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The story of titanium

350 points by weird_user 3y ago

robwwilliams 3y ago
Great overview: Titanium production technology essentially “willed into existence” by the US government (mainly the military branches) but now critical in health care for implants that embed with bone and that do not induce rejection.
danielodievich 3y ago
As a kid in my father's workshop we had several 4mm thick titanium plates, scavenged from some industrial stuff in USSR research facility nearby. I had a lot of fun getting my visiting friends tey to dent it with hammers. No matter how hard you struck it just didn't care. Only the oxidation patina would show some trace of impact. It was absolute magic to me. And so incredibly light!
- cyberax 3y ago
  When the USSR collapsed, a lot of defense companies pivoted to civilian production. A factory in my town was producing titanium shovel heads. They were awesome, unbelievably light, but very durable. They also made nice sparks when dragged across concrete pavement.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    Damn, imagine having a titanium shovel! I want one!
    - avs733 3y ago
      https://nearzero.co/products/shovel https://nearzero.co/products/shovel They exist! Meant for backpacking/back country work. I spent a summer as a wilderness search and rescue intern/volunteer/grunt/mule during college and was shocked at how much weight could have been saved with better gear. There’s just a minimal market for it.
      - amluto 3y ago
        That company sells titanium pots, too. And they say “ Titanium leaves no metallic smell or taste.” I don’t believe it. Titanium is, mechanically, a great material for a lightweight pot, but in my limited testing, I don’t think it’s inert enough. Green tea in a titanium pot is especially nasty.
        therein 3y ago
        I had similar experiences with titanium cookware. Could it be acting as a catalyst to something that would otherwise not happen?
        amluto 3y ago
        I don’t know. My current favorite cooking surface is the coating used on Hestan Nanobond. It’s sold as “titanium” but, from reading the patent, I think it’s a bunch of layers of CrN, TiN, and AlN, applied by PVD in a process optimized to produce an attractive gray color that looks a bit like metallic titanium. It seems very hard, very durable, and does not obviously react with any kind of food. (And even if it did, unless something oxidized the Cr to +6 and made it soluble, nothing that might leach out seems likely to be harmful.) The patent seems to expire fairly soon, and maybe the process will take off. I wonder if this coating could be applied to a lightweight titanium pot with good results.
        OfSanguineFire 3y ago
        In the backpacking and bicycle-travel community, titanium pots are widely regarded as good only for boiling water in, since they don't distribute heat as well as aluminium for more complex cooking.
        amluto 3y ago
        I’m well aware, but I don’t really believe this :). As far as I can tell, no very thin pot or pan distributes heat well [0], and no very thin pan cleans up well from cooked-on food when the cleaning supplies at hand while backpacking. [0] Concretely, this means that, when cooking solid food, the parts of the pan where the food isn’t sinking heat adequately get too hot.
  - myself248 3y ago
    Decades ago, Sears sold magnesium stepladders. I've used one, and it's freakishly light, a 6-foot step ladder that you can walk around with balanced on one finger. I've always wondered what a titanium one would be like.
    - petertodd 3y ago
      A lot heavier actually. In an application like a stepladder, you have to work with certain minimum dimensions for the stepladder to be practical (eg rungs and sides have to fit in the hands nicely). You also have to have certain minimum thicknesses on the parts to have sufficient resistance to local deformation (eg dropping a hammer on the rungs). That forces the parts to be significantly larger and stronger than they otherwise would be. Which makes very lightweight metals like magnesium and aluminum the better choice, as you can make thick parts at the required dimensions at very little weight. Climbing gear is a great example of this. Even though there's a segment of that market for which money is no object, the only use for titanium in climbing gear is certain specialized applications where corrosion resistance is important. Eg fixed gear mounted on sea-side cliffs. Because climbing gear has to have certain minimum dimensions to avoid damaging ropes, the very low density of aluminum wins over titanium's higher density/higher strength. If you made a carabiner out of titanium it'd be stronger than necessary, and a lot heavier.
      - londons_explore 3y ago
        If you can 3D print titanium, then you can make a honeycomb structure overcoming this problem.
        bch 3y ago
        What is the response to stress by this build method? Will it fail gracefully over a lifetime of stresses? Any single big stress-event? In terms of (rigid, diamond-frame) bicycles, this is why I’m still firmly in the steel camp. No aluminium, no carbon; just steel. It really does have an excellent combination of nice ride quality, low weight, high strength, good failure mode (I’ve broken a few frames, and they tend to just bend/sag, vs the rapid unscheduled disassembling of carbon/Al).
  - saiya-jin 3y ago
    Mountaineering ice screws. Its a dream for pro alpinists, since you have to drag every gram up there in thin air, so focus on weight saving is extreme, ie drilling holes into aluminum spoons before 8000m expeditions was normal in 70s-80s in eastern Europe block. Normal stainless steel ones are much heavier.
- petertodd 3y ago
