As a descendant, Li Xuan has never doubted the important role that the steam engine can play, otherwise, he would not have continued to support the development of the steam engine in the young military camp in the past two years.

It is also impossible to apply the steam engine to industry and even ships when the steam engine has just been developed and only has a few horsepower.

It is true that the current steam engine is only a low-pressure steam engine, not to mention the small power, and the volume and weight are not small, and the fuel utilization rate is too low, and the fuel required to produce a horsepower is too much.

At present, the cost of producing one horsepower of a steam engine is enough for a hydroelectric machine to produce ten horsepower.

In other words, even if the current steam engine power is mature and can run stably, it is impossible for the current factory to directly replace the hydraulic machinery with the steam engine, because it represents ten times the cost!

Only in places with abundant coal resources, such as coal mining areas, can have a relatively good economy, if it is used as a factory power or freight ship power, in fact, the operating cost is very high, and the economic gains outweigh the losses.

However, the extensive use of steam engines is an inevitable trend in the future, and only with the large-scale use of steam engines can the industrial revolution be truly opened, so Li Xuan clearly knows that the ships he is making now have no practical value, but he still vigorously promotes it.

C16, this paddle steamer ship equipped with steam engine power, even the transmission device is not perfect, once the steam engine starts, unless it stops directly, it cannot accelerate or slow down at all, and the speed is also full of outrageous, only a few kilometers per hour, basically the same as the speed of human walking, and this is still in the case of empty ships.

If the C16 is loaded with a certain amount of cargo, or if it is towing other ships, it is estimated that when it goes upstream, it will not only not advance, but even go backwards!

Therefore, at present, the steam engine does not have the practical ability to go on board because the unit power is not high enough, but this is not important.

All Li Xuan wants is to point them in a direction, and then continue to work in that direction.

Sure enough, after the news of the successful test of the steam engine on board reached the navy, the generals of the navy learned that the steam engine could allow ships to travel without sails and artificial oars.

Today's ships, even the slightly larger river vessels, rely heavily on sails for navigation, so in today's naval operations, gaining the upper hand is a crucial tactic.

But if you have a steam engine, you can grab the upper hand of a fart, and you can directly maneuver to any position you want and then attack!

At the same time, when fighting on inland rivers, because of the limited width of the river, the use of sails is extremely restricted, and it is also faced with the difficulty of countercurrent.

Therefore, after learning the news of the successful test of the steam engine on board, several senior generals of the navy, and even Bao Yifen himself, found Li Xuan, saying that the navy urgently needed this kind of steam engine warship!

In their mouths, this steam engine is even more important than those large-caliber naval guns!

Li Xuan himself naturally didn't care about these technical details, and let the navy negotiate with the people in the young military camp and the machinery branch on its own, and soon Bao Yifen found Lin Hui, and then put forward a series of requirements.

What are the requirements?

They needed a steam engine that was more powerful, smaller in size and heavier, and at the same time trouble-free and longer, preferably more than a hundred horsepower, so that their navy could mount this steam engine directly on the cruiser, and it couldn't be too big in size and weight, well, the cost couldn't be too high, and the current steam mechanism was too high.

In this regard, Lin Hui directly rolled their eyes at them, a hundred horsepower steam engine, just kidding!

He Lin Hui led a group of people to meditate day and night in recent months, and improved many details, but they still failed to push the power of the steam engine to ten horsepower, and although the weight and volume were reduced, the reduction was also very small.

Want a hundred horsepower, it's absolutely impossible!

Whether it is a steam engine or other internal combustion engines in later generations, all kinds of messy engines have a very special name: the flower of industry!

If you want to build an engine, it's useless to just design it, you have to build it!

This is like in later generations, when the Yankees threw an F135 engine to other countries, they didn't even need to reverse mapping, and directly handed them a full set of design papers, but few countries could successfully copy it!

Because the vast majority of countries don't even have the raw materials and processing level to make this engine!

Even the most primitive steam engine is the same now, don't look at the steam engine made by Lin Hui is very simple and cumbersome from the perspective of later generations, but for this era, it is the top industrial product, and the materials and processing have basically reached the top level that the current Tang Dynasty can achieve.

Even so, the only manufacturers that can produce steam engines are still the machinery branch of the Zhaoqing Arsenal, and they can only be assembled in small batches, using a large number of skilled craftsmen to polish those fine parts by hand.

