1855 United States Tycoon

Chapter 568, Preparations for a Great Era (3)

Scrooge left the negotiation with the British to Donald. He did have other important things. People in later generations will often regard Scrooge as a monster, to a large extent because Scrooge is still energetic even in his old age, and his thinking is still so creative. You must know that under normal circumstances, With age, the processing power of the brain will decline significantly. Therefore, look at those occupations that rely heavily on the processing power of the brain, such as scientists, the age group where they can produce the most results are concentrated in the middle age, even Newton and Like Einstein, after he gets older, he won’t have any great achievements.

Scrooge’s performance in science now generally conforms to this law. Over the years, there have been a lot fewer scientific papers made by him, or the first author is his. But any scientific worker working in the laboratory of the University of Cleveland also admits that this old man has amazing insights into the development of science and technology. Although he is older, his response to some mathematical problems has declined a lot. But that kind of insight has become more obvious. In many cases, the research direction that the old man insisted on is not favored by most people, but the final history has proved his correctness time and time again.

For example, now, the old man has begun to fully promote a series of shipbuilding-related research projects: including low-cost steam turbines, or reciprocating steam engines with better high-speed performance, welding instead of riveting, standardizing ship components, and so on. Now, Scrooge regularly goes to the University of Cleveland laboratory to stay.

“Mr. MacDonald, and everyone. After careful research, we have come to this conclusion.” Ship engineer Charlotte is reporting on a pre-research project that he was in charge of before.

“As far as our original design requirements are concerned, the technological advantages of low-cost steam turbines compared to three-expansion reciprocating steam engines are not obvious. At least, it is not obvious in the preset environment, or even has no advantage. It would be quite difficult to compress the cost to the point where it can be compared with a reciprocating steam engine. Therefore, I suggest that in this project, we should use a low-cost high-speed reciprocating steam engine as the main force.

Everyone, our new power system requires that a transport ship that can carry about 8,000 tons of cargo retains better sailing performance, um, that is, it must be able to run the sailing performance of the route across the Atlantic. It can reach a cruising speed of more than 17 knots and a maximum speed of about 20 knots in the whole journey. There are nothing more than two ways for a ship to gain speed. The same is a ship type that is more suitable for high-speed navigation. For example, the Alaska gold transport ship designed by Mr. MacDonald back then, its speed is very amazing even now, but this The ship obviously does not meet our current requirements. First of all, the transport capacity of this kind of ship is too small relative to its displacement, and its sailing performance, especially in high sea conditions, is really mediocre. Finally, this thing is too expensive. We know that this ship can reach that high speed under the condition of limited power because it uses a ship type with a very large aspect ratio. This type of ship is very conducive to increasing speed, but it will cause cost ascending and worsen sailing performance. Under the same tonnage, the carrying capacity decreases. From an economic point of view, this type of ship is not suitable for general merchant ships.

The second way is to increase the power. In theory, as long as the power is large enough, even if the ship is unreasonable, it can run fast. Of course, the same problem here is cost. We know that steam turbines have higher thermal efficiency. If they are used for a long time, they can save a certain cost on fuel. However, the pre-research requirements emphasize that this type of ship only needs a short use time and only needs to be able to travel on the Atlantic route. After three years of continuous use, the fuel saving compared with other things is hardly worth mentioning. The continuous high-speed performance of the steam turbine is much better than that of the reciprocating steam engine, but the precision requirements are higher when the parts are manufactured. Even if we work hard, the room for cost reduction is limited. The reciprocating steam engine is indeed inferior to gas turbines in terms of energy density and sustained high-speed performance. However, our design goal requires a reciprocating steam engine with a cruising speed of 17 knots or more. As long as the life expectancy of the engine is sacrificed, it can be easily achieved, and the maximum speed of 20 knots or more is the same. In short, if we do not have high requirements for the life of the ship, we can improve its high-speed performance at the expense of the life of the reciprocating steam engine. This can even further reduce the cost of such engines. Therefore, I think it is better to choose a reciprocating steam engine than a steam turbine for the new general-purpose merchant ship. It’s easier to implement in technology, and it’s also cheaper. ”

Although I don’t understand why Scrooge made such strange performance requirements, a general-purpose transport ship actually only needs to run for three years. However, Charlotte knew that he didn’t need to worry about this kind of thing. He only needed to bring his own team and design a ship that met the requirements. And the design of this ship is just a small part of the huge plan.