  Those must have been soft hammers. Titanium isn't magic. It's neither as hard, nor as strong, as steel. It's a lot lighter, which makes it a wonder material in certain applications that can take advantage of it's excellent strength-to-weight ratio. But if max hardness, or strength at a given size, is what you are after, without a weight constraint, steel wins.
  - saberience 3y ago
    I mean, I'm no materials scientist but one google tells me that Titanium is AS strong as steel but much less dense. I just browsed through the top 10 Google results and everyone states that titanium is roughly equal to steel in strength but with various other benefits. So your comment is definitely off-base somewhere, you make it seem like steel is much stronger, which clearly isn't the case.
    - AlotOfReading 3y ago
      Steel's strength varies by orders of magnitude depending on the alloy and heat treatment. It's an incredibly flexible family of materials. Some members of that family are far stronger than anything in the titanium family, e.g. 4340 steel has a nominal yield strength of >1800 MPa, compared to <1300 MPa for Ti 10-2-3.
      - saberience 3y ago
        We're not talking about exotic and expensive varieties of steel though. We're just talking about "general" or common steel and comparing it to unalloyed "common"/"general" titanium. Remember, Steel is itself an alloy, Titanium is an element. If you start comparing Titanium alloys to Steel then the comparison gets even harder. Titanium alloys are in general stronger than steel as well as much lighter and more corrosion resistant.
        petertodd 3y ago
        > We're not talking about exotic and expensive varieties of steel though. 4340 steel isn't exotic. It's one of the most commonly used grades of steel out there, and it's much cheaper than titanium. There are steels out there with significant stronger yield strengths too. Meanwhile the highest yield strength of any Ti alloy is <1300MPa. Titanium is still a really great material in certain applications. But it's not magic. You have to use it intelligently in the right application to get a benefit from it.
- Turing_Machine 3y ago
  The article mentions that the Soviet Union had lots of titanium ore, and also that it was heavily used in the A-12/SR-71 family of aircraft. I remember reading elsewhere that the CIA set up a bunch of front operations across the world to buy titanium (or maybe titanium ore) from the USSR without them finding out what it was being used for. They didn't want the "Ship to:" part of the order form reading "Lockheed Skunkworks, Burbank Califoria". Heh.
  - dendrite9 3y ago
    There's an interesting story about trading Boeing aircraft design knowledge for Soviet titanium design knowledge during the cold war. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/the-titanium-gambit-3804526/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/the-titani...
  - pests 3y ago
    Elsewhere would of course be the excellent "Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed" by Ben Rich. Highly reccomended and goes into further engineering and design challenges of the RS-71 Blackbird and its titanium construction.
- muz754 3y ago
  Some hammers might not be that hard - you don’t want it to blow up in your face if you’re hitting a hardened steel tool.
  - psd1 3y ago
    I do not like my hammer hard! I do not like a face of shard! I like to whale upon a tool A shattered hammer is not cool!
latchkey 3y ago
This is the 5th time this story has been posted here. None of the other times received any comments and only a few points.
- pmarreck 3y ago
  It's the first time I've seen it, and I'm glad I did because it's fascinating! Also, this time seems to be going a bit differently... Perhaps timing is everything (see: bored people with their Thanksgiving families today...)
- kylehotchkiss 3y ago
  It started with the titanium iPhone didn’t it? Maybe more people have begun to understand the benefits practically
- fuzzfactor 3y ago
  The timing of the submission is far more important than the nature of the article. Time of day, time of week, other prominent distractions, etc have an increasingly outsized influence.
pmarreck 3y ago
This is a really interesting story!
scrlk 3y ago
I can't help but recall Steve Jobs introducing the PowerBook G4 Titanium: > "Titanium! It's made out of titanium! Like the spy planes! This is an incredible material, it's stronger than steel yet lighter than aluminium." https://youtu.be/bNHkrnU77m0?t=92 https://youtu.be/bNHkrnU77m0?t=92
- Ingaz 3y ago
  I had IBM notebook with titanium case (before it became Lenovo)
- kylehotchkiss 3y ago
  I could see a day when titanium laptops return. Apple has invested in the some of the best mass machining in the world. I wonder what it’d look like sandblasted like their laptops and with their new coatings.
  - scrlk 3y ago
    I miss the short "how it's made" videos that used to be in every single Apple production introduction (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQnr-kfuVdQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQnr-kfuVdQ). There was a blog called "Atomic Delights" that would explain the manufacturing processes featured in the videos. Found it super interesting, especially considering the challenge of shipping products at Apple level volumes. A MBP with the natural titanium finish as seen in the iPhone 15 Pro would be fantastic.
  - askvictor 3y ago
    Wasn't one of the major problems that Titanium doesn't play well with Wifi? The TiBook predated built-in wifi, and I thought one of the reason to shift to Aluminum was wifi performance.
  - thaumasiotes 3y ago
    > I could see a day when titanium laptops return. I don't get it. I was issued a metal macbook once. I had to buy a plastic case for it, because the bare metal scratched my fingernails. Why would we want a hard metal case instead of a soft plastic one?
303uru 3y ago
Love titanium, something so cool about it. It’s like steel with no downsides. I’ve got 5 ti bikes and a few ti watches, one of my favorite pieces though is my snow peak double wall titanium mug.
