Chapter 17 Grandma Zhang enters the Grand View Garden (6) Hot air balloon

Zhang Xingcai and Guan Yinping looked curiously at the surrounding scenery along the way, and everything here was a novelty.

The roads here are wide, flat and clean, the roads are bustling with pedestrians, and the bustling city is no worse than in Chengdu. There are all kinds of shops and workshops on both sides of the road, and the merchants and customers in the shops are bargaining and noisy.

Liu Hou took the two little loli and walked left and right to the depths of the base. Zhang Xingcai and Guan Yinping couldn't help but feel a little nervous as they watched the guards gradually become stricter along the way.

The group soon came to a compound with a plaque at the entrance of which read "Flight Research Institute". There were also two heavily armed guards standing guard at the door. Entering the compound, it is three steps, one post, five steps and one sentry, and the strict guard is almost comparable to the palace.

After entering the compound, what greeted the eyes of the two little Loli was a huge round object hanging in the air, and a large bamboo basket with a square size of 8 feet was hanging underneath.

Both little Lori had curious looks in their eyes. "What is this? How is it so big? Zhang Xingcai was in charge of asking questions.

"This is what can carry you into the sky, we call it a hot air balloon." Liu Houdao.

At this time, Zhang Xingcai saw a young woman with an ordinary appearance and a slightly sallow face and two craftsmen-like men circling around the hot air balloon together, obviously busy debugging this thing.

"Huh! Mrs. Huang! Why are you here? Zhang Xingcai exclaimed, raised his legs and ran over, as light as a deer.

Zhang Xingcai and Guan Yinping both know this woman, she is Zhuge Liang's virtuous helper - Huang Yueying. Why is Huang Yueying here? It turned out that this Huang Yueying was proficient in the art of strange and obscene tricks, and Liu Hou was very suspicious that Kong Ming Lantern was invented by Kong Ming, or whether she pretended to be Zhuge Liang after her invention.

Anyway, since Liu Hou's hot air balloon plan was learned to her, she volunteered to preside over the research work. Liu Hou also knew her name and ability, so he did not hesitate to appoint her as the dean of the Flight Research Institute. This hot air balloon was actually developed under her auspices.

With the experience of developing Kong Ming lanterns, Huang Yueying actually understands the principle of hot air balloons. To put it bluntly, a hot air balloon is a king-sized Kong Ming lantern, and Liu Houtong Guò Zuoci constantly conveyed some scientific knowledge and "creativity" to her, which made it not difficult for her to develop a hot air balloon.

Although there were some troubles in obtaining leather and dealing with air leaks in the seams, these troubles were successfully solved with Liu Houding's support. The hot air balloon has been successfully developed, and it has been tested many times through guò, accumulating a lot of experience. No, Huang Yueying is taking a few craftsmen to improve the hot air balloon.

Zhang Xingcai and Guan Yinping held Huang Yueying's hand and chatted non-stop, so it was not wrong for the three women to play a scene, Liu Hou was bored when he was left to the side, so he asked the craftsman next to him who was also being hung about the improvement of the hot air balloon.

The hot air balloon has recently undergone a lot of changes, the most important of which is the power structure. The original hot air balloon was not powered and could only fly with the wind, so that the hot air balloon could only be used according to the direction of the wind, and the wind could only fly that way when it blew that way, and it was often deviated from the predetermined direction by the sudden change of wind direction. This significantly limits the range of use of hot air balloons.

The most recent change is the addition of a propeller that protrudes from the gondola. The propeller is connected to a pair of foot pedals by a geared and chained structure. If future generations look at it here, they will know that this is nothing more than a bicycle with wheels removed and propellers replaced.

As long as someone sits on a triangular seat and presses the pedal alternately, the propeller can be driven to rotate at high speed, thus agitating the air to propel the hot air balloon forward. In addition, the front handle can be rotated left and right to drive the propeller to the left or right, thus controlling the direction of the hot air balloon.

Of course, the structure of this power system was also drawn by Liu Hou with a simple structural diagram, and then transferred by Zuo Ci to Ma Jun. Ma Jun was very interested in this machine, and was even more excited to learn that this was the power component of the flying artifact, and immediately put twelve points of enthusiasm into the trial construction. After many failures, the pedal propeller power system was finally built.

Liu Hou looked at this pedal system, thinking about when to let Ma Jun replace the propeller with two wheels and turn it into a bicycle, and then he would not be able to defeat Zhuge Liang's wooden ox and flowing horse.

The power structure on the hot air balloon is easy to use, even easier than learning to pedal a bike, at least you don't need to worry about falling off. As long as you are a normal person and have seen others demonstrate, you can immediately learn how to step on it.

The only thing you need to worry about is the strength of your feet, and you must find someone who has enough pedaling power as a pedaling driver. Of course, Liu Hou doesn't have to worry about this, Zhao Yun is responsible for selecting from the army, and doing special training for this action to enhance the explosiveness and endurance of the pedaling action.

But in the end, this is still manpower, and the maneuverability of this hot air balloon without mechanical power is still very limited. If you encounter a strong wind, it is not something that ordinary manpower can resist. Therefore, this device can only add a little power to a certain range of dù.

