Chapter 248: Furnace Built! Steel Warship!
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Su Mo outlined future prospects while he performed his morning ablutions and prepared breakfast.
At this time, although the Candlelight Shelter was more than a hundred kilometers away, Chen Shen was still very conscientious about first asking Su Mo if he was busy. After that, he made a video call and respectfully gave a report on yesterday and today’s harvesting, and the plans for today until tomorrow.
“Today, just continue with the first two rounds of wheat. Once you’ve finished with that, go ahead and plant the vegetables and the cotton.
“Oh yes, have you arranged for what’s necessary to grow the vegetables and decided on how you’re going to sow the cotton and harvest it?”
Chen Shen nodded his head when he heard what Su Mo said, indicating that he had already arranged everything.
Collective wisdom exceeded that of any individual.
By gathering ten university students together and setting a clear division of labor, the Candlelight Shelter, with its hundreds of inhabitants, was both well-managed and well-organized.
After briefing Chen Shen on all the things he had to take note of and discussing the matter of connecting the fuel line, Su Mo ended the call. By then, breakfast was also ready, sending forth appetizing, enticing aromas.
After eating greasy oil-sprinkled noodles for quite a few days, Su Mo glanced at the dishes in front of him and took a serving of stir-fried cabbage with vinegar. He then took several large, freshly steamed white buns and had a mouthful of thick, creamy rice congee.
While others were shedding tears of gratitude to be able to eat steamed buns right now, there was no doubt that Su Mo was way ahead of them, living like a member of the petit bourgeois.
The rice congee had a delicate, sweetly aromatic flavor. When paired with the delicious taste of the psychic energy cabbage, it could soothe all unhappiness in an instant.
Even Moore, who preferred much stronger flavors, constantly praised the taste.
After breakfast, they put away the cookware and finished cleaning up, then loaded Earth Tiger with the diesel produced yesterday and today.
Man and bear arrived at the main door of the shelter.
“Moore, once you’ve finished delivering the oil, you have to come back as soon as possible. We need you here to help us out!”
Su Mo patted Moore’s shoulder, then watched as the large bear nodded obediently, climbed into Earth Tiger, and rumbled off into the distance.
Standing at the entrance of the underground shelter, Su Mo was like a loving elderly father, waving at the departing car with a pleased smile on his face.
‘Our family’s little bear has finally grown up!’
Based on the way things were progressing, it would not take long to train Moore to become the first mate of the mini destroyer.
When the time came, as long as a complete autopilot system could be installed in the mini destroyer, both man and bear could fully control the ship and travel across the ocean, sailing thousands of miles away.
Furthermore, since everyone on board would be their own people, there was no need to worry that mutiny would occur once the journey was underway or that one would be stabbed in the back at night.
“Alright, alright. Stop being jealous!”
Seeing that Moore’s role was becoming increasingly important, Oreo—one of the shelter’s founding members—had started whining.
Su Mo watched the husky behaving in this ridiculous fashion until Earth Tiger had disappeared into the horizon. He laughed and picked Oreo up, then walked back into the shelter.
The cultivation of the black soil would have to be delayed for a little until Moore came back.
After pumping up the necessary amount of psychic energy water for routinely watering the energy fruit tree sapling at the entrance, Su Mo returned to his workbench and began studying the good thing that he had obtained a while back…
The furnace!
After two rounds of exchanges in the Secret Trading Realm, except for one last rare earth element—lutetium, which had yet to be found—all the other necessary materials he had obtained exceeded what he needed to build the furnace.
“As far as I’m concerned, 2000 points is no longer an unacceptable amount.
“If I keep on waiting, not only will the development of the shelter be delayed, but it will also result in a series of unnecessary variables.
“I may as well just use the creation function to create the lutetium!”
After deciding to use the creation function, Su Mo did not delay any further. He moved all the materials necessary for building the furnace onto the workbench according to what the design blueprint required, then pulled up the creation function panel.
As Su Mo used his mind, expending 2000 survival points went as swiftly as water flowing.
In the air, multiple pure white particles of light began to coalesce into a shape. Three to five seconds later, clear crystals that glowed grey and black finished forming completely and dropped on the table.
At the same time, the creation panel, which had hitherto kept prompting about materials that were still lacking, suddenly displayed a glowing green light. All the necessary materials had now been assembled!
“Confirm… build a furnace!”
After collecting the requisite amounts of everything and viewing the various materials all over the floor, the game panel acknowledged the command and began the creation process immediately upon receiving Su Mo’s confirmation.
