Chapter 31

Qin Miao widened his eyes: "What did you say? We're making a cannon in our experimental workshop?"

"Yes!" Professor Yuan nodded: "Yes, who said only Harbin Institute of Technology can make cannons? Our Ha Gong Da can too! Don't worry, I've already reported it to the department, and the department strongly supports it! By the time the year-end meeting comes, we'll be able to hold our heads high!"

Making cannons is much harder than making cannon shells!

Even for a rifle, one must go through years of experimentation, comparison, and selection to choose the appropriate caliber and ballistic specifications.

Back then, there were many rifles with varying calibers: the Japanese 6.5mm Type 38, the German 7.92mm Mauser, and the Soviet 7.62mm caliber; but after the sands of time, during the Cold War, rifle calibers were largely unified at 7.62mm, achieving a decent balance of ballistic characteristics, lethality, and accuracy.

And for large-caliber artillery, the West settled on 155mm, while the Soviets settled on 152mm.

It's not just caliber; other data such as barrel length, number of rifling grooves, left-hand or right-hand twist—if these differ even slightly, they can cause huge differences in shooting performance.

The existing dimensions are the result of many years of research and practical testing, gradually maturing.

To create a completely new dimension, even if it's still a 155mm caliber, but with different barrel length and rifling, the ballistic characteristics of the fired shell will be entirely different.

This cannot yet be fully calculated by computer; it requires repeated experiments to obtain the most satisfactory solution—in other words, it may take five to ten years and hundreds of different barrel sizes to find the optimal one.

Does Ha Gong Da have this capability?

"Sigh, I also know that making a completely new cannon isn't easy, but… you said last night that a 52-caliber length is the most suitable; I went back and did a quick calculation, and found that this might indeed be the perfect solution. Let's first build one; with a prototype, we'll have a chance to get the project approved… We will definitely solve the funding shortfall."

"Cough cough, Professor Yuan, I don't mean that." Qin Miao said: "With a 23-liter propellant charge, do you know how high the internal bore pressure is? Our domestic cannon steel simply isn't up to standard; we need electroslag remelted steel, combined with barrel autofrettage, to avoid bursting the barrel. Otherwise… if we fire it after building it and something goes wrong, we might end up having to eat peanuts."

Electroslag remelting takes the steel ingot produced in the steelmaking furnace as an electrode, and through the resistance heat of the slag undergoes a second remelting; the electrode melts into the slag pool, and at the bottom of the slag pool the molten metal crystallizes to form an ingot, which becomes further refined electroslag remelted steel.

The internal impurities become slag, and the steel's quality improves; using it to make the barrel allows a thinner wall without worrying about bursting, and for a 52-caliber cannon, the barrel weight is now the primary indicator!

"I thought it was something else—you're worried about this? Ha Cheng Steel Plant has it! We can coordinate it under Ha Gong Da's name and have it delivered the same day."

Wait!

"Do we ourselves have electroslag remelted steel?"

According to Qin Miao's own historical knowledge, in the 1980s, when signing the heavy truck project with Steyr, they also introduced electroslag remelted steel technology from Steyr, used to produce the domestically made L7 tank gun, continually modified, becoming the world's strongest 105mm gun.

A 125mm cannon made from this steel weighs half as much as the Soviet 2A46 tank cannon! It has the world's greatest firepower!

Now, this project hasn't even started yet—where would we get this technology?

"In 1958, our related notices, when using electroslag welding to fix cracks, we discovered the electroslag remelting phenomenon; in 1959 we developed electroslag remelted steel; in 1960 we set up industrial electroslag furnaces with a capacity of 100 kilograms, and the electroslag furnace at Ha Cheng Steel Plant can produce five-ton ingots in one go—more than enough for us to make cannons."

"We have it ourselves?"

Qin Miao nodded: "Okay, then we can give it a try! I'll go to class this morning, and wait until this afternoon……"

"Fine, this afternoon I'll coordinate the ingot over!"

"Oh, and also, get rid of the leftover beggar's chicken—I'm heading to class!"

At the door of Classroom 4381, Chu Miaomiao took a deep breath, calm mind, calm mind—she hadn't done anything guilty, so what was she afraid of?

She lifted her head, puffed out her chest, and walked in!

No one noticed her—not even the few girls from the same dormitory reacted! Good, great!

She sat back in her seat, Chu Miaomiao opened her textbook and began class, but…… a sentence kept popping up in her mind.

Howoldareyou? What does that even mean?

After a morning's class ended, the three girls went together to the cafeteria to eat; Wang Fang and Liu Cuiying chatted and laughed, not mentioning at all where Chu Miaomiao had stayed the previous night.

"Xiao Fang, Cuiying, I have a question for you."

"Speak."

"Does Howoldareyou have any special meaning?"

"What's so hard about it? What does How mean?"

"How."

"Old?"

"Old."

"Are?"

"Is."

"You?"

"You?"

"Put together?"

"How, old, is, you? How always you?" Chu Miaomiao was dazed—could English really be used this way?

"Who asked you that sentence?"

"Was it Qin Miao the classmate? Or Qin Miao the teacher asking?"

"No, no."

A few girls laughed and joked as they went to the cafeteria, while Qin Miao, after finishing class, strode purposefully toward the metal cutting workshop, where the next workpiece to be processed was a huge piece!

Sure enough, a nine-meter-long, several-ton steel ingot was placed into the workshop and fixed onto the deep-hole drilling equipment.

"Qin Miao classmate, we'll first drill the hole; the internal detailed design is still up to you."

"Alright, I'll need to use a computer and calculate carefully. We also need to make a barrel autotightening device; using hydraulic autotightening is the simplest……"

Time flew by; in the blink of an eye, half a month passed.

"Everyone, the internal structure of a microcomputer isn't complicated; we don't need to know how the internal chips operate, just know the block diagram……"

Even the computer structure and principles course had fallen on his head! At this moment, Qin Miao had already greeted all the leaders of the computer department in his mind, yet he still had to keep a smile on his face and continue teaching the students.

Even the donkey of the production team isn't as miserable as me!

Today, the class had only just begun for a few minutes when hurried footsteps sounded outside.

"Qin Miao… teacher, please go to the school conference room for a moment!"

"What's the situation?"

"You'll know when you go; President Liu is calling for you."

I'm still in class here!

Teacher Li, please continue the lesson!

Qin Miao put down his textbook, suddenly feeling, if he wanted to rest later, could he use this method?

But when he reached the school conference room, he heard a murmuring sound coming from inside.

The pronunciation is soft, with no obvious stress, and it even drops some vowels—is this Canadian-accented English? Damn, could it be that Bu Lang Boshi has come knocking?

Where is Qin Miao? That student named Qin Miao, why hasn't he come yet? I came especially to find him! If he doesn't show up within ten minutes, I'll never set foot in the East again!

This explosive temper—none other than Bu'er Boshi! It's as if the whole world has to accommodate him; whoever he wants to see, he can see.

Hmph, I'll deliberately stand you up, just to wear down your temper!

Just then, an Eastern voice came from inside.

Have you all heard? Bu'er Boshi is furious, the consequences are serious—why don't you hurry and have Qin Miao come over, hurry and apologize to Bu'er Boshi? If Bu'er Boshi storms off in anger, that'll be a serious diplomatic incident!

Hearing this, Qin Miao clenched his fists, then strode purposefully inside.

I hate banana people the most!