blenderwars #485 - Good intentions but no power
#485 - Good intentions but no power
Following the debut of the Han-class strategic nuclear submarine, similar news spread, to varying degrees, among the great powers.
However, for Ren Zhong, external reactions were no longer important; what mattered most was proceeding at his own pace.
While it wasn't feasible to build a large number of aircraft carriers, it was essential to have them and master the relevant technologies.
At this point in the Bright Sword world, after acquiring the Dongting Lake-class amphibious assault ship, there were no significant shortcomings in aircraft carrier hull design and related materials.
Furthermore, with the J-9 and Qiang-9 designated carrier-based aircraft, the design of the aircraft carrier's hangar and flight deck had clear constraints.
During their honeymoon period with Dongda, the John Bulls were willing to share some of their experience in hull and propulsion systems.
Their involvement was a welcome addition, but they were unwilling to offer their expertise on the crucial catapult and arresting systems.
These were among the most critical subsystems on an aircraft carrier.
In the Bright Sword world, only the John Bulls and the Rogue Eagles possessed steam catapult technology, and even their technology originated from the same source.
Currently, only three entities have arresting gear technology: the John Bulls, the Rogue Eagles, and the Great Bear.
However, the arresting gear technology of the John Bulls and the Rogue Eagles also shared a common origin.
Therefore, the John Bulls, citing a confidentiality agreement with the Rogue Eagles, flatly refused cooperation in these two areas.
Of course, Ren Zhong was well aware of the nature of these great powers.
When you lack a particular technology, pleading with them is futile, but once you possess it, they will proactively seek cooperation.
This held true for both the previous cooperation with the Rogue Eagles and the current cooperation with the John Bulls.
Therefore, Ren Zhong never entertained the idea of relying on Western powers for advanced technology.
Unfortunately, Dongda in the main world had suffered too many losses and setbacks in this regard.
Ren Zhong would rather sacrifice all his personal leisure and devote himself to the forefront of technological research.
By establishing the Dawn Research Institute and implementing a 'technology-industry-trade' strategy, he transformed technology into a vast Dawn-affiliated factory and sales system.
He successfully created the largest, most peculiar scientific research consortium in the Bright Sword world: the Dawn Research Institute system!
Based on its current operation and results, this system, with over 100,000 direct technology research experts and over a million R\u0026D and engineering personnel in affiliated enterprises, now supports Dongda's most core technological research.
In comparison, Dongda's official New Science Research Institute system couldn't yet compete.
This was because the source of its technology still relied on Ren Zhong's imports from the main world.
Now, focusing on arresting systems and steam catapults, shortening the research and development time still depended on Ren Zhong's efforts.
Although the current industrial and technological foundation, especially the alloy material foundation, had reached the level of the late 1970s and 1980s in the main world, even without Ren Zhong's 'arresting rope,' it could eventually be researched and developed through experimentation.
After all, even though the John Bulls and the Rogue Eagles maintained a tight grip on this technology, some technical characteristics were still revealed.
Given the current strength of the Dawn Research Institute's powerful research and development team, overcoming the difficulties was only a matter of time.
However, with Ren Zhong, this time wouldn't be dragged out to five or even ten years, which would not only save time but also greatly reduce research costs.
All along, the Dawn Research Institute had managed to elevate Dongda's overall technological strength from a low 19th-century base to a point where it had essentially entered the 1970s and 1980s in key areas, bridging nearly a century of technological development, by taking shortcuts.
In particular, in the fields of materials science and basic chemical industry, nearly twenty years of Ren Zhong's efforts had finally resulted in the introduction of mature technologies from the main world.
Upon returning to the main world, Ren Zhong quickly gained a certain understanding of arresting systems.
In the main world, the Rogue Eagles' mainstream MK7 arresting gear was the equipment installed on active large aircraft carriers.
It could arrest modern carrier-based aircraft, capable of stopping aircraft weighing 50,000 pounds landing at a speed of 105 knots, and even aircraft weighing 60,000 pounds in emergency situations.
