Volume 20 Chapter 128 The Iron Empire with Incomplete Technical System

"Didn't you say this thing can lose weight? Why do I hold it so heavily in my hand?"

"The air magic stone will only generate upward lift only if it inputs energy. Of course, you will not react when you just hold a magic stone."

"So that's it." I nodded and asked, "Is this thing consumed a lot of energy?"

"It should be said that it is very low. Anyway, it saves energy compared to the flight methods 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 buoyancy immediately, but will slowly reduce buoyancy. The single-player reconnaissance flight suit we made before was made. Suddenly the magic crystal stone exploded. After that, the flight props that lost power did not fall directly, but glided slowly to the ground. The test pilot had nothing to do with it."

I heard this muscular man say it’s good, but I’m not a layman, so it’s not easy to fool. “You said that this thing will slowly lose buoyancy when it loses energy supply, which means there are signs of incomplete energy circulation inside this thing. Can I understand that this thing is also slow to start?”

The muscular man immediately admitted when he heard what I said: "But it is. The biggest disadvantage of this air magic stone is that it takes a little longer to start the start time. It usually takes seven or eight minutes in advance before it can fly. Moreover, the lift will not reach the maximum value in an instant, but will slowly increase little by little."

"This thing is quite stable!"

"It's a pity that it's too stable, so the military purpose is not very large."

"Who said?" I shook in front of him with the air magic stone: "You have misunderstood how to use the air magic stone from the beginning."

The old man who hadn't spoken much before immediately retorted after hearing my accusations that they used it inappropriately: "Who said our method is inappropriate? Isn't it just a method to use it to rely on the buoyancy of the air magic stone to make the props fly? Can you use other methods?"

"No, since the air magic stone can generate buoyancy, it is natural to use this buoyancy. But you also know that this thing is too slow to charge or release energy, so the flexibility in the air must be very bad. Such things cannot be used for military purposes at all, otherwise they will only become a living target flying in the air. But why don't you think about using other powers to provide motor power? Adjust the weight of the aircraft and the buoyancy of the air magic stone to the same size, so that the overall aircraft will enter a false weightless state. If you can rely on the thruster to adjust the direction of advance and the flight altitude, don't you need to control the air magic stone?"

"Huh? This is also a solution! Why didn't we expect it?" The old man was stunned by me, and the muscular man next to him also thought about it. Obviously, they were all considering the feasibility of this method. Of course, this method itself is very feasible, so they quickly figured it out. Use the air magic stone to fight gravity, and the rest rely on other propulsion methods to provide power. In that case, the technical difficulty is not very high. And the most important point is that such a vehicle will obtain unrivaled maneuverability of pure air magic stone powered aircraft, and this is the biggest disadvantage of the air magic stone powered aircraft.

The old man who got the new method of using it was excited and almost ran to do the experiment on the spot. Fortunately, he was pulled by the muscular man. Later, after the persuasion of his assistant, the muscular man and the fat man, he dismissed the plan to do the experiment first.

After watching the Air Magic Stone, I looked at other equipment in the equipment library with the muscular man, and found that the equipment of the Iron Empire seemed to be very dependent on magic crystals. Just as modern warfare is inseparable from various explosives and gasoline, the weapons of the Iron Empire are gone without magic crystals and a pile of scrap iron.

After visiting the equipment library, we continued to visit the city's living facilities and the legendary Imperial Library. However, it felt that the city was well built, but the Imperial Library was a bit disappointing. Although it sounded quite grand, after being shocked by Aisinger's library, the library here seemed to me just the size of a township library, which was incomparable to Aisinger's large library.

"How is it? Our Iron Empire's library is very powerful, right?" As the head of the technology department, the old man looked very proud of the library in front of him, but he did not notice that my expression was obviously not shocked.

Perhaps I saw that I was disdainful of the library and the fat man who had been keeping a low profile before suddenly spoke: "Just look at the library and the like. If you read all the books, please take President Zi Ri for several years and don't have to leave. I think we might as well go to the port to see our Iron Empire spaceship first? You can also have lunch on the boat."

Because the proposal was to look at the military department of the muscular man, the muscular man immediately began to support the fat man's suggestion. The old man seemed quite depressed and obviously was not very happy. However, two of the three guides present supported him, so he had to agree.

I heard before that I was going to visit a spaceship, and I immediately became excited. Speaking of which, the technology of the Iron Empire is not very special. I just compared the technology of our guild and roughly determined that the technical level of the Iron Empire is actually not much higher than ours. The only technologies that I value are basically concentrated on energy conversion. In addition to energy conversion technology, the only thing that the Iron Empire can interest me is the utilization technology of the air magic stone. Although the muscular man briefly introduced the mining and utilization methods of this air magic stone before, such an important technology cannot be calculated by just listening to it. It doesn’t count if you don’t actually look at it or even experience it yourself.

