Both of them were actual participants in the design of the Warhawk-1, and neither Yang Cong, Li Jianming, nor Sun ngfei minded, so they imdiately started discussing the design issues of the Warhawk-1.
"Before coming here," Li Jianming exclaid repeatedly, "I always thought that there must be significant problems with the Warhawk-1’s design. Everyone admits that Academician Zhao is a genius, but it all happened too fast..."
"Yes, way too fast!" Sun ngfei echoed his sentint, looking at Bao Enhong, "I feel like you’ve just gone there."
Bao Enhong shook his head earnestly, "Academician Zhao is indeed... hard to understand. Most of it was completed by himself, Lei Yong and I hardly helped."
Lei Yong nodded in agreent.
Li Jianming continued, "I’ve looked at it all, and it’s a design so advanced that I couldn’t even imagine it. Before I saw it, I couldn’t conceive of such things; my brain just didn’t have those concepts." He sighed and said, "Truly, utterly convincing! Right now, I even want to directly apply to stop the J-31’s design and developnt project. It’s unnecessary."
Li Jianming’s words struck a chord with Yang Cong and Sun ngfei. The validation work had been halfway done to that point, and let alone right or wrong in the design itself, just the overall architecture and the design details they had seen gave them a sense of ’unimaginable’.
There were many aspects of the design they simply felt ’unthinkable’.
The conversation then turned to design inspiration.
"For the tail section," Li Jianming said, "I had never seen such a design before; there was nothing to reference. And the air intakes? While I could imagine triple air intakes, I would dare not design a closed upper air intake if I thought of it."
"Indeed."
Sun ngfei agreed, "Folding wings, are you kidding ? When I first saw this design, it really... left my mind blank. Wings... folding? Are there even such things in sci-fi movies?"
Yang Cong laughed and shook his head.
He had seen the design earlier than the other two, and although his ti for expressions of awe had passed, he still couldn’t wrap his head around the concept. He couldn’t understand how anyone could co up with such a design.
The main question was the source of inspiration.
Normally, aircraft design requires a lot of reference material, not to suggest ’imitation or plagiarism’, but rather that without solid references, it’s difficult to just go ahead with the design, since deep consideration is sowhat bound to human ways of thinking.
Human thought always has a base, for example, knowing what snow looks like allows one to imagine Antarctica.
But what if you don’t know it?
How could ancient peoples living on the equator even imagine what Antarctica was like? They had never seen snow!
Knowledge and experience are the foundations of imagination; only with a foundation can expansion take place, and inspiration can also be described as an expansion of the base, surely a recombination of existing knowledge, like words, having both ’spirit’ and ’feeling’, can be combined into the word ’inspiration’. Without either one, the word ’inspiration’ wouldn’t exist.
So, they couldn’t understand how Zhao Yi could co up with these designs.
Zhao Yi did indeed receive so design materials, but what he received definitely wasn’t as much as they had seen, yet his designs far exceeded the scope of the materials, and so aspects were even entirely unrelated to any known materials, like the folding wings, how did he think of that?
How did he validate it?
Why did he decide to design folding wings?
And so on.
These were all things Yang Cong and his colleagues couldn’t comprehend; after much discussion in awe, they rembered there were others present.
Li Jianming turned to Lei Yong and asked, "Lei Yong, do you know where Academician Zhao’s inspiration cos from?" Concerned that Lei Yong might not understand, he elaborated, "For example, how did he co up with the folding wing design? What kind of materials did he look at, or..."
"I know?"
"Huh?"
"I know," Lei Yong nodded affirmatively, then added, "Bao Enhong knows, too."
"Really? Where does it co from?"
Lei Yong suddenly walked over to the side, picked up his briefcase, pulled out a docunt, and placed the photograph of a toy airplane model from the top page on the table for Li Jianming, Yang Cong, and others to see, then said, "It’s this!"
"Right!"
Bao Enhong also nodded, "Academician Zhao’s initial inspiration was this toy airplane model."
"—??"
"...??"
"!!!?"
Yang Cong, Li Jianming, and Sun ngfei looked at each other, then carefully compared it to the current design, realizing that there were indeed so similarities. So Zhao Yi’s inspiration really ca from a toy airplane model?
This...
"Perhaps we should buy so science fiction movie plane models, spaceship models, and the like to expand our imagination and thinking space, so we can create better, higher-end designs?"
The three of them couldn’t help but ponder upon this idea.
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