I became a witch, but I started the industrial revolution

Medea couldn't help but slap her smooth forehead. She felt like she was about to cry because of her own stupidity. Technology couldn't create water out of thin air, but magic could!

She said and ran out in a hurry.

Because part of the ballast water filling port was outside and they never thought of adding water inside, Medea returned dejected.

As the two women stared at each other in bewilderment, more than half an hour passed before the airship slowly descended to the designated height.

After landing, Mitiadam told the designer about the problems he had discovered, and the designer just patted his bald head.

Because the design principles were basically provided by Medea, they had become blindly dependent on the omniscient queen and had never thought about improvements. This was their own dereliction of duty.

As for the ballast water problem, as long as the crystal matrix is ​​arranged in the cabin in advance, it can be activated and used to create water using water elements when landing is needed. It is not difficult at all.

Although there were some awkward moments, overall it was a perfect experience.

Obviously with the help of magic, the airships in this world have much more expandable space than in the previous life.

It is a huge leap forward not only in the military aspect, but also in people's livelihood.

With the help of magic, the airship does not need to consume a large amount of fuel when lowering its altitude, and the cost is further reduced.

After all, whether it is the air compressor or the six engines, they are all fuel-guzzling when running at full power. Without this consumption, the manufacturing and operating costs will drop to a very scary level.

It can carry artillery shells and bombs for airdrops, naturally it can also lift heavy objects, and can even be used to carry passengers.

The requirements for the airport are very low. Any flat ground is enough for parking. At most, a pool of water will be discharged on the spot, and there will be no pollution.

It is foreseeable that there will be many of these big guys roaming over the sky of the Seris Federation in the future.

Chapter 104 National strategic key projects.

The more I think about it, the more I feel that the space for airship operation is very large.

After returning, Mitia urgently convened meetings of the House of Commons and the House of Lords to quickly advance the plan for large-scale manufacturing of airships and include it in the first S-level national strategic key project after the beginning of spring.

That is to say, at all costs, no matter how difficult or how many problems there are, the whole country must work together to complete it.

No matter how advanced aircraft become in the future, Medea feels that in that future, airships will definitely occupy a pivotal position in the military and civilian use of the Seris Federation.

Although the maximum speed of an airship is over 100 kilometers per hour, flying slowly has its advantages.

If the manufacturing volume is further reduced, with a diameter of tens of meters and a load capacity of about ten tons, two large-caliber machine guns and two heavy machine guns can be directly mounted on the pod, and it can be transformed into an air support gunboat.

The manufacturing volume can also be further expanded, with a size of several hundred meters to increase the load capacity, and be used to transport materials to remote and rugged mountainous areas.

You should know that when the airship is in a floating state, its energy consumption is almost zero. As long as it is pulled to an area with the anchor, it can hover in the sky for at least a week.

She also revised the design plan. A large part of the airship's load capacity in the previous life was wasted, the most typical of which was the problem of ballast water and energy consumption.

After the ballast water is released, the airship's weight is reduced and it can take off. However, dropping bombs and other items on the airship will make it even lighter, so the airship's propellers and other equipment will need to keep working to maintain its altitude.

An airship that consumes almost the same amount of fuel as it carries all the cargo is extremely light, so it needs more power to land. More power consumes more fuel, so it needs to carry more energy.

This becomes the classic problem of adding noodles if there is too much water, and adding water if there is too much noodles.

But in this world, with the existence of magic, the unsolvable problem of adding more water and flour no longer exists.

A matrix of several or a dozen mid- to high-level magic crystals can be used to create water, which can flexibly adjust the weight of the airship itself. The engine can then be used entirely for flight control and no longer needs to do work downward.

In addition, one or two high-power engines can be installed at the tail as propulsion engines, which can further increase the cruising speed of the airship and reduce energy consumption.

With sufficient energy supply, the threat of sideways crosswinds is no longer a serious problem, and the side engines can provide thrust to offset the reaction force.

There is no need to compress air and release the gas in the airbag for lifting and lowering, and the economic cost will be reduced again. This is an extremely ideal inner ring transporter.

As we all know, the development speed of the outer areas near the sea and rivers is bound to be faster than that of the inner areas which are all land because of the existence of sea transportation, because the cost difference of material delivery between the two sides is too large~

The price of a product is basically equal to the material cost, manufacturing cost, and transportation cost.

