From a purely hull perspective, the hull of a 30,000-ton civilian ship is at best a bit troublesome and requires a larger investment, but technically speaking, there are no problems.
Even building a civilian ship of 30,000 tons is technically simpler than building a battleship of more than 10,000 tons, and it is much simpler.
Currently, the empire is capable of building 10,000-ton passenger ships, and there are at least a dozen shipyards for cargo ships, and there are even more shipyards. As long as they are given money, they can immediately complete technological upgrades and start construction.
However, there are only three shipyards in the empire that can undertake orders for large naval warships, that is, armored cruisers and battleships!
Hong Kong Dingsheng Shipyard, Jiangnan Shipyard, Qingdao Naval Shipyard, nothing else!
Even those cruisers, frigates, and even offshore patrol ships of several hundred tons in the Navy have high construction technical standards. Many shipyards can build passenger ships of 10,000 tons, but they still cannot undertake the construction of a thousand-ton passenger ship for the Navy.
tons of frigate orders.
Even for cruisers of more than 2,000 tons, there are not many shipyards qualified to build them today, and most of them are shipyards controlled by the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises and the Royal Assets Division. These shipyards often invest a lot of resources in building warships.
, it is relatively loss-making economically.
Among the private shipyards, the one with the strongest technology should belong to the Shamian Shipyard. It may not seem very large, but it has strong technology. The ships it builds are relatively difficult, have high added value, and are also very profitable.
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For example, Imperial Oil Company and Nanyang Oil Company's 10,000-ton ocean tankers, a large part of the orders for 10,000-ton oil tankers were snatched up by Shamei Shipyard.
The shipyard has built 4,000-ton battleships/protected cruisers, and is now building West India-class cruisers, New South-class frigates and other warships for the navy.
The company's technology is hard to say. It doesn't build many ships every year, and its shipbuilding tonnage is far inferior to other first-tier domestic large-scale shipyards. However, for every 10,000-ton ship it builds, the net profit it earns exceeds
Other shipyards built ships of 50,000 tons, so Shamian Shipyard was the second most profitable shipyard in the empire.
As for number one!
That is of course the Hong Kong Dingsheng Shipyard, which is wholly owned by the Royal Assets Division. They build all high-end goods, such as battleships, armored cruisers, 10,000-ton passenger ships, cargo ships, special ships and the like.
Shamian Shipyard is actually following the path of Hong Kong Dingsheng Shipyard.
And what about Feng's No. 1 Shipyard, a subsidiary of Feng's Shipping Company?
In terms of production capacity, they rely on Feng's Shipping Company and also rely on low costs to undertake a large number of external orders. They are busy with orders all year round. Therefore, in terms of production capacity, the production capacity of Feng's First Shipyard is very large.
, enough to enter the top five in the country.
However, their technical capabilities are among the many shipyards in the country. Even if they are optimistic and say shamelessly, they can only say that their technical capabilities can be among the top ten.
But in fact, this top ten is still not very credible. Comments from the outside world are that it is probably no problem to enter the top twenty, but the top fifteen is too difficult.
Top ten? Do you think that a large number of domestic first-class shipyards with strong technology are fake?
The lack of technical capabilities also made the management of Feng's First Shipyard very worried about whether they could build the 30,000-ton Nova.
However, when the technical engineers of their shipyard discussed it, they learned that the head office only required them to build the hull, and that the head office would solve the problem separately for the most core system, that is, the power system.
This is where you feel relieved!
Although it is a little more difficult and troublesome to build only one hull, as long as you have enough funds, you can still smash it.
Soon, Feng's No. 1 Shipyard officially replied to their head office: It can be built!
However, they need to obtain about 200,000 Tangyuan in advance for shipyard upgrades and construction equipment upgrades. In the mid-term, they also need about 300,000 Tangyuan for technology upgrades.
After the No. 1 Shipbuilding Factory gave a positive reply, Guo Yadong with a stroke of a pen took the money directly from the head office, and 200,000 in early stage technology upgrade funds were directly transferred to the No. 1 Shipbuilding Factory.
Then he put forward one, and only one, requirement to the First Shipyard: the Nova must have 30,000 tons, not even one ton less!
After solving the hull construction problem, Guo Yadong personally led a team to the Naval Steam Engine Factory for negotiations and won the latest triple-expansion steam engine developed by the Navy for the 20,000-ton battleship.
In fact, this thing is said to be a steam engine for a 20,000-ton battleship, but it has actually been abandoned by the navy a long time ago because this solution is far from being able to reach the level of the navy.
The Navy's requirement for a new power system is that it can be stuffed into the hull of a 20,000-ton battleship and can provide at least 25,000 horsepower.
However, the power system prepared by the Naval Steam Engine Factory could only provide a maximum of 15,000 horsepower under the initial volume and weight restrictions.
In order to achieve this 15,000 horsepower, the engineers of the Naval Steam Engine Factory frantically designed a set of super vertical triple-expansion steam engines that were extremely large in size and weight. Just to satisfy the operation of the two steam engines, they were equipped with enough
Twelve coal-fired boilers are propelled by twin shafts and propellers.
However, even this did not meet the Navy's requirements.
But the Navy's requirements are high, which does not mean that Feng Shipping Company's requirements are also so high.
Fung Line's speed requirement for the Nova is also very simple, that is, it must exceed all current ocean liners.
Among the current ocean liners, the fastest ones are the New Pacific series. They also use the latest expensive triple-expansion steam engines, so they can reach a high speed of 14 knots when cruising, and the maximum speed can reach 15 knots.
This speed is already very fast for civilian ships.
At present, except for luxury passenger ships that pursue high speeds, ordinary passenger ships only have an average speed of about eight to ten knots. Even so-called high-speed passenger ships actually only have a speed of about twelve knots.
As for freighters, the speed is even lower. For freighters powered by pure steam engines, the speed is generally maintained at about seven or eight knots, and rarely exceeds ten knots.
The speed of fourteen knots is already super fast for a large civilian passenger ship.
The goal of the Nova is to exceed this speed.
To achieve this goal, the only way is to go directly to the Naval Steam Engine Factory and purchase their most advanced and expensive triple-expansion steam engine solution specially developed for 20,000-ton battleships.
It can't even be the original plan, because if it is just the original plan, the power is still insufficient.
Improvement plans for steam engines and coal-fired boilers must be added!