The most important feature of the MK7 arresting gear was that it was equipped with a constant-length runout control valve, which allowed the hydraulic arresting machine to stop various types of carrier-based aircraft in a designated area on the aircraft carrier deck.
Another major feature of the MK7 arresting gear was the installation of a cable tail-end buffer system and a pulley buffer system, which could solve problems such as cable slack and excessive working tension of the arresting cable caused by the high arresting speed of modern carrier-based aircraft.
The MK7 arresting gear was the most representative hydraulic buffer arresting gear to date.
From a mechanical perspective, it was a complex, large-scale hydraulic system composed of multiple subsystems: arresting cable, arresting cable support system, arresting machine system, pulley buffer system, cable tail-end buffer system, cable system, constant-length runout control system, reset system, oil cooling system, and so on.
Ren Zhong could find relevant schematic diagrams, but he could never obtain detailed design data and parameters.
Schematic diagram of arresting fighter aircraft
Schematic diagram of arresting gear
Fortunately, with a bidding document from the main world, Ren Zhong obtained some crucial performance parameter data.
With these things, plus some introduction to the composition of the arresting cable, he provided an application idea for the research of arresting cables in the Bright Sword world, that is, how to use it and what the requirements were.
He determined reasonable performance parameter boundaries, but it still didn't provide substantial help on how to achieve the technical indicators of the aircraft carrier arresting cable.
"Arresting rope? We don't have that." When Ren Zhong contacted a private enterprise in the main world that claimed to have arresting ropes, the sales representative flatly denied it.
"Didn't the internet say that you produced and sold 4,000 pieces for foreign countries in 2002?" Ren Zhong asked, somewhat unwilling to give up, "Can you reproduce them?"
"No, sir, can you take the self-media stories circulating on the internet seriously? We make rigging, not arresting ropes," the sales representative said with a smile, "However, our company has too many legends, and it's normal for you to be misled.
The real project is being done in Qian Province, this is no longer a secret, but I don't know whether they sell it to the outside world."
The sales representative was quite nice and gave Ren Zhong accurate information.
However, when Ren Zhong called to inquire, the person who answered the phone also refused Ren Zhong outright.
"This product is not sold to individuals!"
They did indeed exist, but they weren't for sale to ordinary individuals; they were truly controlled products.
This shattered Ren Zhong's idea of buying a sample to take to the Bright Sword world.
The more cutting-edge a product is, the more difficult it is to even buy a sample nowadays.
Especially in military applications, many items are still in use, and for ordinary companies and individuals, these goods are simply not for sale.
Ren Zhong wasn't too disappointed. After all, it wasn't the first time he'd hit a wall. During the process of purchasing machine tools for the aviation industry, he had already encountered certain high-end machine tools that couldn't be bought.
Not to mention special items like modern mainstream aero-engines, which, apart from airline companies, no other businesses were qualified to purchase.
Thus, apart from providing materials and ideas, Ren Zhong had no other way to research the two key subsystems of the Dawn-class aircraft carrier.
Fortunately, Ren Zhong was calm. He didn't expect instant success. His abilities in the main world were limited, and he couldn't expose his abilities to solicit help from the national team.
Because in his opinion, the Bright Sword world wasn't of much use to the national team. Its technology was nearly a century behind, and Ren Zhong couldn't extract resources from the Bright Sword world on a large scale. Obtaining things like celebrity calligraphy and paintings or diamonds and jade wouldn't have a significant impact on the vast Dongda now.
However, because he could connect two worlds, he might have immense research value and could end up becoming a test subject.
This wasn't a question of patriotism.
For Ren Zhong, this might be a matter of life and death.
He wouldn't entrust his fate to an uncertain future.
Ultimately, Ren Zhong was just an ordinary person.
Even though he now possessed the ability to travel between two worlds, making him seem somewhat special.
But in terms of personal ability, Ren Zhong wasn't anything special. Apart from transporting knowledge from the main world to strengthen Dongda's power in the Bright Sword world, Ren Zhong in the main world was just contributing a few enterprises sustained by funds exchanged for scarce resources from the Bright Sword world.
Becoming a billionaire in the main world.
