The Grandmother in the Siheyuan

Chapter 534 Adding Fuel to the Fire
It is said that the US carrier strike group retreated 500 kilometers that day and headed towards the Philippines. According to its official statement, it was returning to the Philippines to resupply, but the whole world knows that it had only been out of port for less than a month.

As more details were revealed, our warship was named the Wuzhiqi-class, which is quite different from the previous naming conventions. Later, we learned that it was designed by Dijun Company, a dual-use pilot company, and manufactured by Jiangnan Shipyard.

Military enthusiasts have finally learned that there is a private company in China that can produce military equipment, and the previous news about sanctions has not made a ripple.

Experts from the NATO organization also studied this naming convention. Why was it different from before? It was later discovered that Wuzhiqi was a legendary water monkey who once dominated the Huai River region.

So NATO named the ship the "Water Demon King" class. According to their naming rules, the more ferocious the name, the more advanced the weapon. Therefore, naming it the "Water Demon King" class shows that they were indeed quite wary of this warship.

Military enthusiasts are overjoyed! Our main warships have finally exceeded 10,000 tons, which is definitely a day worth celebrating.

For our country, Wuzhiqi has officially embarked on its journey, but for Liu Hua and Dijun Company, this matter has come to an end, and they are about to embark on a new journey.

Xingdou Aerospace's research on rocket engines did not go very smoothly, which is understandable, since all the researchers were a group of teenagers who had just graduated from school.

They are passionate, idealistic, knowledgeable, and ambitious, but their immediate combat effectiveness is slightly lacking, so they need someone to mentor them.

After finishing all his work, Liu Hua planned to take the lead and guide these teenagers for a while, getting them on the right track so that the work would go much more smoothly in the future.

These innocent and pure-hearted children only learned what true ability meant after working with Liu Hua. Back in school, they thought the professors were very capable.

Because no matter what problems they have, they can always find the answer with the professor.

However, they didn't realize that the problems they faced back then were mostly from textbooks, while the problems they encountered after starting work were not found in textbooks. Even if they went back and called their professors, the professors couldn't give them answers immediately, and might not even give them answers at all, because some questions involved confidentiality.

Now that Liu Hua has come to the lab and is leading them in experiments, they finally understand what the phrase "effortless" means.

Before each day's experiment, Liu Hua would give them a one-hour lesson, and before leaving get off work, he would give them another half hour to answer their questions.

They spend an hour and a half each day learning more than they have in the past four or five years. It seems that none of the problems they encounter in the research process can stump Liu Hua.

"Two hundred tons of thrust, teacher, we'll have to build a completely new heavy-lift rocket, right?"

Liu Hua shook his head: "I have never thought about developing heavy-lift launch vehicles. Or to be more precise, I have never thought about developing rockets, not even reusable ones. Rockets have many limitations."

"If you're not making rockets, why are you making rocket engines?"

"So young, how come you have no imagination at all?" Liu Hua said disdainfully. "Can't you come up with something more imaginative? For example, a spaceship that isn't one strapped to a rocket for launch, but one like an airplane, capable of taking off anytime, anywhere, and traveling through the Karman line at any time." Another student joked, "Teacher, I've seen spaceships in science fiction movies with blue plasma flames at their nozzles. If we install this engine, it'll be a fiery red flame..."

"Nonsense," Liu Hua said irritably. "Current ion propulsion technology is just so-so. It can't even propel a piece of paper inside the atmosphere. If its thrust could reach the power of a motorcycle engine, humanity would have started interstellar colonization long ago."

A group of people were laughing and joking in the laboratory, conducting experiments and cracking jokes. Liu Hua's dream undoubtedly gave them even greater motivation.

This is an unprecedented spaceship. Both the former Great Bear and the Great United States have spaceships, but they all require additional power sources within the atmosphere, such as rockets or large transport aircraft.

If they actually succeed in designing this, it will definitely be a landmark achievement in history. Their names will be prominently featured in the future history of Earth's spaceflight and the history of China's spaceflight.

"Teacher, if we were to use rocket engines within the atmosphere, should I consider the possibility that excessive reuse of the rocket engines could lead to nozzle damage or other malfunctions?"

Liu Hua nodded: "That's for sure. Right now we're still using chemical coatings. If we were to use entirely new high-temperature materials, I think the most ideal approach would be to use magnetic confinement, like the tokamak devices used in nuclear fusion power generation."

With a good leader, the progress of the work is indeed different. The research on the 200-ton thrust hydrogen-oxygen engine has gradually gotten on the right track.

When Liu Hua announced that he would be temporarily leaving the Starry Sky Lab, the researchers were extremely reluctant to see him go.

Liu Hua taught them knowledge and helped them organize their research process. The rest was up to them. Liu Hua guided them in their research, making it as smooth as cutting butter with a hot knife.

"Alright, don't be so reluctant to part. I'm the boss, and I'll be coming to the lab to check on things from time to time. When the time comes, prepare the difficult problems and I'll answer them for you. But don't rely on me too much; you need to develop the habit of independent research."

These young children are the seeds of inspiration sown by Liu Hua. Liu Hua is almost sixty years old, and he doesn't know how many more years he has left to live. He only hopes that in his limited time, more Chinese researchers can become successful.

Leaving the Starry Sky Lab, Taiyi New Materials also sent good news: their carbon nanotube research team was finally able to mass-produce carbon nanotubes on a small scale in the laboratory.

The next step is to carry out large-scale industrial production. Liu Hua vaguely remembers that in his previous life, China's research on carbon nanotubes was basically on par with the world's progress.

Starting in the 1990s, after twenty years of unremitting efforts, small-scale mass production was finally achieved after 2010.

Liu Hua decided to give him a boost, enabling China to achieve mass production of carbon nanotubes ten years ahead of schedule.

The next day, Liu Hua's secretary delivered several USB drives to the lab, containing the technical data that Liu Hua had just exchanged the night before.

(End of this chapter)