Chapter Nine hundred and forty-six The Navy said that money is a fart!
Due to the low communication capabilities of this era, orders could only be delivered by messengers on horses. Therefore, even if Li Xuan gave the order to start the second phase of the battle, the fight could not start for a while.
Even now, the exact time has not been set yet!
Because the units launching the campaign are too far apart, the Second Infantry Division currently preparing to attack Jingzhou is still stationed in Yuezhou, and the Third Mixed Regiment preparing to attack Anlu Prefecture is still stationed in Wuchang.
The house is waiting.
The First Infantry Division of the First Army, which accurately went to the west of Hanyang for landing operations, had just retreated from Huangzhou and was still floating on the ship. The other 10th Mixed Regiment, which was also used for operations in the direction of Hanyang, and the Third Mixed Regiment
Together with the group, we are still in Wuchang.
The other main force, the Seventh Mixed Regiment, is still in Shizhou. This force still doesn't know that it has been assigned to attack Badong and defend the mission of the Sichuan troops coming to rescue Jingzhou.
Due to the poor communication methods, even the Tang Army had already established a complete system of post stations along the Yangtze River, and military orders could be delivered in an expedited manner of five hundred miles.
However, the order issued by Li Xuan in Jiujiang also took many days to reach the various units, and then each unit would carry out relevant actions according to the order.
This is also the reason why the second phase of the battle plan formulated by the Privy Council lasts for more than three months!
The normal southwest battle will be a battle that lasts for half a year or even longer!
Of course, the main battle between the two sides actually takes far less time. Most of the time is wasted on passing orders and marching the troops.
If everyone is in the same place, and then directly fights the decisive battle, the preparation time will only be a few days, and the actual hand-to-hand combat time will only be a few hours.
However, for these few hours, the Tang Army needed several months to prepare.
At this time, Li Xuan desperately hoped that radio could be developed as soon as possible, not for anything else but to quickly transmit various military orders.
It is a pity that although there are many monsters in the Royal Institute of Technology, it is not so easy to develop wireless communication. This thing is worse than steam engines, breech-loading artillery, breech-loading rifles and other weapons.
It's even harder to do.
Li Xuan directed the establishment of an electrical research group at the Royal Institute of Technology very early, but it is still stuck in the exploration of various electrical theories and various repeated experiments in order to have a deeper understanding of electrical knowledge. Otherwise,
It’s useless for them to just know about electricity, electromagnetism and the like!
What's more, even if you know electromagnetism, you also know what wireless telegraphy is, but how do you make it?
Let’s not talk about other things, just how to provide stable power supply for the telegraph machine is a super problem for them. They can directly use the power engine, but how to stabilize the voltage?
If chemical batteries are used, what materials and combinations are used?
These are actually problems that they urgently need to solve.
So now, they actually know a lot of theories, but the theories they know are all memorized by rote. But how to apply what they have learned and how to use these theories to build a telegraph machine, that is the problem.
This is like everyone now knowing that nuclear fusion can be used as a super energy source, but no one can do it, because it is very difficult to turn nuclear fusion into controllable nuclear fusion.
In fact, a lot of scientific and technological research in the Tang Dynasty had these problems. They learned a lot of advanced things from the simple textbooks written by Li Xuan himself.
For example, the students at the Royal Institute of Technology who study steam engines know what a high-pressure steam engine is, and they also know that a high-pressure steam engine can obtain greater power in a smaller volume and weight, but can it be done?
Can't do it now!
There is nothing else but the materials are not good and the processing technology is not good. In the final analysis, if the processing technology is not good, it is also because the materials are not good.
Li Xuan can tell them all kinds of messy common theories, but Li Xuan can't tell him the proportions and formulas of various materials. Damn, he's not a science major. It's good to know some basic theories. Is it possible that you can also
It’s impossible to expect him to know the proportions and formulas of titanium alloys...
They conducted a lot of tests, and the final test showed that with the current materials and processing levels, the steam engine's air pressure is greater than 0.13 MPa, so it cannot withstand it.
And this is actually still the level in the laboratory. If it is used for industrial production, this data needs to be further reduced to 0.1 MPa.
Otherwise, they would have built a high-pressure steam engine long ago. It’s not that they can’t design it. There are a lot of design drafts. If the materials and processing skills are acceptable, they can build it in minutes. If they can build it, then they can build it new.
The volume of a five-horsepower steam engine is only one-twenty-fifth of the existing low-pressure steam engine.