The concept of this kind of ship reference comes from the “free ship” of later generations. In World War II, the people of United States produced nearly 3,000 general cargo ships in one go. It is precisely relying on this kind of freighter that can produce quickly, the production speed is even faster than the speed of the German submarine to sink the freighter, the British talents have to support the pillar not to be defeated by the Third Reich.

Speaking of submarine warfare, although the German wolves in World War II seem to be more famous, but to say that the real threat is the greater threat of unrestricted submarine warfare in Germany during World War I. Because throughout World War II, the German submarine force never managed to sink more tonnage of merchant ships than the newly built merchant ships of the Allies, but in World War I, for a long period of time, the German submarine force was real. Did it. If it hadn’t been for the British to achieve breakthroughs in technology and adopt more reasonable tactics in tactics, then the Germans’ infinite submarine battle really almost won the Germans.

And in this time and space, Scrooge provided the Germans with a lot of things that can further improve the combat effectiveness of their submarines, such as the “civil transport submarine” that just signed an agreement. With this, the German submarine’s ability to continue to switch wars. There will be a substantial improvement. With this, I believe that the German navy’s naval forces can do better than in history. And the more the Germans and the British lose both sides, the better for the United States and for Scrooge. For this reason, Scrooge is even considering whether to help the Germans with the wolf pack tactics invented by the German admiral Dunnitz in World War II in advance? Anyway, the key tactical shortwave radio station is now a bad thing. Moreover, MacDonald has also made good progress in aircraft technology. In another one or two years, it is completely possible to launch an aircraft that can board warships. At that time, the means to deal with wolves is to escort the aircraft carrier. There will be. And how much wealth can these bring to the family?

Of course, this is not the time yet. However, after the war begins, it is actually quite good to do such things through some caring people when necessary, according to the development of the war situation.

Scrooge was born in 1844. At least this body is. By now, he is also 63 years old. Scrooge knew that the world’s greatest opportunity to make money was war. He couldn’t keep up with World War II, so , We must seize the opportunity of World War I and earn more money.

“Charlotte, what do you think about rapid construction?” Scrooge asked. For this kind of ship, the feature of being easy to build quickly is even more important than low price, because once the war begins, the struggle on the sea transportation line will become a struggle between the speed of construction and the speed of sinking. Although Scrooge hopes that Germany can beat all European countries, he does not want Germany to win. This is because in the short term, because of the advantages of British surface ships, it is impossible for Germany to have too much business with United States during the war. Therefore, it is naturally impossible to borrow from United States and Scrooge on a large scale. If he wins, wouldn’t the debts that Scrooge borrowed in the future will be wiped out? In the long run, neither United States nor Scrooge can tolerate the emergence of a unified Europe in the world. On this point, they are very much in agreement with the United Kingdom.

“Mr. MacDonald, in order to increase the production speed, we have some of these ideas in design.” Charlotte replied, “First, we set a fixed standard for various parts, and consider the ease of production of most parts. In this way, most of the parts in this kind of ship can be handed over to other companies with low technology level. OEM, so that when necessary, many parts can be ordered from any machinery factory in the United States. As for the engine, you know, even the short-life version, the key components are not ordinary Companies can produce. But considering its versatility, I mean, unlike now, there are not so many ship types, and there are not many models of each model. As a result, almost every ship’s steam engine is almost custom-made. Of course, it can be produced. It’s slow. Our ships use the same steam engines, and the steam engines on each ship are exactly the same as those on the other ship. In this way, for mass production, we can prepare special production lines for them, so that the speed can naturally be greatly Ascension. In terms of docks, we can also design docks optimized for this kind of ship, so that we can further speed up shipbuilding.”

“Very good.” Scrooge said, “Charlotte, I think this type of ship, we can call it a “Charlotte” standard freighter. Charlotte, you will be famous for this type of ship. ”