Because the airport is relatively far away, we did not walk over. Of course, this time the other party did not ask me to take a flatbed car again, but made me a pretty good automatic car. The shape of this car looks very similar to a European car, but it has no horse to pull, and it is driven entirely by its own power. In addition, the operation technology of this thing adheres to the usual style of the Iron Empire, just like the flatbed car before, it can be controlled with just one joystick.

When I took this automatic car to the outside of the airport, I found that the port was very interesting. In fact, this is not the simple airport 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 combination of stairs, through these stairs, you can enter the upper waiting area and lower area of ​​the port ground respectively.

The muscular man first took me to visit the lower area. The location of this place is much lower than the urban ground, but the space is also huge. Only one-third of the ports in the lower area are land, and the other two-thirds are water surface, with many ships docked on it. 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 all these ships have no masts, so they appear to be much lower than ordinary ships.

"Are these submarines?" Just a glance at the ship in front of me, I discovered their common characteristics. Sealed cabins, no masts, high-level propellers, and ship collision angles. If this thing is not a submarine, I really couldn't imagine why they had these settings.

Sure enough, the muscular man said with appreciation: "President Zi Ri is indeed a wise man. This is a submersible warship. It can directly attack the enemy underwater or surface to fight."

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

"Huh? Can you use other materials without wood?" asked the old man who had been depressed before because he was pulled out of the library.

"Can't metal be used? In terms of ductility and compressive resistance, it is also better for metal properties, right?"

"Use metal? What are you kidding?" the old man said disdainfully: "The structure of sea-surface ships is simple, and it can be made up for it with metal. The structure of the submarine itself is very complicated. If it is metal, the weight will increase by at least one-third. Can the submarine float?"

"But our guild's submarines are all made of metal

I feel very buoyant.”

"What? Do you really use metal to build submarines?" The old man thought at first that I was talking nonsense because he didn't understand, but when he heard me that our guild did have metal submarines, he immediately became uneasy. "You really have metal submarines?"

I nodded and said, "Of course, there are more than one. There is also one of them. Its size is almost as large as your port, so why isn't it still floating and rising and falling?"

“But it

How did you cast such a large hull?"

"Casting? Isn't it just casting that way?"

The old man knew that I didn't understand, so he quickly explained: "I asked you how to mold the hull. How to cast such a large hull at one time? Do you have a melting furnace that is even larger than the port? Besides, even if the casting is completed, how do you forge it?"

"Why do you need to make a mold in one go?" I asked in surprise: "Isn't it enough to cast separately?"

"Casted separately? Then are your submarines spliced ​​out?"

"Yes, is there any problem with this?"

"Don't your ship leak?"

"Leaking? Why does it leak?"

"But the metal is not as soft as wood, and the structure during casting cannot be too accurate. There must be gaps between the casting parts. How do you deal with these gaps?"

"The gap? Just weld it."

"Welding..." The old man looked at me in surprise and asked with a puzzled look on his face: "What is welding?"

"Don't you understand welding technology?"

"Welding technology?" the old man shook his head and asked, "What is this welding technology for? Is it specially plugged leaks?"

"It is not a special leak plug, but it can be used to plug the leak. To put it simply, welding technology is a technology to connect two pieces of metal into a whole piece. If your welding technology is good enough, the strength of the welding position can even exceed the parts cast at one time. However, the technical requirements in that situation are too high. We can generally only ensure that the welding point is slightly lower than the casting parts, which will not affect the use anyway."

"It's really incredible that there is such a technology!" The old man kept sighing after hearing my introduction to welding technology, but I felt that it was nothing. First, the welding technology itself is not a particularly exaggerated thing, and second, our guild has been used for it for a long time and has been used to it.

After observing the appearance of several submarines at a distance, I proposed to go to the boat to see it. The muscular men knew that the purpose of taking me to visit this time was actually to cooperate with us, so I agreed very readily when I heard my request.

After boarding the ship, I found that these submarines were not as large as I imagined. Although the outside looks like the hull is not small, the hardness of the wood cannot be compared with that of metal. In order to ensure strength, the Iron Empire adopted the method of thickening the shell to meet the needs. The direct impact of this method is to occupy a large part of the internal space of the hull. The outside looks like the boat is very large, but after entering, you will find that the inside is actually very narrow.

