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, it meant a flying boat?

"Indeed, we have no way to get close to the sea, and we can't build ships, but we can fly over it." Hughes spread out the blueprint. "This is the airship I designed. It can fly through the air. Except for its slow speed, everything else is pretty good. What are you looking at?"

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

But Chloe and Alexi's hands began to tremble.

"Isn't there anything like this 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 to mention mortals, even extraordinary people don't have the ability to fly in the sky. Can we really fly into the sky with this airship?"

"Of course, the principle is actually similar to floating up and sinking in water. We just need to find a gas lighter than air, which can 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 looked at them carefully.

"So, the huge oval thing above is a balloon. It is filled with hydrogen, which creates a lift, and the movement is done by propellers around it?"

"right."

"Aren't balloons afraid of being punctured?"

"This is the difficulty in designing an airship." Hughes's airship was designed based on 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 didn't 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. As expected of Chloe, she saw the most troublesome point at a glance. In fact, the most difficult part of making an airship is not making hydrogen, but finding a skin with qualified performance. This is why he has not taken out the blueprint.

Strictly speaking, the airship skin is not a high-tech thing. It can be made of canvas + rubber. But the problem is that Castel has no rubber.

There is no such thing as rubber trees. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union was severely choked by rubber. This primary agricultural product can easily strangle an industrial country with a complete industrial chain, which shows its irreplaceable nature.

Of course, there are solutions. If Hughes can get a complete petrochemical industry and all the industrial workers, and find a few oil wells, then it is not impossible to skip rubber and use composite materials. But at this moment, Hughes has no other 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 actually most likely the recent technological lock has been 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 that 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, what he produced were inferior products with vastly different performance. This could 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 in their manufacturing for unknown reasons. However, the technologies of 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 only had some vague guesses, such as: This is a phenomenon similar to cognitive interference, where some will is rejecting the breakthrough of science and technology, and this will leads to the deviation of reality.

Now that the technological lock has been broken, 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.

The latest novel is published first on Liu9shuba!

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 think that simply removing the technology lock will not lead to a technological explosion. It just removes a certain kind of suppression. All successful technologies are what we should have succeeded. 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 a short time. It was really difficult to find a skin material that was airtight and strong enough to cover it.

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 still have some ideas about the airship skin."

Chloe's next words pulled Hughes back again.

"Do you remember those fishmen?"

The fishmen have captured many prisoners, and the task of interrogation has been given to the Fire Chaser. Could it be that they have obtained some information from them? "Those fishmen seem to be unable to communicate. After a series of tests, we found that they seem to exist only on instinct and have no reason. We don't know if it has always been like this or if something has changed recently."

"At the same time, another experiment we conducted found that their skin seems to be very tough."

(End of this chapter)