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However, there were thousands upon thousands of such millionaires in Dongda, making him nothing too special.
In terms of aero-engines, Ren Zhong, in the Bright Sword world, pushed for a connection with Rolls-Royce to start joint research and development. Once this path was open, no matter how long it lasted, at least the training of research personnel on Dongda's side kept up with the times in the several projects they were currently cooperating on.
They didn't have to just simply copy, like they did before, when they were reverse-engineering the Spey engine that Ren Zhong provided.
Having fully experienced the forward research of an advanced aero-engine was a completely new baptism for these Dongda aviation elites. Such engineering experience was hard to come by even with money in the main world.
Ren Zhong clearly knew that even after obtaining the blueprints for the Spey, it still took decades to finally fully understand it and modify it into the WS-9, which they truly mastered. This was because after buying the data, they didn't directly go through the research and realization process of this aero-engine together with Rolls-Royce.
However, Ren Zhong had the support of a team of materials experts. Although directly developing a complete arresting gear was difficult, there were no restrictions on investing funds to study the basic alloy materials needed for this kind of cable.
After Ren Zhong obtained the parameters of the materials, he separated the material research for the arresting cable and handed it over to the alloy research team for research in the main world. Although Ren Zhong had already introduced quite a few alloys to the Bright Sword world, none of them possessed the performance demonstrated by the arresting cable.
Alloys and carbon fiber were already abundant for Ren Zhong, but there was no systematic testing to verify whether these materials could meet the requirements of the arresting cable.
Ren Zhong issued research tasks to the scientists he hired in the main world, although he didn't fully expect them to produce results in the short term.
But this was originally a fallback method. If they could figure out the material production and formula in the main world, they would pass the first hurdle directly.
After all, there were a lot of troublesome things now. Anyone who didn't strive for things they had the answer to would be a fool.
Although Ren Zhong's ability to mobilize scientific research resources in the main world was limited, meaning he couldn't follow the whole process, and the things being researched were difficult for them to completely deliver on their own.
But one benefit was that they were standing on the shoulders of giants. Ordinary industrial technology from the 1970s and 80s was almost freely available, but some of the main military technologies of the main world, even if they were outdated to the 1960s and 70s, were not open to individuals.
Therefore, Ren Zhong generally decomposed these technologies. Ren Zhong hoped to conduct research on the technology from the source. After obtaining the basic technical details, these things would be truly invaluable to the Bright Sword world and could greatly reduce the effort invested in technical exploration.
All along, Ren Zhong's strategy has very much accomplished the task of acquiring a large number of basic technologies.
For the Bright Sword world, the investment and time saved were often calculated in decades. These were two completely different worlds. In terms of technology, many of the technologies in the Bright Sword world, which was decades behind, were relatively low-end in the main world.
What Ren Zhong was doing now was trying to find ways to forcibly raise the scientific and technological level of Dongda in the Bright Sword world. He needed to surpass the accumulation of the great powers over the past two hundred years, and also needed to advance ahead by about twenty or thirty years, so that Dongda could reach the overall technical level of the 1980s in the main world. He didn't know if he could ultimately achieve such a thing in his lifetime.
But he didn't need to think so much now. Dongda had already begun the true electrification and industrialization process, which was thirty years ahead compared to the main world. Compared to the mainstream technology in the Bright Sword world, it had already achieved a leading position in several important fields. Coupled with nearly 100 million industrialized people, Dongda was already an undeniable industrial power in the Bright Sword world.
If measured by total steel production and electricity production, these basic indicators had already entered the forefront of the world.
Not only had a relatively complete system been established in terms of production, but Ren Zhong had also promoted large-scale university education in terms of scientific and technological development, and the number of people receiving higher education next year was beginning to approach one million.
Coupled with the Dawn Research Institute, this giant scientific research freak had already formed a closed-loop, complete set of cutting-edge scientific research system, and Ren Zhong could rest assured even if he lay flat.
It's just that Ren Zhong felt somewhat unwilling that success wasn't achieved in his own hands. How many people could be selfless enough to say that they didn't need to be the ones to achieve success?
(End of this chapter)