Chapter 577: Emperor's Staff
Chapter 577: Emperor's Staff
Tan Yaoxun has been working in Jiuquan, and it takes two days to travel to Hailing by train.
In order to save time, he took the mail plane again. It was fast, but it was dangerous, wasn't it?
Shao Quanzhong admired this young man very much - ahem, Xiao Tan is now 36 years old, middle-aged, in charge of Daxia aerospace research and development, and can no longer be considered a young man.
Seeing Tan Yaoxun coming in, he shook his head and sighed, "Xiao Tan, why are you being so polite to me? If you have anything to say, just give me a call. You don't have to come all the way here in person."
"Even if you want to stay in Hailing for a few days, you are absolutely not allowed to take the mail plane again. This is my order. Do you hear me? You are the pillar of the country. Daxia cannot afford the loss."
Tan Yaoxun was very touched, "Thank you for your care, Marshal."
Then he knelt down in front of Shao Quanzhong.
Shao Quanzhong was the de facto emperor emeritus, one level higher than the emperor. It was normal for his subjects to kneel when they saw him.
But in fact, Shao Quanzhong never asked people to kneel, and there was no rule for kneeling in the Xin Dynasty. Intellectuals were given special treatment, and at most they just had to bow to Shao Quanzhong.
"Marshal, I failed to live up to your instructions. I insisted on testing the space-based kinetic weapon I envisioned. As a result, the test failed, causing a loss of five million taels of silver to the country. Please punish me."
It turned out that he came in person to apologize.
Wasting five million taels on the country is indeed enough to warrant execution, but that depends on who did it.
It doesn't matter if Tesla can just use more. Xiao Tan has made outstanding contributions and has the privilege to use more.
Shao Quanzhong was very kind to intellectuals and helped Xiao Tan up affectionately.
"It's not a big deal. You didn't embezzle the money for your own use. When working for the country, you have to allow for the cost of trial and error. Daring to think and act is worth encouraging."
"The more you do, the more mistakes you make; the less you do, the fewer mistakes you make. If you muddle through like this, what's the difference between you and the mediocre officials of my Qing dynasty?"
"It's okay, just follow me. I'm not afraid of you making trouble or spending money. What's important is that you get the big job done for me."
Tan Yaoxun was extremely excited. This was the best boss for someone like him who was willing to work. "The Marshal is wise. I should have listened to him in the beginning."
"It's just that space-based kinetic weapons can strike any corner of the world at will, and the temptation is too great. Being able to summon meteor showers from the sky to strike the enemy has been my dream since I was a child, so I insisted on doing it."
"Of course, my insistence is also based on science. In order to make the weapons strong, we use tungsten rods to make space-based weapons."
"I calculated that a tungsten rod with a diameter of 30 centimeters and a length of 6 meters, shot down from the sky at a speed of 30 Mach, would only take 10 minutes to strike any target on Earth."
"It can generate 4586 billion joules of energy, equivalent to the explosion of 110 tons of TNT. The effect of a tungsten rod is theoretically equivalent to the concentrated explosion of 37 P16 missiles."
"If you calculate it this way, the cost of the tungsten rods, plus the rocket and satellite platform, only cost five million taels, and we sent 10 tungsten rods into space. This is a huge bargain."
Hearing 110 tons of TNT, ten sticks would be more than a thousand tons of TNT equivalent, Shao Quanzhong became very interested, "Then why did it fail? Were they not accurate?"
Tan Yaoxun shook his head. "Satellites aim at fixed targets from the sky, which is much more accurate than missiles that fly 10,000 kilometers in a curve. It's no problem to be accurate to a few meters."
"But I didn't expect that although this thing has a large explosive force in theory, in practice, because the tungsten rod is not an explosive, the striking range is too small."
Tan Yaoxun took out a photo and said, "Look, Marshal, our tungsten rod fell from the sky and accurately hit the target point on the Gobi Desert, but it only created a deep pit with a diameter of 9.1 meters. It did break the rock and penetrate dozens of meters underground."
"But it doesn't explode. It can only hit an area the size of a small house. Its attack power is not as strong as a 250-kilogram bomb. Isn't this a failure?"