- JonChesterfield 3y ago
  What makes the mug particularly good? Always interested in something to improve coffee and recently broke my favourite one.
  - amluto 3y ago
    Tea, especially green tea, in a titanium mug is, in my experience, utterly gross. Maybe anodized titanium would work better? I don’t know what the chemistry behind the problem is, but even stainless steel kills green tea after a while.
  - psb217 3y ago
    I've got a Ti double-walled mug from Snow Peak that I use a lot around the house. The big strengths are light weight, near indestructability, and a cool Ti functional aesthetic. It's double-walled and holds heat well, but I prefer the "mouth feel" of ceramic or glass when drinking coffee, so I don't use it much for coffee.
  - petertodd 3y ago
    I've got one myself. For only a bit more weight (~70g) than single-walled aluminum mug (~60g), Snow Peak can put two walls, making the mug insulated. Though it's heavier than an insulated plastic mug, and _way_ more expensive.
  - 303uru 3y ago
    It’s super light, about the same weight as single wall stainless cup. The mouthfeel is nice, hot coffee doesn’t make the titanium feel as hot as steel gets and the feel is more similar to ceramic than stainless steel. It cleans up really nice and truly doesn’t stain. I even used a dc transformer to do some custom anodizing on mine and it looks really cool.
megraf 3y ago
Resting next to me is a titanium ring, it is extremely light, resistant to ambient temp change, and is usually cool to the touch. It cost $15 or so. It wears in a really beautiful way, aging like it's enjoying itself. On my finger is a tungsten carbide ring, it's extremely dense (that of gold, slightly heavier than uranium), and has a lot of interesting properties. It's warmed quickly by my fingers, and rings the most beautiful tone when I strike it with some bar stock of AI. Wolfram has been a very nice metal in my life, I wish it was more common, and would love to try to add some knurling to it.
- kylehotchkiss 3y ago
  I wear a titanium ring too and keep my real one safely locked away. It’s an incredible metal that I proudly wear around. Mine cost about the same. I also have a titanium pocketknife (James Brand), carabiner, keyrings, pens, camera (fujifilm makes a few), and some beloved snow peak dishes. And the silly titanium iPhone. It’s such a great metal to make things to carry with.
  - efitz 3y ago
    It’s not that great for blades as it doesn’t retain its edge as well as steel and is harder to sharpen.
    - nico_h 3y ago
      It’s usually the frame and sides / scales that are made of titanium, never the blade afaik. Except maybe in some multitool keyring single piece doohickeys, but it’s not expected to cut anything beside the tape on your packaging.
      - MeImCounting 3y ago
        Titanium so widely desirable for knife scales because of not only its strength to weight benefits but also interesting finishes that can be applied for instance anodization can give incredibly beautiful iridescent colors in a wide spectrum of potential colors and tones. I dont know how interested you are in modding your pocket knife but there are several very talented people that can do just stunning colorful and textural finishes on titanium.
Ingaz 3y ago
Great article! Sad it's so USA-centric. It would be great to read "Soviet part" of titanium
- kylehotchkiss 3y ago
  The real story now is how China centric it is - a lot of the worlds machining capabilities for it are still only there.
- ratsmack 3y ago
  A little info in the subject. https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/28152/when-and-how-did-the-west-lose-its-dependency-on-the-ussr-for-titanium https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/28152/when-and-h...
MeImCounting 3y ago
I collect nice pocket knives. Many nice pocket knives are made from titanium and other fancy materials like carbon fiber. I love titanium above all other metals for its unique properties in being anodized and finished in a large variety of beautiful ways. If you are ever interested in seeing some truly unique and beautiful titanium finishes check out "Knife Modders" on instagram. Combinations of coatings/anodizing/laser etching can produce some truly beautiful pieces.
stevefolta 3y ago
How can titanium be both a "streetwalker" and "incredibly corrosion-resistant"?
- kragen 3y ago
  same as aluminum, it immediately forms a hard and adherent oxide layer upon exposure to air or especially water
hdivider 3y ago
Huge fan of Titanium. If only we could find a cheap way to get the metal out of titanium dioxide. Like a Haber process-level breakthrough. Then we could start replacing steel with titanium in many applications. Think entire freight trains, cargo ships, containers, cars, trucks, tractors -- all that heavy steel replaced by titanium alloys. Enormous quantities of fuel and energy saved by lower density and higher strength. In many applications, it would likely make stainless steel obsolete. Trillions of dollars of value may be locked up in such a breakthrough.
- pocketstar 3y ago
  Fatigue is why we use steel for everything, no other alloys have the practical strength and infinite life.
  - petertodd 3y ago
    Like steel, titanium alloys have a distinct non-zero fatigue limit, and thus can be engineered to have infinite fatigue lives. Though the exact details differ and steel or titanium can be better depending on exactly what the conditions are.
  - softfalcon 3y ago
    You are correct in that steel is harder and stiffer than titanium. Steel is also more re-usable, smelt-able than titanium. However, when it comes to fatigue (which I assume, you are referring to fracture strain) titanium has a significant edge. The fracture strain for steel is roughly 15%, but for titanium alloys, it often reaches and exceeds 50%. I don't say this to contradict you, but to point out that as with most things in life, "it depends". Source: https://www.ulbrich.com/blog/titanium-versus-steel-a-battle-of-strength/#:~:text=Titanium%20also%20has%20good%20fatigue,best%20choice%20for%20these%20applications https://www.ulbrich.com/blog/titanium-versus-steel-a-battle-....
