Chapter 1,118 “Satellite City”

The more Jiang Chen looked at the twenty-meter-long barrel, the more he liked it.

Although the actual combat value of this purely kinetic energy weapon in space battles on a scale of tens of thousands of kilometers has not yet been determined, it is true that giant ship cannons are the romance of men! The scene of thousands of cannons firing together makes me feel emotional just thinking about it.

Now that the cannons are available, can the giant ships be far behind?

"Can I have a test shot?" Jiang Chen looked at Ling Tao and asked.

"Of course! Let me show you its power now." After saying that, Ling Tao took off the walkie-talkie on his shoulder and gave a few instructions to the engineers at the institute. Soon, the more than 20-meter-long gun barrel was placed on the robotic arm. It was suspended and slowly lifted half a meter off the ground.

Ling Tao raised his hand and stretched out his fingers to count points on the touch pad. Soon the door of the warehouse where the electromagnetic gun tower was stored was closed and locked. The nozzle embedded in the top of the ceiling began to throw dry ice into the warehouse inside the protective wall. At the same time, dozens of large vacuum pumps in the laboratory began to work "whirring".

Along with the enchanting smoke screen, the warehouse where the turret was located was soon evacuated.

"Steel plates" several centimeters thick were slowly placed in the slot 500 meters in front of the electromagnetic gun tower under the movement of the mechanical cantilever, and stacked upright to form a wall of steel. However, this was not over yet. When the steel plates were stacked to a thickness of more than five meters, a concrete wall more than ten meters thick rose up behind the row of steel plates.

After all, the scale of the entire vacuum laboratory is limited, and it can only test up to 500 meters. However, for weapons used in space, there is actually not much difference between five hundred meters and five kilometers. After all, there is no air resistance in the universe, so there is no need to consider kinetic energy attenuation.

The barrel shook and pointed at the five-meter-thick "steel plate". The capacitor in the turret began to charge, and a faint blue arc could even be seen faintly leaking from the mouth of the barrel.

When everything was ready, Ling Tao looked at Jiang Chen, smiled, made a respectful gesture to the touch pad, and said.

"Just press the red launch button."

Following Ling Tao's suggestion, Jiang Chen took two steps forward, looked at the turret inside the separation wall, and pressed the red button.

There was no warning.

The blue arc flashed suddenly, the dazzling white light flashed away, and the fifty-kilogram mass bomb hit the steel plate at the same time, followed by the tremor of the earth and the roar from the soles of the feet.

"..."

Simple words could no longer describe the shock in Jiang Chen's heart.

Almost as soon as he came back to his senses, a fracture as thick as a thigh was engraved on the steel plate, and this steel wall made of dozens of steel plates had been blasted into a "V" with an opening on the side. type.

As for the concrete behind the steel, it was completely shattered in half...

Because he had seen it many times, Ling Tao didn't have much reaction.

"The gun barrel can fire up to 50 kilograms of mass bullets. Theoretically, the rate of fire can reach nine rounds per minute. Do you need to test the next round?"

"No need, I've already seen its power." Jiang Chen shook his head.

"OK"

Nodding, Ling Tao stepped forward and clicked a few times on the touch pad. After the overflowing electric energy in the high-energy capacitor of the turret was slowly released, he immediately turned off the power of the turret. The blue arc also dimmed and eventually disappeared.

After a long time, Jiang Chen ended his silence and said with emotion: "...I'm thinking now, if this thing is placed in the Pacific Ocean, which warship can withstand a single shot from it."

"No warship can carry this kind of turret." Ling Tao thought his boss really had this plan, so he hurriedly explained to him, "The electromagnetic gun on the guardian class is already strong enough. No warship can carry it." The armor can take one shot and still be safe——"

"I know," Jiang Chen waved his hand, "I'm just talking about how it is possible to really use a cannon to kill mosquitoes."

Looking at the turret, Jiang Chen paused for a moment and then continued to ask, "How much does it cost to build such a turret?"

"Ignoring the research and development costs, the prototype cost approximately S$1 billion."

S$1 billion!

