I Became a Witch and Started an Industrial Revolution

The more she thought about it, the more Mitia felt the operational potential of the airship was enormous.

After returning, Mitia urgently convened meetings of the Upper and Lower Houses and rapidly pushed to have a large-scale airship manufacturing program listed as the first S-level national strategic key project for the coming spring.

That meant doing it at all costs — no matter how difficult, no matter how many problems arose, the whole country’s strength must complete it.

No matter how advanced airplanes might iterate in the future, Mitia believed that in that future the airship would absolutely hold a pivotal position in the Seris Federation’s dual military-civil applications.

Although the airship’s top speed was, at most, a little over a hundred kilometers per hour, flying slowly also had its advantages.

If the built volume were further reduced — diameters of several dozen meters with payloads around ten tons — mounting two large-caliber autocannons and two heavy machine guns directly under the gondola could instantly turn it into an airborne fire-support gunboat.

The manufacturing size could also be expanded: a body of several hundred meters with enlarged payload could be used to transport supplies to remote, rugged mountainous regions.

It should be understood that when an airship was in a floating state its power consumption was almost zero; if it anchored over an area with a mooring, it could hover there for a week as a starting point.

She had revised the design again: in her previous life a large portion of an airship’s payload capacity had been wasted — the most typical problems being ballast water and energy consumption.

Discharging ballast water to reduce self-weight allowed it to rise, but when an airship delivered bombs and thus became even lighter, the propellers had to keep doing work to maintain altitude.

A fully loaded supply-carrying airship used roughly the same fuel as an empty one; a very light airship needed greater power to descend and land, while greater power consumed more fuel, which meant carrying more energy reserves.

It turned into the classic “add water when there’s too much flour; add flour when there’s too much water” problem.

But in this life, with magic, that unsolvable water-and-flour problem vanished.

A matrix of several or a dozen mid-to-high-grade magic crystals could produce water on demand, flexibly adjusting the airship’s own ballast distribution; the engines could be dedicated entirely to flight control, no longer required to do work downward.

Moreover, one or two high-power engines could be installed at the tail as propulsion thrusters, which would further increase the airship’s cruising speed and reduce energy consumption.

With ample power supply, the threat from lateral crosswinds was no longer a serious issue — side engines could provide thrust to counteract reaction forces.

And because there was no need to compress air or release gas from the buoyancy cells for ascent and descent, economic costs would drop again; this would be an extremely ideal inner-ring transport vehicle.

As everyone knew, coastal and riverside regions developed faster because of maritime transport; their development speed would inevitably outpace entirely inland regions because of the huge difference in logistics costs.

Product price was basically equal to material cost, manufacturing cost, and transportation cost.

The same product transported by sea started at thousands to tens of thousands of tons per cargo ship — in Mitia’s previous life they could even reach over a hundred thousand tons.

For inland transport networks, even adding two more rail tracks could not achieve one-tenth of maritime costs, not to mention transport methods other than trains.

That single disparity doomed inland areas from developing large manufacturing enterprises; once such enterprises got started, they would immediately look for ways to relocate out of the interior.

With insufficient jobs, people’s incomes stayed low; low incomes meant poor tax revenue, poor taxes meant rotten public welfare, which drove people away to work elsewhere and further reduced public revenue.

Also, due to transportation costs, various goods in the city would be many times more expensive than in other regions — low income and high prices; who would want to stay in such a place?

Take Alos as an example. In areas where provincial roads were basically completed, driving 300 km by car took about three hours at most; on terrible dirt roads and muddy stretches, 300 km took at least six hours, and there was no upper limit...

If you got stuck midway, you could figure out how to dig yourself out; if the truck carried cargo, it couldn’t finish the 300 km in six hours.

To solve this embarrassing problem, Mitia’s government had to invest heavily in building provincial expressways for these states, arrange multiple rail lines, and then relax permissions to allow private and local participation in constructing provincial roads.

The ultimate purpose of this combination of measures was to speed up material circulation and reduce transportation costs — transportation costs were the lifeblood of urban industry.

The theory of “build roads first if you want to get rich” came from this logic.

With airships’ help, these problems would not be completely solved or equalized with sea freight, but compared with land transport they would certainly be far more cost-effective.

Civilian airships that did not need to go to battle could reduce alloy framework and various weapon mounts, and even use fewer engines, compressing and freeing up space.

A 240-meter-long airship could carry nearly a hundred tons.

Airship manufacturing and maintenance plants could be placed out in the wilderness; as long as large wind-deflection arrays similar to those used for cross-sea bridges were built nearby to solve side-wind problems, takeoff and landing would not encounter sudden accidents.

If the state stepped in nationwide to launch a factory consolidation and allocation plan, grouping plants by type, surrounding areas could be opened up to provide zones for airship takeoff, landing, loading and unloading cargo.

An airship’s sustained power consumption was extremely low; even if loading and unloading were a bit slow, they could afford to wait. If modular container gondolas were used, the airship would not be that slow at loading and unloading.

And for airships in the 200–500 meter range, their loading capacities could meet the material needs of an industrial park in a few batches; if that were insufficient, two or more open lots would suffice.

Moreover, aligning airship routes with the future intercity and continental railway networks would allow full use of both ground and sky, with airplane routes reserved as well.

Large-scale batch manufacturing would further reduce airship production costs.

In the military field there was even more to be gained: besides serving directly as airborne gunboats and bombing airships, they could act as logistics-supply platforms.

What did a service ceiling of 5,000–6,000 meters imply? It meant that whenever Seris wanted to wage operations against someone, the materiel could be transported there first by airship, and the enemy would have a hard time detecting it.

Then supplies could be air-dropped locally for ground troops to use — whether ammunition, shells, or survival supplies.

When materials science advanced in the future, air-dropping heavy armored equipment to replenish mechanized ground units’ losses would not be impossible.

Wasn’t that far more convenient than a long train of trucks trailing behind?

A high-powered truck in today’s muddy environment had to either increase engine power and torque or reduce load — there were a host of problems.

Wasn’t converting trucks into armored personnel carriers a better idea?

With airships, Mitia could fully realize region-to-region aerial support like in her past life’s America.

Pre-deployed airships would loiter in the air, while the steel torrents on the ground advanced rapidly; at each area dozens of container drops would be waiting to be received.

Refueling and resupplying locally, combat capability could remain at a very high level throughout almost the entire operation.

An airship support combat system — that kind of thrilling scene — she could achieve it now!

So what reason was there not to push for its realization?