For the same product, a cargo ship carrying thousands or tens of thousands of tons by sea would cost at least, and in Medea's previous life, it could even carry hundreds of thousands of tons.

As for the inland transportation network, even if you add two more railway tracks, you can't even achieve one-tenth of the cost of sea transportation, not to mention the transportation costs other than trains.

This gap alone is enough to ensure that large-scale manufacturing companies cannot develop in the inland areas. Once they do develop, they will immediately start looking for ways to move out of the inland areas.

If there are not enough jobs, people’s income will be low. If income is low, the government’s tax revenue will be poor. If tax revenue is poor, public welfare will be poor, and people will move out of the country to work, further reducing public income.

At the same time, due to the issue of transportation costs, the prices of various materials in the city are much more expensive than in other areas. With low incomes and high prices, who would stay in this damn place?

Take Alos as an example. In areas where the roads in the state have been basically constructed, it takes about 300 hours to travel 3 km by car. On sparse dirt roads and muddy areas, the travel time for 300 km starts at 6 hours, and there is no upper limit...

If you get stuck anywhere on the road, you will have to find a way to dig yourself out. If it is a loaded truck, it will take more than 6 hours to drive the 300 km.

In order to solve this embarrassing problem, the Median government must find a way to invest heavily in the construction of state-level highways in these states, and arrange multiple railway systems, and then release authority to allow private and local governments to jointly build roads within the state.

The ultimate goal of this combination of measures is to speed up the circulation of materials and reduce transportation costs, which are the lifeblood of urban industries.

The theoretical basis for building roads first if you want to get rich comes from here.

With the help of airships, these problems may not be completely solved and may catch up with sea transportation, but it is definitely much more cost-effective than land transportation.

Civilian airships that do not need to fight on the battlefield can reduce the distribution of alloy frames and various types of weapons mounted, and even install fewer engines to compress and release space.

Then a 240m long airship can basically carry nearly tons.

The factory for building and repairing airships can be located in the wilderness. As long as a large wind-breaking array is built around it like a cross-sea bridge, the crosswind problem can be solved, and there will be no sudden accidents during takeoff and landing.

Then, action can be taken at the national level to launch a factory merger and allocation plan across the country, clustering factories according to different categories, and opening up areas around them to provide airship take-off and loading and unloading of cargo.

Airships have extremely low self-sustaining energy consumption, so they can afford to wait even if loading and unloading is slow. If modular loading and unloading methods such as container hanging cabinets are used, the airship's loading and unloading will not be too slow.

With the loading capacity of airships in the 200m-500m range, a few batches can meet the material needs of an industrial park. If that is not enough, just add two more vacant lots.

The flight route of the airship will be aligned with the future intercontinental and intercity railway network, so that both the ground and the sky can be fully utilized, and aircraft routes are also reserved.

Large-scale batch manufacturing can further reduce the manufacturing cost of airships.

It has even greater potential in the military field. In addition to being used directly as an aerial gunboat or aerial bombing airship, it can also serve as a logistics material carrier platform.

What does a 5000-6000m ceiling mean? This means that as long as Seris wants to launch a war against someone, the baggage can be transported directly by airship, and it is difficult for the enemy to detect it.

Then they can airdrop supplies to the troops on the ground, whether it is ammunition, artillery shells, or supplies of survival materials.

When materials science catches up in the future, it may be possible to airdrop heavy armored equipment to ground mechanized forces to replenish the lost heavy weapons.

Isn't this much more convenient than having a string of trucks following you?

For a high-horsepower truck to operate in today's muddy environment, it either needs to increase engine power and torque or reduce load, which will cause a lot of problems.

Wouldn't it be nice to convert a truck into an armored personnel carrier?

Through the airship Media, it is possible to provide the same region-to-region air support as America did in the previous life.

The airships dispatched in advance stayed in the airspace, and the steel torrent on the ground advanced rapidly. Every time it arrived at an area, dozens of containers would be airdropped on the spot waiting to be received.

By replenishing fuel and supplies on site, the team can maintain extremely high combat capabilities almost throughout the entire process.

Airship support combat system, she can now create that kind of heart-warming scene!

So what's the reason not to promote it?

