The research and development of hot air balloons began as early as the fifteenth year of Yongye. Humans have longed for flying in the sky since a long time ago, fantasizing about flying freely in the sky like birds.

Whether in the East or the West, all myths have descriptions of flying. In fact, as early as the Song Dynasty, some people tried to fly into the sky according to the wings of birds, tied two kite-like wings on their bodies with paper, and jumped down from a high place. Of course, this kind of civil science research ended in a crash and a person died.

In the years that followed, many people tried to achieve this goal out of interest or dreams, and the methods they took were strange and unsuccessful. And now in the Ming Dynasty, someone once again put forward this point of view.

For Zhu Yicheng, flying is certainly not a dream, because in later generations, even personal aircraft have been invented.

But in this era, flying is still an untouchable fantasy. Moreover, with the continuous expansion of the territory of the Ming Dynasty, if the problem of flying can be solved, it will be extremely important for the Ming Dynasty's information transmission, transportation, military, transportation and other aspects.

The most suitable equipment for flying is naturally an aircraft. However, when the Ming Dynasty just started its early steam era, it is impossible to manufacture the aircraft due to technology. Therefore, Zhu Yicheng moved his target to the most traditional and simplest and most convenient aircraft, which is the hot air balloon.

The emergence of hot air balloons in history was in Europe in the late 18th century. Compared with that time, the current Ming Dynasty was nearly half a century earlier than the emergence of historical hot air balloons. The principle of hot air balloons is not difficult. Kongming lanterns have been made in China. Compared with the emergence of hot air balloons in Europe, Kongming lanterns were nearly a thousand years earlier than it. Unfortunately, the Chinese at that time did not try to use it on aircraft, thus missing an epoch-making invention.

Now, the Ming Dynasty has been at the forefront of science. To put it bluntly, the principle of hot air balloons is to use heating air to generate upward buoyancy, thereby driving the balloons to air.

In order to develop hot air balloons, the Ming Academy of Sciences spent more than two years. During this development process, not only did the hot air balloon materials, shapes, buoyancy calculations and other aspects, but also needed to solve an important problem, that is, the heated fuel.

Zhu Yicheng did not want to use hydrogen commonly used in the 19th century as the filling of balloons to generate buoyancy. From a principle, hydrogen is the greatest as the filling of balloons, but hydrogen is too active and will lead to extremely serious consequences once it encounters fire.

The era of manned hydrogen airships in history ended precisely because of the Hindenburg air crash. This air crash was a huge disaster for aircraft in human history. In just 34 seconds, the huge and luxurious Hindenburg airship was destroyed in a raging fire. Thirty-six people were buried on the spot. The photo of the air crash was even more regarded as shocking the world.

For this reason, Zhu Yicheng directly rejected the idea of ​​hydrogen and directly decided to adopt the safest air heating and lift-off method. Although this method is insufficient due to the buoyancy, the volume of the hot air balloon will be too large, and it also has extremely high requirements for the fuel required for long-term stagnation of air.

Historically, the initial hot air balloons were heated and lifted off with waste wood, paper, etc. These things were too large and too heavy in size, and the combustion heat was insufficient, making them extremely inconvenient to use.

The same was true for the initial development of the Academy of Sciences. Afterwards, it switched to other fuels for experiments, including charcoal, charcoal (coal), etc., which were not satisfactory. It was not until Zhu Yicheng asked the Academy of Sciences to extract strong tincture oil, that is, oil, and thus separate kerosene, which was successful.

The hot air balloons are not yet perfect, and there is still a lot of room for further research. The most important reason is that the hot air balloons can only be fixed and cannot move freely in the air.

If you want to move freely in the air, you must have the power to advance, but this is limited to technology that cannot be manufactured at present. Although the Ming Dynasty already had a steam engine, you should know that the steam engine cannot be used as aircraft power. Not to mention the others, just its excessive size and weight cannot solve this problem.

At present, if the hot air balloon is not fixedly lifted off, the hot air balloon cannot control the direction of movement in the air at all, and can only rely on the wind direction to float and move irregularly. Such a result is completely impossible to achieve in terms of traffic transmission and transportation. However, no matter what, the initial success of the hot air balloon is a huge progress for the military aspect of the Ming Dynasty.

The height and line of sight of the hot air balloon in the air can serve the military, thereby guiding and commanding troops on the ground to fight.

This method greatly changes the command system of the battlefield, so that the party with hot air balloons can have a more intuitive and comprehensive understanding of the battlefield dynamics than the opponent.

In addition, hot air balloons can also play a considerable role in detecting terrain. It is precisely because of this that Zhu Yicheng asked the Academy of Sciences to send the hot air balloon that had just been developed to the north, allowing Yang Xu to conduct actual tests on the battlefield to see its effect and function.

Yang Xu was a qualified commander. When he saw the hot air balloon, he immediately understood its huge role. With this thing, he was more confident in attacking Irkutsk and was very happy.

The second day after the hot air balloon was delivered, Yang Xu issued an order to march towards Irkutsk. The journey from Ulan-Ude to Irkutsk was not far. In order to be on the safe side, Yang Xu did not allow the army to advance quickly, but instead fought steadily to prevent Russian sneak attacks and ensure smooth logistics roads.

But what surprised Yang Xu was that he did not encounter any Russian attacks along the way. He did not even encounter Korchin, Chechen, and Cossack cavalry that he had expected to appear, as if the Russians had given up directly.

This strange situation made Yang Xu even more cautious. He sent a large number of scouts to the left and right to search for possible hidden enemies, but the information from the scouts' return puzzled Yang Xu, because the scout's search results showed that the Russians did not send troops to intercept them.

After thinking for a long time, Yang Xu couldn't figure out what the hell was selling in Russia. What kind of play is he trying to sing? However, Yang Xu is not an indecisive person, otherwise he would not have resolutely ordered the attack on Ulan-Ude before the winter came.
Chapter completed!