Chapter 1977 The days of lying down and making money are over
Despite many worries, one group of designers said that they had made detailed calculations. Even if they fired a salvo against all the enemy's main guns from one side, the hull would not fall apart, because the salvo they fired would not cause the hull to fall apart.
It is not a salvo in the strict sense, there will still be an extremely short interval between each artillery fire.
The so-called salvo only compresses the sequential firing time of each main gun into an extremely short period of time.
Regardless of worries or distrust of one kind or another, the construction of this technology verification ship began, and the Navy also gave the ship a name, calling it Xinjinshan.
When the navy is developing new types of warships, the development of civilian ships is actually faster.
This progress is not only reflected in more advanced technology and larger hulls, but more importantly, in economy.
The Xinxing, a 30,000-ton luxury fast passenger ship, certainly represents the most outstanding shipbuilding technology of the Tang Dynasty, but many other less eye-catching freighters also embody the most outstanding shipbuilding technology of the Tang Dynasty.
This is the case with the first batch of 10,000-ton oil tankers ordered by Nanyang Petroleum Company.
It's easy to just build a tanker that can hold oil, but if you want to carry more oil, while ensuring safety during transportation, and more importantly, ensuring low transportation costs, these combined are quite a challenge.
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The biggest challenge comes from the power system. Nanyang Petroleum Company has very high requirements for the power system, which requires both a certain speed and extremely low coal consumption.
Nanyang Oil Company requires oil tankers to maintain a low coal consumption to reduce the cost of oil transportation, but it cannot be too slow. After all, if it is too slow, the number of times the oil tanker can go back and forth from the mainland to Nanyang Oilfield will be less, and less oil will be transported.
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This has given Zhaoqing Machinery Company a huge problem. They can produce high-horsepower steam units, and they also have extremely low-power steam units. However, what Nanyang Petroleum Company wants is that the horsepower must not be small, and the power consumption must not be small.
Steam unit that is too high.
However, even though it is difficult, it is the key for Zhaoqing Machinery Company to open up the 10,000-ton ship power market, not to mention that Nanyang Petroleum Company is not short of money and the price it offers is full of sincerity.
Therefore, the technicians of Zhaoqing Machinery Company tried their best and adopted many new technologies to meet the requirements of Nanyang Petroleum Company.
After the steam unit purchased by Nanyang Petroleum Company was finalized, it had not even started to be shipped. Others came to place orders.
Coincidentally, oil companies, Imperial Oil Company and Pacific Oil Company, came to us to order their steam generator sets, preparing to use them in the construction of their 10,000-ton oil tankers.
A steam engine with high horsepower and low power consumption, even if it is a little more expensive, can save more costs in the end. This is why many tanker companies come to our door.
Not long after, as Nanyang Petroleum Company's first 10,000-ton oil tanker was launched for testing, Zhaoqing Machinery Company was completely in the pain of a huge order.
When the oil tanker was undergoing sea trials, its high horsepower and low power consumption attracted great attention, not only from other oil companies, but also from other shipping companies.
We must know that most of the ships in the Tang Empire are actually mainly used to transport cargo. Pure passenger ships actually only account for a small proportion. Whether these cargo ships are used for inland water, offshore or ocean transportation, their transportation costs are
It is the most important thing for major shipping companies.
If a fire ship saves a little coal cost, then with so many ships, the cost savings that can be achieved in a year will be huge.
Just like luxury passenger ships are obsessed with increasing their speed at all costs, many cargo ships are also obsessed with reducing transportation costs.
With Datang's current technology, it has long been possible to build freighters with more than ten knots. However, the freighters of major shipping companies are all only seven or eight knots. There are very few that exceed ten knots, and only a few need to transport tea.
Time-sensitive freighters are high-speed freighters with more than ten knots.
It’s not that higher-speed freighters can’t be built, but the operating costs are too high to be worthwhile.
When these shipping companies learned that Zhaoqing Machinery Company had a steam engine with good horsepower and low power consumption, they came directly and placed orders one after another.
It didn’t take long for Zhaoqing Machinery Company to receive orders for hundreds of sets!
This is a ship-based steam engine. Ship-based steam engines used on ships of thousands of tons or even tens of thousands of tons. Each set is extremely expensive, and there are orders for hundreds of sets at once.
They all knocked the people from Zhaoqing Machinery Company unconscious, and then they all started to look sad.
Because there are too many orders and the production capacity is too small, this feeling is very uncomfortable.
The development of Zhaoqing Machinery Company and various ships is only a microcosm of the rapid development of contemporary Datang industry.
Many data can be used to illustrate how rapidly Datang's industry and commerce developed, but the development of the shipbuilding industry is more convincing.
In the thirty-eighth year of Xuanping, it is expected that the tonnage of newly launched ships will reach 700,000 tons.
This is a quite terrifying number. This number is even larger than the current tonnage of ships owned by all countries in Europe.
And this is only the tonnage of new ships launched by Datang in one year.
The development of the shipbuilding industry represents the rapid development of industry and commerce and the huge demand for shipping.
At the same time, the development of the shipbuilding industry also means that domestic steel and other industries are developing very well and can support the production of such huge ships. If there is not enough steel production, there will be no way to build so many ships.
However, such rapid development will not continue forever. The Ministry of Commerce has already begun to make estimates for the development of industry and commerce in the empire. Even if industry and commerce still maintains rapid development, starting from next year, new demand for ships will
The speed will slow down.
This slowdown in growth does not mean that shipping does not sell ships or buys fewer ships than in previous years, but that the growth rate is not as great as in the past. The year before last, they purchased 100,000 tons. This year, they purchased 200,000 tons.
One hundred thousand tons.
But next year they will purchase only 250,000 tons and add only 50,000 tons.
This is not because the economy is bad. In fact, the empire's industry and commerce are still developing at a high speed. It's because too many ships were built before, and the number of ships in stock is already very huge, and the economic development cannot be unlimited year by year.
One year is fast, and it is difficult to even maintain the high growth rate of previous years.
By then, although many new ships will still be produced every year, it will be difficult to achieve substantial growth. By then, whether it is the shipbuilding industry, the steel industry, or other related industries, if you want to continue to expand and develop, you will have to
The only option is to grab other people's orders.
By then, the empire's shipbuilding industry, steel industry and many other industries will stop their barbaric growth, resulting in fierce competition and a market competition of survival of the fittest.
In other words, the days of just lying around and making money are coming to an end.
It's just that most people don't know it yet, and this is also the reason why the Tang Empire began to regulate the steel industry in advance. If we leave it alone and allow these steel companies to launch steel plants one after another, there will be a high probability of overcapacity in the future.