Most of the time, the hot air balloon still has to go downwind, and this power plant is mostly used to temporarily stop in the sky over a place when needed, which is conducive to observation, bomb dropping and other operations. If you forcibly go against the wind for a long time, it is estimated that the person who is treading will soon be tired to death. No one can fight against nature for a long time.

In this regard, Liu Hou was very helpless, which made him miss the mechanical era and the electrical era more and more. But there is no way, it is not realistic to let him get some steam engine and internal combustion engine out now. Don't say that he himself is not from a mechanical background, even if he has this knowledge, the materials of this era cannot meet the requirements of making these machines.

The conversation between the two little Loli and Huang Yueying is finally over. Zhang Xingcai took Huang Yueying's hand and jumped up and down laughing, and she said that she wanted to learn mechanics from Huang Yueying and participate in the development of flight props.

Liu Hou and the two little Loli got on the hot air balloon, and the two "pilots" selected by thousands of people got on the hanging basket together, and they were responsible for controlling and observing the flight.

These pilots were specially selected by Zhao Yun from the army, and they are all very good guys. Of course, they don't have the best foot pedaling power without being too tall, in order to reduce the weight of the hot air balloon.

Out of the 100 candidates selected at the beginning, after training and layers of screening, only 11 official members of the flight team were retained in the end. The most important screening link is in the actual day test flight. Not everyone can withstand this kind of stimulation, and this unprecedented visual and psychological impact is overwhelming for many people. Another reason is that some people get motion sickness.

Motion sickness is well understood, that is, motion sickness, seasickness and the like, the movement of hot air balloons is much more complex and intense than carriages and boats, under the action of air currents, there are often sudden bumps, swings or spins and other forms of acceleration movements. These exercises can irritate the body's vestibular nerves and cause discomfort.

At first, the soldiers did not know what the reason was, after flying into the sky, they would have upper abdominal discomfort, followed by nausea, paleness, cold sweat, and then dizziness, mental depression, increased saliva secretion and vomiting, and even superstitious people thought that people flying into the sky were offensive to the heavens, and these discomforts were the result of being punished by the gods.

After all, this is the superstitious ideas of the times or there is a big market, plus these soldiers are basically from poor backgrounds, not to mention carriages, ox carts have not been ridden much, and they have not been exposed to rapid acceleration in ordinary times, so they naturally have little understanding of motion sickness. This is the fear that comes with ignorance.

Of course, this situation will be fed back to Zuo Ci, a veteran in the religious world, as soon as possible, and Zuo Ci will of course consult the master from the stars for the first time for questions involving the heavens.

Liu Hou gave Zuo Ci and Ge Xuan a course on physiology and hygiene for this matter. He told them that this was a normal physiological phenomenon, and criticized nonsense such as ghosts and gods or divine punishment. It has also been noted that multiple training sessions and adequate sleep can reduce these symptoms.

Zuo Ci was very confused about what Liu Hou said because of the receptors in the ear, because in their cognition, the ear is used to hear sound, not to feel the state of movement. However, they never dared to question this Heavenly Immortal Master, and would only faithfully record Liu Hou's words. As for whether it is right or not, it can only be proved after the scientific and technological level of future generations is developed.

Liu Hou ordered them to let Zhao Yun re-select talents, and changed the first selection index to the selection of motion sickness first, first selecting soldiers who are not so sensitive to the vagus nerve, and then the problem of foot pedaling strength.

Therefore, the 11 people who have been retained this time can be said to be truly one in a thousand characters, and each of them has been tested by many flights, ensuring that they are all guys who will not get motion sickness when they are bumped and spinning in the wind.

In addition, they also have a lot of foot strength, and after a period of targeted training, their pedaling ability is now estimated to be able to get good results in the Tour de France in the future.

The two people who accompanied Liu Hou and them to the hot air balloon this time were the two people with the best training results in the flying team, and they were also the captain and deputy of the flying team.

The team's name is Zhang Li, a native of Sichuan, who is only 7 feet 2 inches tall (about 1.65 meters in modern times) and weighs 220 kilograms (about 110 kilograms in modern times). This height and weight were about the same as girls in later generations, but in the malnourished Three Kingdoms era, this was basically the average. There are few generals like Guan Yu and Lu Bu who are 8 or 9 feet at every turn.

The deputy of the team is called Li Lin, a member of Jingzhou Gong'an, who is only 7 feet tall (about 1.61 meters) and weighs only 200 kilograms (about 100 kilograms in later generations). In Liu Hou's eyes, this already belongs to the ranks of dwarves, but in this era, such a height is not ridiculously short, barely enough to reach the normal range.

Although the hanging basket is large, it is still slightly crowded after Liu Hou's three children and two adults go up. The main reason is that the stove in the middle and the foot pedal device that stops one side take up too much space. Coupled with two baskets of coal, there are very few places where people can stand. Fortunately, Liu Hou and the three of them are children, and if they are adults, it is difficult for this hanging basket to accommodate so many people.

The stove in the middle was big and high. It was tall because there was a chimney made of iron sheets that went up into the huge balloon overhead. In this way, all the hot air from the combustion can be fed into the balloon without leakage, improving the efficiency of heat use. At the same time, it blocks the light emitted when it burns, making it more difficult for enemies to spot the hot air balloon at night.