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After that day's test ended, Logan didn't leave the base. Instead he summoned the engineers responsible for the cockpit assembly, and they kept working out a plan with high feasibility.
Although Ryan had already marked on the blueprints what equipment went in every position of the cockpit, with this many devices, instruments, and wiring, they still had to consider the layout, what to install first and what to install later to achieve the best result.
There were also some sections with high installation difficulty. The zoom telescope in Crimson Typhoon's head observation window, for instance.
At the very front was a glass lens. In the deep sea, glass was extremely fragile. The moment a tiny scratch appeared on its surface, it could become a breach point for the enormous water pressure. This meant that from production through the entire installation process, the glass lens couldn't come into contact with any hard object, not even a fingernail.
And the fit between the observation window and the glass had to be extremely tight. The gap between them couldn't exceed 0.2 silk, which was 0.002 millimeters.
This foundational knowledge all came from information gained on the earlier Pioneer submersible project. Logan reached out to the Pioneer team and obtained more detailed information from them.
Although Ryan's blueprints, owing to the special glass material, didn't actually require standards this high, Logan habitually worked to the highest standard regardless.
Logan and the engineers under him studied the firsthand engineering data the Pioneer side provided, deliberating over the installation plan, and a viable plan gradually took shape.
There were other high-difficulty sections too, and he found similar domestic reference cases for all of them, providing feasibility support for the assembly plan.
More than once, Logan reflected that without these cases, solving these problems would surely have cost them a great deal of time.
When Ryan heard about this, his own reflection echoed Logan's. Without the support of the country's various projects across different fields, this project genuinely couldn't have moved this fast.
Crimson Typhoon's transport platform came from aerospace. Part of its assembly techniques came from deep-submergence craft. Its vector engines relied on the aviation industry. And then there was the armor, the machining of the mechanical components.
It was, in every sense, a child raised by the whole village.
Of course, with these fields contributing such enormous effort, Crimson Typhoon's technology would later feed back into them in turn.
With the foundation of the current super-large transport platform, future transport platform designs in the aerospace field could save a great deal of effort.
Deep-submergence craft and submarines could later use the seal technology from Crimson Typhoon, along with the machining processes for deep-sea pressure-resistant titanium alloy.
The Storm Series of vector engines, if the radical rework succeeded, might give the country a vector engine with terrifying thrust.
Never mind the damping and shock-absorption field, and the many other fields these technologies could be applied to.
As for the civilian sector, Crimson Typhoon's technology wouldn't be opened up anytime soon. For one, secrecy demanded it. For another, the researchers themselves hadn't even fully digested the technology yet, so what was there to talk about in terms of converting it for civilian use? Ryan had no desire to take on that exhausting chore. But the benefits in the scientific and defense sectors alone were already considerable.
Crimson Typhoon's arms didn't drag on too long. One right arm had been assembled long ago. Now they only needed to take it apart, separate it into upper-arm and lower-arm segments, and assemble it back on. With the prior assembly experience, the other right arm came together fast too. And the remaining left arm was even easier.
The left arm had originally been the plasma cannon, but the plasma cannon had been built long ago and sent off into the mountains. There was naturally no point building another to install on the left arm.
So Ryan had already revised the left arm on the blueprints beforehand.
While the exterior shape and the other seal designs stayed the same, the interior of the forearm had become a fuel tank.
The left arm would exist from now on as the mech's reserve fuel tank, increasing the mech's endurance. With this reserve tank added, Crimson Typhoon's full-power operating time was projected to reach around eight hours.
This revision reduced the assembly difficulty. Had it remained the plasma cannon, the various high-precision instruments inside would not have been nearly so easy to assemble.
After both right arms and the left arm were installed, what remained to be installed were the cockpit and the two big fuel drums on the back.
The two big fuel drums went on first. Before these two devices were installed, the mech's back armor couldn't be installed, and the three vector engines underneath were currently left bare and exposed.
The two fuel drums, storage tanks shaped like the inner liner of a kettle, were hoisted high into the air. Every movable aerial platform was in use, with technicians standing on them, reporting the hoisting status over their radios.
Only once the drums had settled into the correct position did the technicians pilot the aerial platforms closer, attach their safety lines, and begin fixing the storage tanks in place.
Seen from below, the workers looked like ants clambering over a giant's body. But the strength of these "ants" was a startling thing. There was no counting how many times they'd created one miracle after another.
After the tanks were installed, other small components still had to go on, and the last to be installed was the crimson titanium alloy armor over the fuel drums.
Once the drum armor was on, things still weren't finished. Below it, an enormous piece of back armor had to be installed, and on the left and right, two rounded triangular shoulder fins, used to keep the mech balanced.
Installing these pieces took only three days. Ryan watched from the side throughout, and the speed was astonishing.
By the time these two pieces were installed, Crimson Typhoon's completion had passed ninety percent. It lacked only a cockpit.
"The cockpit's just about ready too. Let's go take a look together." Once the hangar assembly was complete, Logan said this to Ryan.
This was, of course, something to see.
Ryan went with Logan to the assembly zone, where the cockpit assembly was now underway.
The plan Logan and the others had worked out was aerial distributed assembly.
First, install the cockpit's base to gain a foothold. Then install the four-sided frame and the other internal devices onto the base. And finally, install the most delicate part, the zoom telescope.
The benefit of this was that they could assemble and build at the same time.
The cockpit's base was a special opposed-piston assembly that greatly increased the flexibility of the neck connection, making the mech's head-turning speed nearly identical to a human's.
After this enormous piston assembly and the four-sided frame were installed, many internal devices were transported up via aerial platform or crane, for the technicians to install. And down in the ground-level assembly zone, a large number of technicians assembled the remaining cockpit equipment according to the assembly plan. The moment a piece was finished, it was immediately sent up to the mech for installation.
The most complex part, the cockpit, was carried up to seventy-two meters in the air, bit by bit, by this laborious ant-by-ant method.
The final assembly took place in the dead of night, with the base still ablaze with light.
Tired as they were, Ryan and Logan still stood on the skybridge at the edge of the wall, fixed on the work across from them.
There was almost no sound on-site. Everyone held their breath, watching ahead.
The mechanical arm carried the observation window to dock carefully with the cockpit. Under the precision positioning instruments, the docking on both sides came together perfectly, without the slightest error.
In the instant the docking completed, a surge of fervent applause broke out on the skybridges, on the aerial platforms, all across the site. The people still laboring here held back the joy in their hearts and clapped without stopping.
Even the ever-steady Logan threw an arm around Ryan's shoulder and shook him. "It's done. It's done."
Ryan laughed, happy and moved.
That this project had been completed so quickly was a genuine surprise even to him.
After the docking succeeded, many technicians pressed down their excitement and hurried into the cockpit with their machinery to fix the newly installed observation window in place.
It wasn't until they'd secured the observation window that Crimson Typhoon could be called truly complete.
Ryan stepped onto an aerial platform and piloted it to move in front of Crimson Typhoon. Looking at this first large mech in the world, and possibly the last large mech as well, he was filled with feeling.
Its frame was enormous, but the burly, powerful torso and legs, along with the slender, forceful three arms, all carried an air of lethality. It was, without question, an agile killer.
"Tomorrow we do a full-machine inspection. One week from now, we conduct the first test."