that the ship technology of Iron Empire was terrible. But considering that their main range of activities is on land, and there are reefs outside the island, it is difficult to get out even with a boat, so it is understandable that they do not pay attention to shipbuilding technology.

After visiting the surface port, we returned to the entrance and entered the airport area on the upper level of the port from the spiral staircase at the beginning. This is the area where the spaceship I want to see the most is located. I don’t know what the spaceship of the Iron Empire is. Looks like, I hope their spaceship is not just a flying sea ship.

!x-on:#

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