    - Gibbon1 3y ago
      A better argument for steel is it requires 5-10 kwhr/kg to produce vs 60kwhr/kg for aluminum and 250kwhr/kg for titanium. So for the same energy you get 6 times more steel than aluminum and 25 times more than titanium. Which seems to say when the properties of steel are acceptable it's the cheaper option. https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/06/how-much-energy-does-it-take-on-average-to-produce-1-kilogram-of-the-following-materials/ https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/06/how-much-energy-do...
painted-now 3y ago
I owned a carbon road bike - which unfortunately I wrecked due to a problem with my chain. I then bought a used titanium bike, and I have peace of mind since then. It might be just a psychological effect - but it just feels good to have a bike frame that's extremely difficult to destroy.
vermooten 3y ago
Come back, zinc! Come back!
A_D_E_P_T 3y ago
Almost everything about the article is wrong, oversimplified, or misleading. Take this paragraph, for instance: > But despite its abundance, it's only recently that civilization has been able to use titanium as a metal (titanium dioxide has been in use somewhat longer as a paint pigment). Because titanium so readily bonds with oxygen and other elements, it doesn’t occur at all in metallic form in nature. One engineer described titanium as a “streetwalker," because it will pick up anything and everything. While copper has been used by civilization since 7000 BC, and iron since around 3000 BC, titanium wasn’t discovered until the late 1700s, and wasn’t produced in metallic form until the late 19th century. As this is basically a bunch of bullet points in paragraph form, it'll be easier to handle if we break it down: > But despite its abundance, it's only recently that civilization has been able to use titanium as a metal (titanium dioxide has been in use somewhat longer as a paint pigment). The same also applies to aluminum, magnesium, nickel, etc. > Because titanium so readily bonds with oxygen and other elements, it doesn’t occur at all in metallic form in nature. The same also applies to aluminum, magnesium, and even iron. (I mean, there's some meteoric iron, but it's very rare.) Pure metals are very rare in nature. What distinguishes iron and copper from aluminum and titanium is the energy required to split the oxide into metal. > One engineer described titanium as a “streetwalker," because it will pick up anything and everything. Titanium is not more reactive than aluminum and it's far less reactive than magnesium. In fact, it's slightly less reactive than iron overall. (i.e., more chemically stable under normal conditions and in contact with common acids.) > While copper has been used by civilization since 7000 BC, and iron since around 3000 BC, titanium wasn’t discovered until the late 1700s, and wasn’t produced in metallic form until the late 19th century. This has everything to do with the temperature required to separate the metal from the oxygen atoms binding it, and nothing to do with anything else. What's more, it applies even more strongly to aluminum, which was discovered in 1825 -- three decades after the discovery of titanium. (1791.) So there's absolutely nothing unique about titanium in this regard. I could go on. But basically this is an "I hecking love science" article that barely scratches the surface of the subject -- and still manages to be subtly misleading.
- kragen 3y ago
  > The same also applies to aluminum, magnesium, nickel, etc. the oxides of aluminum, magnesium, and nickel were not in use as paint pigments > What distinguishes iron and copper from aluminum and titanium is the energy required to split the oxide into metal. (...) Titanium is not more reactive than aluminum the particularly relevant issue here, as i understand it, is that titanium has a stable carbide, which prevents you from reducing it carbothermically; you end up with titanium carbide instead of titanium metal. aluminum's carbide is unstable even in water, while iron's carbide is mechanically strong but still easy to reduce to iron with air. copper's carbide is poorly characterized and even more unstable, and it even occurs native there are other things that titanium reacts more strongly with than aluminum does. titanium tetrachloride, for example, which is mentioned in the article, isn't a mere salt like normal chlorides; it's a volatile fuming liquid, because titanium forms covalent bonds with the chlorine like a motherfucking nonmetal. you can argue about whether this makes it more or less reactive than aluminum in this context; the reaction produces more energy per metal atom but less energy per chlorine atom this kind of dirty trick is why titanium wasn't isolated until decades after the creation of metallic calcium, sodium, potassium, aluminum, and even the isolation of some of the rare earths so i think the characterization in the article is fair
euroderf 3y ago
Great discussion here. I can pretty much see why people would make a career of metals engineering.
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dave333 3y ago
There is evidence titanium may be the cause of the rare disease yellow nail syndrome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_nail_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_nail_syndrome study ref: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3176400/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3176400/
Animats 3y ago