The first thing we arrived at was the cab after we followed the suspension ladder. This design was similar to that of an ordinary submarine, but apart from this cab, there was almost no room for movement for people inside the submarine. Moving from the cab to the stern was a huge propulsion cabin. Apart from the huge mechanical body, there was only a narrow passage that could barely be squeezed through. People from the Iron Empire were thin and small. I could only stretch my head outside to see if I remembered that I would take off the armor.

The bow direction is slightly better than the stern of the boat, but it is also full of crowds. Ninety percent of the space on the bow is occupied by a bunch of giant compressors. Their main job is to control the floating and diving of the submarine. The remaining part of the space on the bow is the weapon compartment on the boat, but it is not a fish inside, but a weapon that surprised me very much.

"Is this thing a sonic cannon?" Although I didn't see the structure outside the boat, I recognized at a glance what principle the weapons on the boat used to work from the structural part inside the boat.

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

Everything has two sides. The warships in our guild are basically metal hulls, which are definitely much stronger than the ships of the Iron Empire in terms of strength, but metal has the advantages of metal, but wood also has the advantages of wood. This sonic weapon is fine when installed on the ship of the Iron Empire, but if it is installed on our ship, as long as the gun is fired, I don’t know if the enemy is in trouble. Our own ship will definitely disperse first. Metal is hard enough, but its ability to absorb vibration is too weak, compared to wood. The directional shock wave generated by the sound wave when the sound cannon is fired will cause high-frequency vibrations of the hull itself.

The ship itself is a soft connection, so the vibration will be consumed during the transmission process, but the iron ship will not work. This vibration will cause the hull to disintegrate due to resonance. Therefore, if we install a sonic cannon on a metal ship, we must first study how to remove the shock. However, at least we are still in a mid-blank state in this technology so far, so I am not interested in this sonic cannon. Besides, the sound waves are decayed very quickly, so the range is definitely not far away. For example, in our current naval battles, we always fight between seven or eight kilometers, and weapons like sound cannons that do not even have a range of 100 meters, are basically a decoration.

After interrupting the introduction of the muscular man, I took the initiative to ask to go to the power cabin for a walk, took off my armor, squeezed into the mechanical room under the guidance of the repairman on the ship, and then listened to the other party's introduction. According to the introduction of the repairman, I can conclude that the propeller of the Iron Empire uses a completely different propeller than our propeller.

The water thruster of our guild uses magic array technology, which relies on water magic to suck in water flow, then pressurize and spray out at high speed from the stern to generate propulsion force. In this process, there is no propeller or impeller running in the water, so it is much quieter than the general guild and very efficient, especially at high speed, it will not lose power due to the speed of the water flow itself. However, because the guild uses the guild does not have a propeller rotation mechanism, it cannot

It was changed to a land-based engine because it has no rotating components at all. In contrast, the thrusters of the Iron Empire are much behind. This kind of thruster uses propeller propulsion, which is very noisy and complex in structure, and the rotation shaft has to withstand huge torque when working, so the failure rate is quite high. However, the magic conversion furnace used by their thrusters is much more advanced than ours. This is obviously a special project of the Iron Empire. It seems that their technology will have obvious advantages as soon as it is involved in magic energy conversion.

After visiting the internal structure of the submarine, we returned to the shore to visit the submarine's outbound and return. This port is actually much lower than sea level, so it cannot directly connect to the sea water outside, otherwise the sea water will flow back and flood the port. The Iron Empire here used the same principle as the torpedo tube on the submarine. They built several thick pipes between the port and the sea water outside, and these pipes had sealed covers at both ends.

When the ship is about to go out, first adjust the water level in the pipeline to be level with the water level in the port, then drive the submarine into the pipeline and seal the sealing cover, then extract the air in the pipeline and pour water into the pipeline. After the pipeline is completely filled with water, open the sealing cover on the other side, and the submarine can directly enter the sea. When a submarine is about to return, turn this procedure backwards, so that the submarine can enter and exit the port without letting the sea water flow back.

After leaving the submarine port, we returned to the height of the city ground and visited the surface port here. The height of this port is equal to the sea level outside, so there is no need for a lock, and the ships can be directly allowed to enter and exit. Compared with the wooden submarine ports in the submarine port, the ships at the surface port look like many. 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 solved with some local methods. However, after the visit, I still felt that the ship technology of the Iron Empire was very bad. But thinking about their main range of activities is on land, and there are reef groups outside the island, so it is difficult to get out even if there are ships, so it is understandable that they do not pay attention to shipbuilding technology.

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

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Chapter completed!