Building the furnace required the deduction of 240 disaster points. This left Su Mo with 2218 points in his account.
Seeing that the furnace needed only five minutes to be constructed, Su Mo simply went to the first floor of the shelter and waited in silence for the item to be finished.
The grey-black furnace did not take up much space—a mere ten square meters was sufficient.
Furthermore, the furnace used the current most easily-obtained resource in the underground shelter…
It was powered by electricity!
Once it was connected to a power source, the furnace would be able to heat up to two or even three thousand degrees celsius in just a short time and begin operating.
Although the power consumption was frighteningly high, compared with the functions of the furnace, it was not a big deal at all.
Five minutes went by in just the snap of a finger.
When the game panel dinged, Su Mo hurriedly accessed it and found the furnace, which was already indicating that it could be placed.
Su Mo fixed on a side corner in the garage and confirmed the position silently in his heart.
Boom!
The large furnace immediately appeared in the air, bringing tons of ash with it, and settled onto the ground at once.
What was more, within a few seconds, it had completely adhered to the ground’s surface as if the furnace had sprung up from the stones there.
“Once it’s been situated, it can’t be moved anymore. Otherwise, another 500 disaster points will be needed for that, but there’s no need to move it under the current circumstances!”
Su Mo closed the game panel after reading through the precautions. He then began taking stock of the massive object in front of him.
The furnace was different from the ones in simulation games. Although the furnace in front of him bore some resemblance to the ones in ‘7 Days to Die’ and ‘Minecraft’, overall, its design was based on modular technology and the concept of the motor-pumped oil well.
The whole furnace was divided into three parts.
The chute—where materials were inserted—was formed by a huge square box and a pipe about two meters thick. The square box utilized some kind of mysterious space storage technology and was fully twenty cubic meters in size. He only needed to put in the raw materials for the supplies that needed to be prepared, and they would be delivered to the heart of the furnace through the pipe.
The heart of the furnace contained four long pipes resembling steam whistles that extended straight upward. They were for heat dissipation. The interior structure was completely sealed and could not be seen at the moment.
The final output area was constructed on the lines of the motor-pumped oil well; it also had four large extruding pipes that were connected respectively to four square metal boxes on the ground. Each metal box measured 15 cubic meters. On the right-most side of the metal box was another pipe that ran straight through the chute area, ensuring that anything needing secondary smelting could repeat the cycle.
“Not bad—not bad at all. Although there are still some mysterious technological elements involved, so far, the principle of operation is still fairly easy to understand!”
Su Mo stroked the surface of the furnace, which was constructed from some unknown material. As he complimented it, the furnace properties chart popped into view.
[Furnace (Excellent)]
[Description]: Modular technology product that can be used in a series of amazing ways. It produces marvelous effects when paired with other modules.
[Modules currently owned]: Crucible module, strong reaction module, storage module
[Function]: Processing
[Power consumption]: 10 kWh
At present, the furnace only had three modules. Of those corresponding to its specific functions, it only possessed the smelting attribute.
Su Mo called up the system panel. However, when he saw that adding in other modules easily required thousands of points, he quickly changed his mind about upgrading.
“There’s only one processing function, but it’s fully sufficient for current use.
“As for the various functions that will be needed later on, I’m not in a hurry. I can collect them slowly and see if I can’t get any of them from treasure chests!”
Once the furnace began operating, the power consumption would be ten kilowatts per hour.
Su Mo experimented by plugging the thick connector into the port for the thickest wire—this had been designed in the early stages of the shelter’s planning.
Following that, Su Mo returned to the second floor to switch on the diesel generator so it could supply electricity. After the furnace’s power supply had been connected, the furnace began operating for the first time with a loud, booming sound.
Pow!
To the side of the chute area, a familiar palm-sized digital screen like that of themotor-pumped oil well popped up, displaying the items that could be created with the currently available processing function.
“At present, what’s needed most are definitely the steel plates that will be used to create the mini destroyer. If it’s not constructed properly, it may very well fall apart after it’s gone no more than two paces!
“However, since building the destroyer is necessary, I’ll just have to make sure there won’t be any problem for at least three to five years. I’ll need to choose good materials!”
There were many bells and whistles on the panel. After a round of screening, Su Mo quickly found the column for steel and accessed it.
The most commonly used steel could be divided into “structural steel” and “tool steel”.
Based on the alloy elements, they could be categorized further into “carbon steel” and “alloy steel”.
