The six blacksmiths opened their mouths in surprise like falling from clouds and mist.

Qin Zhao smiled and said, "This new rocket is like this. Take paper and I will show you the structure drawings of the rocket."

...

The Hale Rockets were invented by the British.

But to be more strictly speaking, it was improved by British William Hale.

Rocket technology was first applied to actual combat in China. There were a large number of rockets in the existing battalion system of the Ming Dynasty.

For example, the "flying" firearms in the Ming Dynasty were to install fireworks on the necks of ordinary arrows. When used, they were loaded with thirty-two such arrows and aimed at the enemy. Then, the leads connected to each arrow were ignited at one time, and the thirty-two arrows flew out at one time.

There was also one that was equipped with three larger rockets, called the Divine Arrow. One that was equipped with one hundred arrows, called the Hundred Tigers Running. The Ming Dynasty army was equipped with a large number of rocket-type weapons of different types and a wide variety of them.

However, these rockets use gunpowder to increase the attack power of cold weapons and do not cause hot weapons to kill.

The Indians really used rockets as thermal weapons. During the colonial war between the British Empire and India, the Indian kings used a large number of hot weapons rockets that could fly and explode. These rockets were similar to fireworks rockets, with a long tail as a stabilization pole, which flew to the target and exploded.

The British learned rockets from these Indian territorial armies, which were used in the Napoleonic War and shined in the war. During the British-French War, the British Royal Navy launched about 25,000 rockets into Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, almost razed the city to the ground.

But the rockets at this time also have the disadvantage of unstable flight orbits. In the most extreme cases, the rockets shot out may even turn around and blow up to the launcher's position, causing unnecessary casualties.

The British used rockets with unstable orbits, which were used in the Napoleonic War, the American War of Independence, and the Opium War.

The Qing people described the Rockets in "A Brief History of the British Into Guangdong":

"The Ying Bing Rocket is its long skill, which can shoot hundreds of feet... It takes a solid wood as its tail, eight or nine feet long, or about 1. The medicine-received tube is two feet long and three inches long, and is made of thin copper or iron tongue. The six holes on the side rings under the tube to attract fire. The wood with the arrow tail is tightly penetrated into the tube with iron wire, and the sharp wood is about 1. The wood powder may be used like a gun barrel, and two of the three are received by the medicine for firecrackers. The arrow burns when the medicine is burned, and the barrel bursts, and the fire will scatter and burn the camp houses."

However, such rocket trajectories are too unstable, and the British only use them in large-scale battles that determine life and death, acting as suppressive firepower.

Until 1844, inspired by the rifle, British inventor William Hale installed three inclined stable spiral plates at the tail of the rocket, forcing the rocket to rotate at high speed when advancing in the air. Due to the aerodynamic effect, the rocket itself rotates to achieve stability.

Hale's improvement allowed the Rockets to aim, turning the Rockets from inefficient large-scale suppression firepower into precise attack weapons, laying the foundation for the Rockets' role on the battlefield in one fell swoop.

The Katyusha rocket launchers and missiles in later generations were all developed based on the Hale Rockets.

What Qin Zhao wanted to create was this kind of rocket launcher with a simple structure and a rough effect.

For the firework craftsmen in the Ming Dynasty at this time, there was no technical difficulty in manufacturing this kind of rocket launcher. The popular fireworks in the Ming Dynasty used a rocket as the power unit to rush into the sky, and then ignited the "Combat Department" in the sky to blow out various fireworks. When the firework craftsmen made the Hale rocket, they felt that they were just making advanced fireworks.

As for the ignition method, Qin Zhao repeatedly considered it and decided to use a fennel to ignite it.

After all, the flintlock bolt is still very labor-intensive and high-quality steel. Using the flintlock bolt to ignite on this disposable rocket is a waste of resources. Moreover, how to combine the flintlock bolt and the rocket is also a challenging engineering design. When Qin Zhao was not very familiar with the flintlock bolt, Qin Zhao decided not to challenge this design for now.

When the combat power gap is not big, the simpler the more reliable it is. From this point of view, Qin Zhao chose to ignite the fuse.

In just one quarter of an hour, Qin Zhao used a fine brush to draw the front, side, internal structure, and four major cross-sectional views of the Hale Rocket.

The only thing blacksmiths and firework craftsmen need to study is the threaded tail that forces the rocket to rotate and study its specific angle.

Of course, this tail wing must be integrated with the entire iron-shell rocket. It is best to cast the rocket shell together. But there is another question, which is how big the thread angle of the thread tail wing should be. Is it better to have one degree or two degrees, or will it be effective if it is more than ten degrees?

This requires craftsmen to constantly try and improve.

Qin Zhao gave the craftsmen unlimited experiments of materials, and gave the craftsmen another month to study the angle of the threaded tail wing within a month.

Calculated at the speed of six people making one rocket per hour, three hundred rockets can be built in a month, which is enough to complete experiments at various angles.

Of course, in order to reduce the useless experimental numbers of these Ming Dynasty craftsmen, Qin Zhao also popularized the mathematical selection problems needed for scientific experiments. For example, to take the best number between 1 and 10, there is no need to do an experiment with one to ten, but to test which one is better, 2:5 and 7:5, and then test which one is better, 1:5, 3:5, or 6:5 and 8:5.

Qin Zhao was very tempted and taught the six craftsmen an hour of basic experimental courses before letting them start building iron furnaces and starting rockets.

...

After explaining how to experiment with rocket wings, Qin Zhao found that he had another job to complete.

That is the granulation of black gunpowder.

After building the rocket, Qin Zhao found that he not only needed powder gunpowder that exploded violently, but also needed to burn flat and could burn gunpowder in the air for a certain period of time. For rockets, the longer the gunpowder burns at the tail, the better. If he could only burn for a short time at the beginning and push the rocket like an explosion, the rocket would soon lose speed in the air and the rocket could not be shot far enough.

In order to increase the combustion time, in the mid-17th century, when technology was limited, the easiest way was to achieve gunpowder pelletization.
Chapter completed!