Machining titanium is possible, but remains difficult. It's slow and you go through a lot of cutters. Now this is just showing off.[1] Daishin and Open Mind started with a 60 kilogram cylinder of titanium and milled a very detailed crown out of it. 300 hours of CNC machining time on a very good 5-axis mill. Most of the metal ends up as scrap. The software for this is called HyperMill. If you have to ask how much it costs, you can't afford it. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bqv5SjC4s6w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bqv5SjC4s6w
Vicinity9635 3y ago
I have a titanium chainmail shirt: https://www.etsy.com/listing/505806057/titanium-chainmaille-t-shirt https://www.etsy.com/listing/505806057/titanium-chainmaille-... (me in 2nd pic) It weighs just 6.6 lbs. (the page says 6.5 but I had to have him add a bit cause I got too swole in the lats a couple of years ago.) It's fun to have someone try it on then watch them struggle as they can't figure out how to get it off lol If you bend over and stick your arms down it basically slide off on its own. What's really interesting is the ringing sound it makes when you play with it or move around wearing it, it's a noticibly higher pitch than steel is. I also have a necklace/spacepen lanyard, wallet chain, and coif made of titanium by Bim also. My keyrings and bottle opener are also titanium. It's such a cool metal. Kind of a pity it makes a very poor knife blade. Speaking of: I also replaced the screws and hinges of my bespoke Benchmade knife with titanium ones, because why not? A bit obsessed as you can tell. tl;dr I have a mithril shirt
- redman25 3y ago
  Curious how durable a Ti shirt would be. Could it save you walking down a dark alley at night?
  - NickNameNick 3y ago
    Looks like they're just butted rings, so you're relying on the rididity of each ring to resist opening up. Welded or rivited rings would be much more robust. Especially vs piercing weapons, like arrows or fighting knives. But much more expensive.
    - Vicinity9635 3y ago
      [dead]
  - Vicinity9635 3y ago
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AngryData 3y ago
Titanium is a wonderful material but I think many people are way more idealistic about how great it is than it is in reality. In nearly every category other than weight constraints steel still wins out and is so much easier to work with.
rendaw 3y ago
> After the war, the Bureau’s work on titanium accelerated. By 1947 it had successfully scaled up Kroll’s process The article so far can be summarized as "people played around with titanium, but had no idea what to use it for" so why is the bureau suddenly trying to scale up production, or even mass producing it in the first place? It wasn't until 1948 that they identified engineering applications.
garbanzoPDX 3y ago
> it formed the literal backbone of the most advanced aerospace technology on the planet. I'm going to be pedantic here, but I feel like it needs to be said: no, it was not the "literal" backbone aerospace technology. It was the "figurative" backbone. There, I said it.
- dreamcompiler 3y ago
  Since the A-12 was 93% titanium, it's virtually certain that its skeletal frame was made of the metal. The word "literal" applies.
- messe 3y ago
  It does not need to be said. The use of literally as an intensifier goes back centuries, and is well-accepted. Move on. Why choose this hill to die on when there are far more interesting things to discuss?
SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
Heads up… except for mine almost none of the comments here mention Grade 5 (6AL4V). This thread is a ton of people talking about things they think they understand but haven’t actually directly worked with. Just making things up or repeating things they heard once. Anyone who actually uses it will know Grade 2, 5, 12, 23 etc. I don’t mind particularly, there are some clearly educated people talking about chemistry, but it is important to note how many people here are talking out their asses. The top current comment is about being unable to dent 4mm Ti plate with hammers - complete BS.
- mingabunga 3y ago
  Maybe you can educate us then..
- zardo 3y ago
  > The top current comment is about being unable to dent 4mm Ti plate with hammers - complete BS. It is about children with hammers.
the-mitr 3y ago
Of possible interest Tales About Metals https://archive.org/details/VenetskyTalesAboutMetals https://archive.org/details/VenetskyTalesAboutMetals On Rare and Scattered Metals https://archive.org/details/OnRareAndScatteredMetalsTalesAboutMetals https://archive.org/details/OnRareAndScatteredMetalsTalesAbo...
peter_d_sherman 3y ago
Great article! >"The earth contains a lot of titanium - it’s the ninth most abundant element in the earth’s crust. By mass, there’s more titanium in the earth’s crust than carbon by a factor of nearly 30, and more titanium than copper by a factor of nearly 100." >"Titanium was nearly as strong as stainless steel, but weighed 40% less." Consider Steel I-Beams, used in construction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-beam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-beam Observation: If the workability difficulties of Titanium could be solved, at scale -- then not Steel, but Titanium I-Beams -- could be produced, en masse... If this could be done cheaply enough, then, in the future, Titanium I-Beams -- produced in the U.S.A. -- could retake the worldwide market for construction I-Beams that was historically lost when other countries started producing Steel I-Beams cheaper than the U.S. did... Anyway, an excellent article!
rkagerer 3y ago
Great article, though I'm surprised they didn't mention how the CIA clandestinely purchased much of the titanium for the SR-71 Blackboard (and it's predecessor) from Russia through front companies. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/crazy-story-how-russia-helped-build-sr-71-blackbird-187431 https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/crazy-story-how-russi...