These could be divided still further into “carbon tool steel” and “alloy tool steel”.
Based on the S and P impurities content, the steel could also be divided into basic steel, high quality steel, high grade high quality steel, and special grade high quality steel.
Back in the day when the famous virtually unsinkable ship, the Titanic, fell apart and sank after it hit an iceberg, it was because the steel plates used in its construction contained a lot of zinc sulfide chemical impurities. Furthermore, lengthy immersion in the freezing sea had caused the steel plates to weaken.
As a result, a minor collision caused them to break, and the incident became a lasting regret.
Therefore, when choosing materials to build the mini destroyer—sorted from highest to lowest grades—Su Mo skipped the mild steels immediately and turned his attention to the military grade steel used for building naval vessels.
The applied research on military grade steel was very complicated. In total, there were nine categories and over 140 items.
Accurate tests had to be conducted on the steel with regards to strength, toughness, tensile strength, its state of stress in low temperatures, and more.
Normally, for materials used to build aircraft carriers, for example, the yield strength of the steel deck plates had to be 90+0 Mpa, while the yield strength for the hull had to be 780 Mpa.
As the size went down the scale, even the smallest mini destroyer would need at least a yield strength of 400 Mpa to ensure utmost safety.
“Right now, the best steel plate that the furnace can create only has a yield strength of 620 Mpa. This is probably related to the temperature of the furnace heat that the shelter’s amenities can provide at present.
“Or it might be have something to do with other modules as well!”
From highest grade to lowest, the best material was military grade steel. Its yield strength was high, but after Su Mo pulled it up to look at the requirements, he immediately abandoned any ideas of making it.
There was no getting past the frightening consumption of resources!
Making military grade steel required the addition of many odd items. In the furnace, this step had been simplified—all one had to do was provide a sufficient amount of the necessary raw materials, and the steel could be created.
However, in terms of raw materials, when Su Mo discovered that one unit of 620 Mpa steel required 1380 units of iron and 880 units of copper, he could only cluck his tongue and choose to abandon the endeavor.
There was nothing wrong with modern warships using such expensive steel because the steel hull plates of modern warships were not thick. Instead, they were fairly thin. For example, the thickness of 052 steel was only 30 millimeters.
What was the concept behind this? The thickness of a yuan coin was only 25 millimeters, while the steel plates of the warship were only 5 millimeters thicker.
In modern warfare, methods of attacking warships had become increasingly advanced, from the initial torpedoes and bombs to the popular anti-ship missiles, as well as nuclear submarines equipped with heavyweight torpedoes that could hunt silently.
Under these circumstances, thick armor plates would not serve as a defense; instead, they would merely impede combat performance.
However, in the wasteland, it was practically suicide to design such thin armor plating based on the modern way of thought or to wage warfare in the modern style.
Everything else aside, if there were any underwater alien races, all they had to do was carry steel tridents, and they could easily cut a large hole in the destroyer.
“The steel plates have to be thick. If the destroyer’s not equipped with weapons, thickness is key. Even if I have to ram something, I want to be able to do it properly!”
Currently, there were only 8000 units of iron in the shelter. Even if mining took place in the interim, the amount would not exceed more than 30,000 units.
Calculating based on the length of the destroyer, which was 40 meters, Su Mo’s design would require at least 2000 steel plates.
Given these requirements, if the unit price could be contained at around 10 to 1, that would be the best value for money.
580? Too expensive, quit!
520? Still too expensive, quit!
Su Mo kept selecting, watching the Mpa getting lower and lower until he was almost at his psychological limits and had begun to doubt himself. It was not until the requirements of 440 Mpa steel popped out that Su Mo finally felt relieved.
For 440 Mpa military grade steel, 1 unit only required 13 units of iron and 1.5 units of copper.
2000 units would require 26000 units of iron and 3000 units of copper!
Based on the current reserves in the shelter, 18000 units of iron still needed to be mined to fulfill the manufacturing requirements.
“My plans don’t conflict with each other after all. To survive the next disaster, everyone in the Candlelight Shelter will need to move to Iron Rock Mountain!
“With the excellent-quality iron pickaxes and the storage space for transport, hundreds of people mining won’t be any slower than a machine—in fact, it might be even faster!
“This will absolutely kill two birds with one stone. While they’re mining a sufficient amount of iron, at the same time, they’re also excavating a large space in the mountain that can house hundreds of people for weathering the disaster!”