Hearing this figure, even Jiang Chen, a major shareholder of the New Federal Reserve, couldn't help but be speechless.

Even if large-scale production can cut the cost in half, it would still be S$500 million. If hundreds of electromagnetic naval guns are to be installed on battleships, will this bankrupt the Earth Defense Alliance?

Seeing the unsightly expression on Jiang Chen's face, Ling Tao vaguely guessed something and quickly explained.

"The reason why it is so expensive is mainly due to manufacturing process problems. Many parts cannot be produced with current processing technology, so industrial-grade 3D printers can only be used. When production technology improves, this turret will definitely not be so expensive. "

Hearing these words, Jiang Chen finally felt a little better.

The Earth Defense Alliance Committee will start again in a few days, and the content of the next meeting will be about which ship type should be used for the first megaton star warship.

In fact, no matter what kind of ship Wulu is, conventional weapons such as electromagnetic guns are indispensable, so no matter what the final result of the discussion is, the orders from the future military industry will not be lost. After all, the Future Group's technical advantages in electromagnetic guns are obvious to all the world.

It's just that the cost of nearly 1 billion is too expensive.

Jiang Chen asked himself, if he were a member of the committee, he probably wouldn't let go of the budget easily.

After all, the Earth Defense Alliance was not founded by him. Each member country contributes money based on the percentage of GDP and population weight. China alone spent three trillion yuan a year! How can companies from other countries easily make this money?

As an executive, he has decision-making power, but the committee also has veto power, voting power, and budget review power.

Jiang Chen couldn't help but get a headache when he thought of this.

How to fool those committee members?

It seems really hard to fool...

…

As August gets closer and closer, expectations for the 2019 Asia-Pacific joint military exercises are gradually rising. However, the response of Star Ring Trade is quite calm, as if it does not take the aircraft carrier battle group parked at the door at all.

At an altitude of 36,000 kilometers, the shuttle-shaped aircraft travels between steel skeletons about several kilometers long, like silver needles pulling threads, weaving the future of earth's civilization amidst the dancing electric sparks.

That's the second shipyard of Starlink, and the project is currently only at 15% progress.

Covering an area of ​​hundreds of acres and costing nearly S$20 billion, the new shipyard is like a satellite city suspended beside the Halo City, connected by a graphene track and a space elevator.

Six main axes about three kilometers long are suspended in parallel on the synchronous orbit and connected by a titanium alloy skeleton. They are like a narrow and hollow hexagonal prism, which already outlines the outline of the entire shipyard.

Nearly a thousand engineering robots that have participated in the construction of the space elevator were remotely controlled by human engineers with the help of neural access technology to weld pieces of alloy steel plates to the skeleton. Shuttle-shaped aircraft travel through the construction site, delivering materials and construction equipment to the hands of engineering robots.

In the future, all warships over 500,000 tons of Star Ring Trade and Earth Defense Alliance will be produced by this new shipyard.

As for the first order from this shipyard, the Earth Defense Alliance has held more than a dozen meetings in a row, but they still have not discussed the reason. Some people propose to develop missile ships, while others propose to prioritize the development of aircraft carriers and unmanned carrier-based aircraft...

The person who finally ended the debate was a Chinese representative named Lu Wei.

At the 17th meeting, the "functional ship theory" he proposed was approved by the majority of committee members.

"It is undoubtedly ridiculous to use 19th-century artillery to attack 20th-century battleships. However, 19th-century battleships can still exert their remaining heat on the battlefield after being modified with 20th-century artillery systems. Instead of debating whether to arm our ships with bows and arrows or spears , it’s better to build the ship first, and then think about what weapons to install on it.”

Leave the choice of which weapons to use to a later date, and first produce a bare ship with room for modification. Even if this naked ship is eventually eliminated with the innovation of shipbuilding technology in the future, it can be converted into an engineering ship at a lower cost and use its remaining energy in the field of infrastructure construction.

Lu Wei's suggestion also made Jiang Chen feel relieved.

At least for now, he doesn't have to worry about how to convince the committee to buy a billion-dollar cannon. (To be continued.) Activate new URL