In the past few months, the machinery branch has produced a total of more than ten steam engines, all handmade, each is an expensive handicraft, the price of a single machine has reached 800 silver, this is still the pure manufacturing cost price estimated by the machinery branch, if it is a commercial selling price, less than two thousand taels of silver don't even think about it!

Otherwise, don't expect to be able to recover R&D costs and maintain profitability for subsequent continuous R&D and improvement.

The current steam engine, if it is said to be an industrial product, is not so much an expensive toy, and only the emperor of the Tang Empire, Li Xuan has the courage and capital to play with it.

The steam engines produced today are basically used for testing, and are basically not used for actual industrial production or military applications.

So Lin Hui said very directly, don't think about a hundred horsepower, don't count on the low cost, don't count on the first two, and don't count on the volume and weight in the back.

But people don't give up!

The cost is high, well, I Bao Yifen just said casually, as long as the thing can be used, it will come according to your price, and you can say as much as you want!

Anyway, the price of any frigate, cruiser and battleship is tens of thousands of taels of silver, and your steam engine is a fart!

A hundred horsepower is not available, fifty horses are fine, the big deal is slower, but it is better than nothing!

What, it takes time to develop it, our Navy can wait, three or five years can wait.

Bao Yifen said on the spot, although our navy does not have the money of the army, but it also has more than two million taels of silver a year.

Faced with Bao Yifen's attitude that as long as the steam engine is easy to discuss, Lin Hui was also speechless.

Dealing with these dirt buns in the navy, opening and closing your mouth is money, which is really detrimental to his forced character!

He is a ninth-grade student, and he is also the only two ninth-grade students in Datang, although he is not in the officialdom, but he enjoys the treatment of three grades, and he is also a top scientist who has been named a viscount, how can he mess with a layman like Bao Yifen, and directly let his seventh-grade assistant blast Bao Yifen, a rear admiral, out of the laboratory.

However, although the navy people were driven away, the development of this steam engine will not stop!

There is no shortage of technical personnel and research funds in the young military camp, as a special institution directly belonging to the royal family, the young military camp has the top scientific and technological talents in the entire Tang Dynasty and even the world, and any sixth-grade student can be brought to the world.

As for the funds, there is no shortage of funds, the funds for the young military camp are directly spent from the royal treasury, and all kinds of research and development funds are also open to supply.

Besides, don't think that the young military camp doesn't make money just by spending money, they actually make money, many of the technical achievements in the young military camp have already begun to be used in many factories under the major arsenals of the Ministry of Industry, although everyone is a part of the Tang Dynasty, but the brothers still have to settle accounts.

For example, for those rice crushing equipment, for every set produced and sold by the machinery branch, the young military camp can directly collect a 10% share from it, and this part of the share is ordered by His Majesty to be a royalty.

So, the young barracks have money!

Otherwise, with such a big bottomless pit for scientific and technological research and development, Li Xuan's royal funds will not be able to hold on!

The people in the navy are gone, but they are still thieves, and the high-horsepower steam engine they want will not be able to be made for a while, but those current steam engines can also be used, even if they can't be put on the battleship for practical use, but it is okay to test and test first, and accumulate experience in use and maintenance.

Therefore, the people of the navy went directly to the mechanical branch factory, directly bought two steam engines for testing, and began the internal tests and tests of the navy.

In fact, since he first came to Zhaoqing, he had never seen a steam engine since he saw a steamship from afar, because after they got off the ship and landed, they had been staying in a separate courtyard in the city, and this courtyard was guarded by soldiers of the Guards, who couldn't go out at all, and they had to learn those complicated Chinese etiquette every day.

Half a month later, after their own request, the people of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs considered it before they were allowed to go out for a walk, but when they went out, they must be accompanied by officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the soldiers of the Guards will continue to follow.

At the same time, they are only allowed to tour along the route set by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and they are not allowed to go to places outside the route without permission, otherwise they will directly die on the spot.

However, although there were many restrictions and they were intimidated, they still couldn't stop the curiosity of Guedes and other Francophone people about Zhaoqing and the capital of the Tang Dynasty, so when the appointed time came, they all dressed up one by one, and then accompanied by officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and soldiers of the Guards, they walked on the streets of Zhaoqing!