350 points by weird_user 3y ago

Great overview: Titanium production technology essentially “willed into existence” by the US government (mainly the military branches) but now critical in health care for implants that embed with bone and that do not induce rejection.

danielodievich 3y ago

As a kid in my father's workshop we had several 4mm thick titanium plates, scavenged from some industrial stuff in USSR research facility nearby. I had a lot of fun getting my visiting friends tey to dent it with hammers. No matter how hard you struck it just didn't care. Only the oxidation patina would show some trace of impact. It was absolute magic to me. And so incredibly light!

cyberax 3y ago
When the USSR collapsed, a lot of defense companies pivoted to civilian production. A factory in my town was producing titanium shovel heads. They were awesome, unbelievably light, but very durable. They also made nice sparks when dragged across concrete pavement.
- hef19898 3y ago
  Damn, imagine having a titanium shovel! I want one!
  - avs733 3y ago
    https://nearzero.co/products/shovel https://nearzero.co/products/shovel They exist! Meant for backpacking/back country work. I spent a summer as a wilderness search and rescue intern/volunteer/grunt/mule during college and was shocked at how much weight could have been saved with better gear. There’s just a minimal market for it.
    - amluto 3y ago
      That company sells titanium pots, too. And they say “ Titanium leaves no metallic smell or taste.” I don’t believe it. Titanium is, mechanically, a great material for a lightweight pot, but in my limited testing, I don’t think it’s inert enough. Green tea in a titanium pot is especially nasty.
      - therein 3y ago
        I had similar experiences with titanium cookware. Could it be acting as a catalyst to something that would otherwise not happen?
        amluto 3y ago
        I don’t know. My current favorite cooking surface is the coating used on Hestan Nanobond. It’s sold as “titanium” but, from reading the patent, I think it’s a bunch of layers of CrN, TiN, and AlN, applied by PVD in a process optimized to produce an attractive gray color that looks a bit like metallic titanium. It seems very hard, very durable, and does not obviously react with any kind of food. (And even if it did, unless something oxidized the Cr to +6 and made it soluble, nothing that might leach out seems likely to be harmful.) The patent seems to expire fairly soon, and maybe the process will take off. I wonder if this coating could be applied to a lightweight titanium pot with good results.
      - OfSanguineFire 3y ago
        In the backpacking and bicycle-travel community, titanium pots are widely regarded as good only for boiling water in, since they don't distribute heat as well as aluminium for more complex cooking.
        amluto 3y ago
        I’m well aware, but I don’t really believe this :). As far as I can tell, no very thin pot or pan distributes heat well [0], and no very thin pan cleans up well from cooked-on food when the cleaning supplies at hand while backpacking. [0] Concretely, this means that, when cooking solid food, the parts of the pan where the food isn’t sinking heat adequately get too hot.
- myself248 3y ago
  Decades ago, Sears sold magnesium stepladders. I've used one, and it's freakishly light, a 6-foot step ladder that you can walk around with balanced on one finger. I've always wondered what a titanium one would be like.
  - petertodd 3y ago
    A lot heavier actually. In an application like a stepladder, you have to work with certain minimum dimensions for the stepladder to be practical (eg rungs and sides have to fit in the hands nicely). You also have to have certain minimum thicknesses on the parts to have sufficient resistance to local deformation (eg dropping a hammer on the rungs). That forces the parts to be significantly larger and stronger than they otherwise would be. Which makes very lightweight metals like magnesium and aluminum the better choice, as you can make thick parts at the required dimensions at very little weight. Climbing gear is a great example of this. Even though there's a segment of that market for which money is no object, the only use for titanium in climbing gear is certain specialized applications where corrosion resistance is important. Eg fixed gear mounted on sea-side cliffs. Because climbing gear has to have certain minimum dimensions to avoid damaging ropes, the very low density of aluminum wins over titanium's higher density/higher strength. If you made a carabiner out of titanium it'd be stronger than necessary, and a lot heavier.