"My original plan was that with such a large amount of kinetic energy, if ten of them were fired at the same time, it should be able to destroy at least a city of a million people. In the end, we could only destroy a company, which was a huge loss."
Shao Quanzhong was listening with a smile, ready to comfort the defeated Tan Yaoxun. But when he heard that the tungsten rod had drilled several dozen meters into the ground, his eyes suddenly started to roll.
After Tan Yaoxun finished speaking, Shao Quanzhong suddenly laughed out loud and patted Tan on the shoulder, "Brother, you have done a great job this time. I will award you the first-class Jiahe Medal, make you a first-class baron, and build a mansion specifically for you in the old city of Hailing." Tan Yaoxun was stunned. Is the Marshal getting old and confused? Didn't he hear my report clearly?
…………
Five days later, Central Park, New York.
Cui Guoyin, Daxia's ambassador to the Federation, personally built a strange building in the park.
It is 20 meters square, made up of pieces of granite, and is meters high.
They bought ready-made stones from the quarry and shipped them to New York by train, and then hired a large number of construction machinery to stack them up one by one.
Because we had enough money and the shape was simple, it only took half a month to complete.
Then, they saw that the construction team was very dedicated and used cement to fill the gaps between the stones. Finally, they drew a big red circle with a diameter of ten meters on it. Then they collected the money and left.
What is this? The onlookers were puzzled.
The hired construction team didn't know either. They just said that they were constructing according to the drawings provided by Daxia. Maybe this is a kind of performance art by the Daxia people?
How did this thing get approval to be built? A curious reporter got the news. It turned out to be an application submitted by the Federal Academy of Sciences, saying that they wanted to conduct some scientific experiments in conjunction with Daxia.
No, aren't we mobilizing troops to fight Daxia? Why are we cooperating to conduct experiments again? What kind of experiment needs to be conducted in a park in a downtown area?
Is Cui Guoyin so influential? Well, the influence was provided by Shao Quanzhong's "old friend" Gustav.
Three days later, when the cement had completely solidified, Ambassador Cui invited a large number of reporters to visit, and invited New York TV and radio stations to broadcast live. He also set up a 400-meter cordon around the strange sculpture.
What's going on? A huge crowd of people gathered outside the cordon to watch the fun.
Cui Guoyin said something into the wireless shortwave phone and then announced that the experiment was about to begin.
The TV station started the live broadcast, and then, after waiting for ten minutes, nothing happened.
The people watching on TV were dissatisfied, and Cui Guoyin pointed to the sky with a smile.
The young man carrying the camera raised his head and suddenly couldn't close his mouth.
From the ceiling, a ray of light descended from the sky like a meteor, heading straight for the park.
Someone with sharp eyes saw it and shouted, and everyone prepared to flee in all directions to avoid the natural disaster.
However, there was no time to react. The speed of Mach 30 was no joke. It was just a flash, and there was a loud explosion.
The people lying on the ground outside the cordon with their heads in their hands suddenly realized that nothing was falling from the meteorite.
After everyone calmed down, they looked at the center of the cordon and saw that the square stone platform had cracked into several pieces, but had not exploded.
The reporters from Daxia were well prepared. A hot air balloon slowly flew over and began to take aerial photos. On the stone platform, a nine-meter-diameter hole was opened, several dozen meters deep, piercing through the stone platform and going all the way to the ground.
The New York Times obtained the photos shared by Daxia reporter Changliang, and an hour later, the special edition came out.
Television viewers and radio listeners around the world also saw and heard truly explosive news.
"Daxia has invented a space-based kinetic weapon that can be guided by satellites and accurately strike targets under granite dozens of meters underground."
After reading the news, the Wing King of Havana laughed out loud and immediately called Shao Quanzhong, "Marshal, Daxia is awesome. This is the manifestation of the Father and Brother of Heaven, a blow sent down from the sky, which can be named 'The Staff of the Emperor of Heaven'."
"Are you going to strike Cleveland, who's hiding underground, right away? Let's see if he's still arrogant and if he still dares to covet my territory all day long."
(End of this chapter)