The Grandmother in the Siheyuan

Chapter 512 Complaint
Upon returning to the capital, Liu Hua immediately ordered that all of Taiyi New Materials' special steels, carbon fibers, and other materials be sent to the Darian Shipyard.

His team rushed to Tangshan, and now the nuclear reactor power plant is ready, and the new electric refining workshop has been built.

Liu Hua wants to work on flash refining technology. Back when he was improving the steel rolling mill, he reduced the time for one furnace of iron to ten or twenty minutes. This time, he wants to reduce the time for one furnace of iron to less than ten seconds.

Liu Hua was surrounded by a group of engineers. With the scale of his steel plant now, it wouldn't be an exaggeration to have a hundred or two engineers. Liu Hua was certainly well-equipped.

"teacher."

Whether it's Taiyi Group or Dijun Group, all the researchers, engineers, and technicians like to call Liu Hua "Teacher".

First, it was to show respect; second, it was because they had indeed learned a lot from Liu Hua, and Liu Hua was used to it, so he readily agreed.

"What is it? If you don't understand anything, just say so. Before we start, I'll go over the process with you."

"Teacher, with your process, a furnace of iron only takes a few seconds. Won't this lead to overcapacity?"

“Overcapacity is a problem of the overall market environment.” Liu Hua shook his head: “You are technical personnel, you only need to consider whether the technology is advanced or not.”

"But this will put pressure on our iron ore imports."

Liu Hua shook his head: "Your focus is on the technology, those are administrative matters. Why do you want to meddle in these things? Do you think the administration would dare to point fingers and scold us because your technology is too advanced and causing us pressure?"

Liu Hua smiled and said, "There has always been a great atmosphere in my company, where technology is paramount. I have never seen any administrative staff member dare to point their finger at a technician and yell at them."

The new blast furnace is highly technologically advanced, using 3D printing technology to print nozzles that spray iron ore powder and reducing agents into the furnace body.

The blast furnace uses electric heating to maintain an extremely high temperature, and the powder instantly liquefies into molten iron as soon as it is sprayed out.

The slag floats on the surface of the molten iron and is then naturally separated by a separator. The molten iron flows to the next process to form iron ingots, while the slag is discarded after being cooled by water extraction.

The whole process seemed to happen in the blink of an eye. The technician rubbed his eyes and said, "It's so damn fast. If we keep using this technology, just this one furnace could meet the iron consumption of a medium-sized country."

"That's technological progress," Liu Hua said with a smile. "Don't think it will generate a lot of iron; we'll need iron in many more places in the future."

"Teacher, the amount of iron used by humankind has reached its historical peak."

"Peak? The peak is always in the future." Liu Hua waved his hand: "Let me ask you, if we have the technology to produce spaceships in the future, like the spaceships in science fiction movies, how much iron would we need?"

"And if we want to build a Dyson sphere, how much iron would we need?"

"Teacher, shouldn't the metals used in spacecraft be primarily iron?"

Liu Hua nodded: "With such a large amount of metal used, let me ask you, how many kinds of metals on Earth can supply this? Currently, our iron has these properties, which are not suitable for space. But who knows, in the future we might invent other special steels that can be used in the space environment."

Seeing that the technicians seemed to agree, Liu Hua smiled and said, "No, you actually believe that?" "But what you said makes a lot of sense, teacher."

"Open your mind and think about it. We can build spaceships on a large scale, so why can't we develop a space mining industry? Earth can't supply that many non-ferrous metals, but aren't there plenty in space? Do you have any friends who study astronomy? Ask them. The Kuiper Belt is full of these asteroids, which are basically metal spheres."

The technicians burst into laughter; they hadn't expected Liu Hua to have set them up in ambush.

After spending half a month in Tangshan, getting the technology sorted out and writing the summary report, Liu Hua finally returned to his home in Beijing.

As luck would have it, my wife, sister-in-law, and daughter were all home today. The three women were watching TV, but instead of those romantic dramas, they were watching a science fiction movie.

As soon as Liu Hua put down his luggage, Rosamund Kwan exclaimed excitedly, "Brother-in-law, let's watch a sci-fi movie together! This one was made several years ago. From your professional perspective, how many years would it take for humanity to reach this level of technology?"

Liu Hua watched the movie, Star Wars: The Great War of 1997. This movie ushered in the interstellar era of the war between humans and the Zerg. Liu Hua had seen it before he went to university in his previous life and felt very shocked at the time.

After graduating from university, I watched it twice more, and my feelings were completely different then.

When I was young and didn't understand much, I felt that the war scenes were grand, the Zerg were brutal, and telepathy was mysterious.

Looking back on it after graduating from university, I felt that the war was completely wrong, especially when facing an overwhelming swarm of insects.

Aside from using interstellar bombers for bombing, the human front-line ground forces consisted entirely of light infantry, with no armored vehicles, tanks, or self-propelled artillery.

Back when our family was fighting as guerrillas, we were overjoyed to have even one mortar. These people are so technologically advanced, yet they don't build heavy weapons. The only weapon of mass destruction they have is a miniature nuclear bomb.

What Liu Hua found even more ridiculous was that these people were so technologically advanced that they could travel between stars. When Carmen piloted his spaceship, it seemed like he was using a warp drive, which meant that the energy efficiency must be extremely high.

But damn it, the light infantry were still using gunpowder weapons, the kind that were loaded with bullets. The grenades, apart from being a bit bigger, weren't any more advanced than they are now.

If this movie had been released during the era of advanced internet, Liu Hua, as a film review blogger, could have produced at least ten episodes of吐槽 (tu cao, a form of online commentary/criticism).

"So, brother-in-law, what do you think of the advanced technology in this movie?"

Liu Hua shook his head: "If humanity has already developed the ability to colonize interstellar space, and is still using such primitive methods to fight insects, then we might as well just go extinct. This would be the greatest disgrace to researchers."

Rosamund Kwan asked, puzzled, "What do you mean?"

Liu Qiaotong laughed so hard she almost fell over: "Auntie, what my dad means is that humans already have the means to travel between stars, yet they're still using such simple military technology. That's an impossible problem."

"The military technology here is anything but simple. They even have miniature nuclear bombs."

Liu Hua shook his head: "It's like being in a completely different field. Miniaturizing nuclear bombs isn't a difficult thing. What's ridiculous here is that a group of light infantrymen are fighting insects with gunpowder guns, and they don't even have a tank. More than two thousand years ago, humans already knew how to use chariots in war."

(End of this chapter)