    - londons_explore 3y ago
      If you can 3D print titanium, then you can make a honeycomb structure overcoming this problem.
      - bch 3y ago
        What is the response to stress by this build method? Will it fail gracefully over a lifetime of stresses? Any single big stress-event? In terms of (rigid, diamond-frame) bicycles, this is why I’m still firmly in the steel camp. No aluminium, no carbon; just steel. It really does have an excellent combination of nice ride quality, low weight, high strength, good failure mode (I’ve broken a few frames, and they tend to just bend/sag, vs the rapid unscheduled disassembling of carbon/Al).
- saiya-jin 3y ago
  Mountaineering ice screws. Its a dream for pro alpinists, since you have to drag every gram up there in thin air, so focus on weight saving is extreme, ie drilling holes into aluminum spoons before 8000m expeditions was normal in 70s-80s in eastern Europe block. Normal stainless steel ones are much heavier.
petertodd 3y ago
Those must have been soft hammers. Titanium isn't magic. It's neither as hard, nor as strong, as steel. It's a lot lighter, which makes it a wonder material in certain applications that can take advantage of it's excellent strength-to-weight ratio. But if max hardness, or strength at a given size, is what you are after, without a weight constraint, steel wins.
- saberience 3y ago
  I mean, I'm no materials scientist but one google tells me that Titanium is AS strong as steel but much less dense. I just browsed through the top 10 Google results and everyone states that titanium is roughly equal to steel in strength but with various other benefits. So your comment is definitely off-base somewhere, you make it seem like steel is much stronger, which clearly isn't the case.
  - AlotOfReading 3y ago
    Steel's strength varies by orders of magnitude depending on the alloy and heat treatment. It's an incredibly flexible family of materials. Some members of that family are far stronger than anything in the titanium family, e.g. 4340 steel has a nominal yield strength of >1800 MPa, compared to <1300 MPa for Ti 10-2-3.
    - saberience 3y ago
      We're not talking about exotic and expensive varieties of steel though. We're just talking about "general" or common steel and comparing it to unalloyed "common"/"general" titanium. Remember, Steel is itself an alloy, Titanium is an element. If you start comparing Titanium alloys to Steel then the comparison gets even harder. Titanium alloys are in general stronger than steel as well as much lighter and more corrosion resistant.
      - petertodd 3y ago
        > We're not talking about exotic and expensive varieties of steel though. 4340 steel isn't exotic. It's one of the most commonly used grades of steel out there, and it's much cheaper than titanium. There are steels out there with significant stronger yield strengths too. Meanwhile the highest yield strength of any Ti alloy is <1300MPa. Titanium is still a really great material in certain applications. But it's not magic. You have to use it intelligently in the right application to get a benefit from it.
Turing_Machine 3y ago
The article mentions that the Soviet Union had lots of titanium ore, and also that it was heavily used in the A-12/SR-71 family of aircraft. I remember reading elsewhere that the CIA set up a bunch of front operations across the world to buy titanium (or maybe titanium ore) from the USSR without them finding out what it was being used for. They didn't want the "Ship to:" part of the order form reading "Lockheed Skunkworks, Burbank Califoria". Heh.
- dendrite9 3y ago
  There's an interesting story about trading Boeing aircraft design knowledge for Soviet titanium design knowledge during the cold war. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/the-titanium-gambit-3804526/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/the-titani...
- pests 3y ago
  Elsewhere would of course be the excellent "Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed" by Ben Rich. Highly reccomended and goes into further engineering and design challenges of the RS-71 Blackbird and its titanium construction.
muz754 3y ago
Some hammers might not be that hard - you don’t want it to blow up in your face if you’re hitting a hardened steel tool.
- psd1 3y ago
  I do not like my hammer hard! I do not like a face of shard! I like to whale upon a tool A shattered hammer is not cool!

