Industrial Cthulhu, starting from the island lord

Chapter 206 Airship Skin and Technology Lock

Airship?
As soon as this word came out, several people fell silent. Although they didn't know what it meant, if they understood it literally... a flying ship?

"Indeed, we don't have any way to get close to the sea right now, and we can't build ships, but we can fly over it." Hughes spread out the blueprints. "This is the airship I designed. It can fly through the air. Aside from being a little slow, everything else is pretty good."

The eyes of several people in the room almost popped out of their heads. Ash was fine, she was a banshee, born in the sea, and didn't have much yearning for the sky.

But Chloe and Alexi's hands began to tremble.

"Is there no such thing in the Empire?"

"Of course not." Chloe swallowed. "Are you serious? Can people fly in the sky?"

"Uh, is this difficult to do?" Zeus scratched his head in confusion. The airship is indeed a very powerful technology, but simply flying into the sky shouldn't be that difficult, right?

"You didn't build a hot air balloon?"

"what is that?"

"Is there no technology that can fly into the sky?"

Chloe and Alexi shook their heads together without hesitation.

"Humans are creatures on earth. Not only ordinary people, but even extraordinary beings don't have the ability to fly in the sky. Can this airship really take you to the sky?"

"Of course, the principle is actually similar to floating up and sinking in water. All we need is a gas lighter than air, which will pull us up. You know the composition of air, right?"

Chloe still shook her head.

Zeus sighed. The basic physics of this world was still a little off. After a brief explanation, several people gathered around the drawings and began to look at them carefully.

"So, that giant oval thing up there is a balloon, filled with hydrogen, which creates a lift, and the propellers around it are responsible for its movement?"

"Correct."

"Isn't the balloon afraid of being punctured?"

"This is the difficulty in designing an airship." Hughes's airship was designed with reference to the structure of the Zeppelin airship. It has a large number of hard keels inside, and its structural strength is quite good.

Given that the armies of this era did not have much anti-aircraft firepower, this thing was almost invincible on the battlefield, a complete dimensionality reduction strike.

Chloe looked through the blueprints for a long time and suddenly asked, "How do we make the skin of the airship?"

Hughes paused for a moment. Chloe was indeed the one who saw the most troublesome point at a glance. In fact, the most difficult part of making an airship was not producing hydrogen, but finding a skin with qualified performance. This was also the reason why he had not taken out the blueprint.

Strictly speaking, the airship's skin wasn't high-tech; it could be made from canvas and rubber. The problem was that Castells had no rubber. Rubber trees were simply not available. During the Cold War, rubber was a major bottleneck for the Soviet Union. The fact that this basic agricultural product could easily hold a whole industrial nation back was a testament to its irreplaceable nature.

Of course, there are solutions. If Hughes can get a complete set of petrochemical industry and all the supporting industrial workers, and then find a few oil wells, then it is not impossible to skip rubber and use composite materials directly.
But at this moment, Xiu Si had no choice. He said to the two of them, "Hasn't our technology research and development been going smoothly recently? Chloe, can you try to find a replacement material?"

"Alexei, try to find a rubber tree on the island."

"Do you think this is a wishing machine?" Chloe sighed. "I've thought about this. Our recent technological breakthrough is most likely due to the recent technological lock being lifted."

Zeus narrowed his eyes. He had guessed about the technological lock before. Ever since he successfully produced nitroglycerin, Castel's overall research progress seemed to have stagnated. He knew the principles of many things, but he just couldn't make them.

Take smokeless gunpowder for example. It is indeed very troublesome to prepare it industrially, but it is not difficult to make it by hand in a laboratory, especially since he knows the ratios between various materials.

But he just couldn't make it. No matter how he adjusted the ratio, the products he made were all inferior products with huge performance differences. This can be attributed to the fact that there were too many impurities in the materials of that era, which affected the original ratio.

But it was not just smokeless gunpowder that was holding him back. Things like mercury fulminate and diatomaceous earth also failed inexplicably in manufacturing. However, technologies such as the Noisier, Machine Soul and the combustion of physical pollution developed without any hindrance.

It was as if the pure technological route had been locked, and only technologies related to the extraordinary could continue to be developed. He discussed this with Chloe, and they together named this phenomenon the technological lock.

Where did this lock come from? Hughes had only vague guesses, such as: This is a phenomenon similar to cognitive interference, a certain will is rejecting technological breakthroughs, and this will causes the deviation of reality.

Now, the technological lock has been broken, and he can easily produce various technologies for which he knows the correct route, as if the restrictions imposed on him by fate have been removed.

Although he didn't know why, this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Hughes had already started a bunch of research projects at the same time, and Castel's technology would soon be the next major breakthrough.

Chloe frowned and said, "I don't think simply removing the technological lock will lead to a technological explosion. It just removes a certain kind of suppression. All successful technologies are what we should have achieved. Do you understand what I mean?"

I understand. The progress will get stuck at 99%. Those who can succeed after the technology lock is released are those who have already finished reading the bar. The rest still have to take their time to read the bar.

Zeus nodded helplessly. It seemed that it would be difficult to build an airship in the short term. It was really difficult to find a skin material that was airtight and strong enough.

Perhaps it would be more reliable to expect Alexei to find a rubber tree. Castres has a warm climate, which is really suitable for the survival environment of rubber trees. Maybe there really is one.

"But I do have some ideas about the airship skin."

Chloe's next words pulled Hughes back.

"Do you still remember those fishmen?"

The murlocs have captured quite a few prisoners, and the task of interrogation has been given to the Fire Moths. Could it be that they have extracted any information from their mouths?
"Those fishmen seem unable to communicate. After a series of tests, we found that they seem to exist only on instinct, without reason. We don't know if this has always been the case, or if something has changed recently."

"At the same time, another experiment we conducted found that their skin appears to be quite resilient."

(End of this chapter)