What is this concept?
This means that if they are really developed, these high-pressure steam engines can really be used as the driving force for trains and battleships, instead of being just toys as they are now.
However, the high-pressure steam engine is limited by the materials and processing technology and cannot be built. Therefore, the steam engine research team at the Royal Institute of Technology has basically given up on the research of high-pressure steam engines and is planning to wait for a breakthrough in the technology before pursuing it. Now
Well, it is focused on improving the existing low-pressure steam engines.
Although low-pressure steam engines are large in size and low in power, it doesn't matter. They are not used as industrial power!
Nowadays, several companies under the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises, with the attitude of supporting new technologies and using them even at a loss, have begun to use steam engines in small quantities. Especially in several coal mining areas, steam engines are basically used to pump water.
Jiangnan Textile Company also began to use a small number of steam engines.
As for private enterprises, I'm sorry, but there is no one to use it. It's not that we don't sell it to them to keep it secret, but because they don't want it!
The steam engine developed by the Royal Institute of Technology and produced by Zhaoqing Machinery Company these days sounds like a very high-end thing, but the cost of use is basically more than ten times that of water power.
Coal consumption is large and coal prices are high, resulting in high fuel costs.
What’s even more disappointing is that the failure rate of this damn thing is extremely, extremely, extremely high!
Enterprises under the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises are state-owned enterprises, not to mention rich and powerful, and they also have political tasks. The superiors must support the development of steam engines. This steam engine cannot be sold and no one uses it. How can we get more research funds and how can we improve it?
Steam engine!
So no matter how rubbish the thing is, they still have to bite the bullet and use it.
But people are not stupid. After using steam engines, they know the broad prospects of this thing. It doesn't matter if it doesn't work well now, as long as it can be used in the future. So they buy current steam engines to support the research and development of steam engines. There are conditions.
Yes, that is, they have signed a contract with exclusive rights of priority. When the new steam engine is developed, they have the right to purchase and use it two years in advance for a period of ten years.
In other words, within ten years, the Royal Institute of Technology will develop a more practical steam engine. After it is developed, the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises will have the exclusive right to use it for two years. After two years, this type of steam engine can be sold to the outside world.
If not to seize the opportunity in the future, why do they spend so much money every year to buy and use these loss-making steam engines that will cost grandma's family!
However, the research and development funding for steam engines is not only supported by enterprises affiliated to the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises. In fact, the navy is the main supporter!
However, the Navy does not want low-pressure steam engines. It has no interest at all in this kind of steam engine that is huge and destined to be used only in industry. They are only interested in high-pressure steam engines, and they are very interested.
Although they haven't seen even one in person, just looking at the paper data is enough to make them extremely excited. If they really want to build it, they can directly put it on the battleship in a minute and use it as the power of the battleship.
If the materials are not good and the processing workers are not good, how can we still build this high-pressure steam engine?
The Navy said it doesn't matter. If the materials are not good, let's get the materials first. If the processing technology is not good, let's get the machinery and equipment needed for processing first!
What? You said that material research and development requires countless tests and requires a huge amount of money. Just doing tests costs tens of thousands of taels of silver a year. The Navy said that although our navy’s military expenditure is not as high as that of the army, it still costs a lot of money a year.
It's millions of taels of silver. It's not a big deal to come up with tens of thousands of taels of silver this year. We've taken care of all the research and development of your materials.
Then the students from the Royal Institute of Technology looked contemptuous. This is just one of the research and development funds for materials. We at the Royal Institute of Technology have at least dozens of similar material research and development projects. If your navy wants us to develop it in a short time, just
There are so many projects that need to be launched at the same time, and you can’t do it without hundreds of thousands of taels of silver in a year!
The navy said that money is nothing...wait, what did you say, hundreds of thousands of taels of silver?
Damn, why don’t you go and grab it!
If you don’t give it, go to the Army. The research and development of this material is not our Navy’s responsibility. Their Army also uses all kinds of messy new materials to make guns and cannons. Their Army has money, so go to them!
However, the Navy could not afford to support the research and development of all materials, but it still gritted its teeth and supported several of the projects that seemed to be relatively reliable. Then after calculating the accounts, the Navy generals discovered that there was no trace of the high-pressure steam engine.
They have already spent almost 100,000 taels of research and development funds on this.
This allows them to equip a cruiser.
This settlement made their teeth hurt, but no matter how painful their teeth were, they had to grit their teeth and continue to give money!