The only pity is that the vulcanized rubber technology has developed by leaps and bounds because of Li Tianyang's proposal of a word, but just because Jingpu Gangzhong has just been planted, I don't know if it can survive, and after it survives, it is not suitable for the rubber tree species that is suitable for the climate of Dayuan Island, and then to provide the raw material of natural rubber, which seems to be an extremely long and difficult process.

Unless, Li Tianyang purchased natural rubber from the Portuguese, or built his own fleet to go to the Spanish-controlled Acapulco region of the Americas.

Sourcing natural rubber from the Portuguese was not a wise choice, because Li Tianyang did not want rubber products to be exposed to the public too soon, because they did not seem to be very useful, but in fact they were very versatile.

Just what Li Tianyang could think of, the production of rainproof utensils is not only limited to waterproof boots, but also rain-proof coats and rain-proof cloaks, and can also use the function of isolating rainwater to go the opposite way, as the storage of gunpowder and other moisture-proof materials for the daily march of Hongmen soldiers, drinking utensils, etc.!

At the same time, the vulcanized rubber came out and imprinted into Li Tianyang's eyes for the first time, what Li Tianyang thought of was that it was a thick rural slingshot, a slingshot string cut from a truck tire, and then he thought of a tire.

What are the advantages of pneumatic tires, probably no need to say anything about Li Tianyang, although there is no tire tire technology matching pneumatic inner tubes in this era, but the elasticity of rubber can still effectively solve the durability of the wooden rollers caused by the bumps of the daily carriage, as well as the comfort of the carriage ride.

Of course, what is indispensable is the elastic belt used by everyone in daily life, for this era of toilet need to untie the belt, but also to avoid the belt to appear dead buckles and other problems, in front of the elastic belt will be gone forever.

This is the many ways that Li Tianyang, a layman, can think of using rubber in later generations, not to mention that the R&D Institute will have various brain-opening ways to use it in the future.

Therefore, if the rubber with a simple use can be kept secret for a while longer, so that Westerners can know the use of this rubber later, Li Tianyang thinks that it is profitable, just like the cement formula that is widely used in Hongmen now, until now it is still the Portuguese, the Dutch or the British who occasionally come to the chicken coop port to trade, etc., all want to spend a lot of money to obtain strong products from Hongmen, but Li Tianyang refused on the spot.

Then there is only one way left, which is to reopen a route east into the Pacific Ocean and directly to the port of Acapulco in the Americas.

With the current Hongmen team's navigation ability, there is no problem with ocean trade, but in the Ming Dynasty, thousands of materials, or even two thousand materials to cargo ships, there is no big problem in the offshore trade, these years by He Yong, Sun Juyong several people are responsible for the Luzon Manila route, the Japanese route and the newly opened North Korea route, for the Hongmen team has made outstanding contributions to the economy, creating profits every year in hundreds of thousands of taels of silver.

There are many advantages of Fuchuan in offshore trade, such as its sail is a hard sail, easy to operate, does not require too many sailors, the storage part is also very large, and the large freight volume brings more profits.

However, it also has many shortcomings, because it adopts the "V" structure of the Oriental sea ship, which is less stable in the deep-sea trade, and cannot be equipped with large firepower artillery as a defensive weapon in batches, and its ability to resist pirates and other countries is naturally poor.

And because of the oriental hard sail design, it is also inferior to Western-style sea ships in terms of wind utilization, which is reflected in the performance of sea ships that the overall speed is not fast, it is easier to be pursued by pirates known for their maneuverability, and it is not easy to avoid central areas such as sea storms with extremely fast speeds.

Therefore, if Hongmen wanted to open up its own route to the Americas, then it would need to build several merchant ships that were modeled after Western sea vessels.

This is for the Hongmen team, in fact, although there is difficulty, but it is not too big, with the development of the "Yang Fan" warship, the essence of the Hongmen shipyard Yang Zhi They have already understood seventy-seven-eighty-eight.

The only difficulty is that if such a cross-ocean trade ship is built, it will have to be built as much as possible, the more cost-effective it is, for example, the Spaniards only go back and forth between Manila and Acapulco on average every two years, and the size of their ships is almost not inferior to the Ming Dynasty's 2,000 sea ships, or even exceeded, so as to maximize its carrying capacity and obtain huge profits from ocean trade.

The Hongmen "Yang Fan" warship, although much larger than the Hongmen's former main warship of 400 materials, but the largest does not exceed the scale of 1,000 materials of sea ships, converted into modern sea ships, that is, three or four hundred tons, I am afraid that it is not enough to see if it is used for ocean trade.

In the past few years, since the beginning of mass production of "Yang Fan" warships, almost all of the best shipbuilders in Hongmen have been brought under Yang Zhi's command, and even the R&D Institute has not had a few talents in this area.

Yang Zhi's starting point for accepting these shipbuilding talents was naturally to help Hongmen build the "Yang Fan-style" warship as soon as possible, and secondly, he was also taking precautions and preparing for such a request as Li Tianyang today.

After all, it is the shipbuilding technology of the Westerners, although many key technologies have been explored by the Hongmen Shipyard from Western warships, but there are still many technologies that they have not figured out, let alone the use of "Yang Fan" to stand out and build technology to build larger-scale ships.

You must know that the size of the hull is larger, but it is not just built according to the original style, otherwise the Western Europeans will not only have a few maritime powers now able to build a first-class battleship with a scale of more than 2,000 tons.

Li Tianyang's requirements, coupled with Yang Zhi's painstaking research and development in the past few years, made them prepare to start building the first imitation Western-style sea ship with a scale of more than 1,000 tons belonging to Hongmen, as the most important key to Hongmen's opening of the American route.

The research and development work is not something that Li Tianyang can control, even if it is delayed for a year and a half, it is very likely, so after handing over the task to the right people, what Li Tianyang can do next is to track its construction speed, research and development speed from time to time, etc.

As for Wu Chao and his party further away, Li Tianyang couldn't think about it, so he could only understand the situation there through a weekly carrier pigeon communication and give some simple suggestions.

(End of chapter)