Chapter 105 Comprehensive Optimization and Innovation

Not only airships, but also large aircraft manufacturing projects have been launched.

Compared with small biplane propeller aircraft, large biplanes are even easier to manufacture. If two engines are not enough, just put in four or five!

Do you know what it means to fly with great force?

After the airship incident, Medea has completely changed his thinking on military construction.

Before, her idea was to follow the standard template of industrialized countries in her previous life, and try her best to make airplanes, from biplanes to monoplanes to jet fighters.

But now looking back at this world, the fighter jets' pitiful bomb load and dive attack method may not be able to do anything to the opponent's mecha units.

Moreover, the huge overload pressure during a dive will make the aircraft's route fixed and predictable. A magic bullet can shoot it down like a turkey. It is difficult to say whether such an attack behavior is a gift to death.

In comparison, large transport aircraft and bombers at higher altitudes can perform very well, dropping bombs from high altitudes. If you have the guts, fly up and hit me!

To put it bluntly, she changed her mind from using fighter jets as the main attack force to using aircraft to create local advantages for ground forces.

The ultimate goal in her mind is an aerial gunship like the AC13030.

With three-dimensional fire support from gunboats in the middle airspace and material supplies delivered by high-altitude airships, coupled with heavy mechanical forces on the ground, it is entirely possible to nail every place they occupy there like a nail.

Of course, there is a high probability that there is still an air force in this world, and the development of fighter jets cannot be interrupted, but they will not be deployed on a large scale and will only be used to collect flight data for actual combat.

At the same time, after more than ten years of funding from Mediah, the Federal Naval Shipyard finally produced a qualified main armored warship.

【Zhiyuan-class cruiser】

The ship has a double-chimney and double-mast design, with a length of 106.2 meters and a maximum draft of 6.57 meters. The bow and stern are each equipped with a twin-mounted 210mm naval gun with a gun shield, and there is also a back-mounted 210mm turret on the front deck, with a configuration of 2 in front and 1 in the rear.

There is a 152mm naval gun with a gun shield on each side of the front amidships, and three 152mm rapid-fire naval guns on each side.

In addition, it is equipped with 20 machine guns, powered by 2 triple-expansion steam turbines, 4 coal-fired boilers, dual-shaft propulsion, a maximum boost horsepower of 10600 horsepower, and a speed of 22.5 knots.

The displacement is 3900 tons, the maximum coal capacity is 820 tons, and the endurance is 8000 nautical miles/15 knots.

The armor is an arched "dome armor" installed in the middle of the hull, with the middle part located above the waterline and the sides sloping down to below the waterline. There is no armor at the waterline, but the coal cabinet is used for defense.

The dome armor is 70.8~131 mm thick, the conning tower armor is 130 mm, and the gun shield armor is 70 mm.

Twin 210mm naval guns use hydraulic recoil technology

When firing, the gravity of the inclined plane and the hydraulic mechanism are used simultaneously to offset the recoil.

This greatly reduced the displacement of the artillery and shortened the firing interval. The firing interval of a single artillery piece was 2.5 minutes per shot, and two Oxen soldiers were equipped to carry the artillery shells.

The 152mm secondary gun is a rapid-fire naval gun that eliminates the inclined gun mount and adopts a hydraulic and spring double return system.

When firing, the gun barrel moves backward, the hydraulic system reduces the recoil depth, and then the spring group is compressed to release the reaction force, allowing the gun body to return to the normal position at a faster speed.

This recoil and recovery system can increase the firing rate of the 152 rapid-fire gun to one round per 10 seconds, which can be done by ordinary soldiers who are gunners carrying artillery shells.

Although a giant ship with a full load displacement of 10,000 tons was built a few years ago, it was ultimately a civilian vessel, not a professional war behemoth.

A warship of nearly 4,000 tons was considered very good by Medea, and several joint shipyards in Sendegas were able to complete the construction of the ship.

Medea naturally did not save any money and approved the construction of ten ships so that the Seris Federation Navy could quickly form a strong combat capability.

At the same time, all orders for the construction of civilian ships were transferred to the Port City of Bonwich. In the past, Bonwich had only built wooden sailing ships and was not familiar with ironclad ships, so it would take some time to transition.

Medea is not in a hurry anyway, she has plenty of time to wait for the fruits to bloom and bear fruit.