latchkey 3y ago

This is the 5th time this story has been posted here. None of the other times received any comments and only a few points.

pmarreck 3y ago
It's the first time I've seen it, and I'm glad I did because it's fascinating! Also, this time seems to be going a bit differently... Perhaps timing is everything (see: bored people with their Thanksgiving families today...)
kylehotchkiss 3y ago
It started with the titanium iPhone didn’t it? Maybe more people have begun to understand the benefits practically
fuzzfactor 3y ago
The timing of the submission is far more important than the nature of the article. Time of day, time of week, other prominent distractions, etc have an increasingly outsized influence.

pmarreck 3y ago

This is a really interesting story!

scrlk 3y ago

I can't help but recall Steve Jobs introducing the PowerBook G4 Titanium: > "Titanium! It's made out of titanium! Like the spy planes! This is an incredible material, it's stronger than steel yet lighter than aluminium." https://youtu.be/bNHkrnU77m0?t=92 https://youtu.be/bNHkrnU77m0?t=92

Ingaz 3y ago
I had IBM notebook with titanium case (before it became Lenovo)
kylehotchkiss 3y ago
I could see a day when titanium laptops return. Apple has invested in the some of the best mass machining in the world. I wonder what it’d look like sandblasted like their laptops and with their new coatings.
- scrlk 3y ago
  I miss the short "how it's made" videos that used to be in every single Apple production introduction (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQnr-kfuVdQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQnr-kfuVdQ). There was a blog called "Atomic Delights" that would explain the manufacturing processes featured in the videos. Found it super interesting, especially considering the challenge of shipping products at Apple level volumes. A MBP with the natural titanium finish as seen in the iPhone 15 Pro would be fantastic.
- askvictor 3y ago
  Wasn't one of the major problems that Titanium doesn't play well with Wifi? The TiBook predated built-in wifi, and I thought one of the reason to shift to Aluminum was wifi performance.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago
  > I could see a day when titanium laptops return. I don't get it. I was issued a metal macbook once. I had to buy a plastic case for it, because the bare metal scratched my fingernails. Why would we want a hard metal case instead of a soft plastic one?

303uru 3y ago

Love titanium, something so cool about it. It’s like steel with no downsides. I’ve got 5 ti bikes and a few ti watches, one of my favorite pieces though is my snow peak double wall titanium mug.

JonChesterfield 3y ago
What makes the mug particularly good? Always interested in something to improve coffee and recently broke my favourite one.
- amluto 3y ago
  Tea, especially green tea, in a titanium mug is, in my experience, utterly gross. Maybe anodized titanium would work better? I don’t know what the chemistry behind the problem is, but even stainless steel kills green tea after a while.
- psb217 3y ago
  I've got a Ti double-walled mug from Snow Peak that I use a lot around the house. The big strengths are light weight, near indestructability, and a cool Ti functional aesthetic. It's double-walled and holds heat well, but I prefer the "mouth feel" of ceramic or glass when drinking coffee, so I don't use it much for coffee.
- petertodd 3y ago
  I've got one myself. For only a bit more weight (~70g) than single-walled aluminum mug (~60g), Snow Peak can put two walls, making the mug insulated. Though it's heavier than an insulated plastic mug, and _way_ more expensive.
- 303uru 3y ago
  It’s super light, about the same weight as single wall stainless cup. The mouthfeel is nice, hot coffee doesn’t make the titanium feel as hot as steel gets and the feel is more similar to ceramic than stainless steel. It cleans up really nice and truly doesn’t stain. I even used a dc transformer to do some custom anodizing on mine and it looks really cool.

megraf 3y ago

Resting next to me is a titanium ring, it is extremely light, resistant to ambient temp change, and is usually cool to the touch. It cost $15 or so. It wears in a really beautiful way, aging like it's enjoying itself. On my finger is a tungsten carbide ring, it's extremely dense (that of gold, slightly heavier than uranium), and has a lot of interesting properties. It's warmed quickly by my fingers, and rings the most beautiful tone when I strike it with some bar stock of AI. Wolfram has been a very nice metal in my life, I wish it was more common, and would love to try to add some knurling to it.

kylehotchkiss 3y ago
I wear a titanium ring too and keep my real one safely locked away. It’s an incredible metal that I proudly wear around. Mine cost about the same. I also have a titanium pocketknife (James Brand), carabiner, keyrings, pens, camera (fujifilm makes a few), and some beloved snow peak dishes. And the silly titanium iPhone. It’s such a great metal to make things to carry with.
- efitz 3y ago
  It’s not that great for blades as it doesn’t retain its edge as well as steel and is harder to sharpen.
  - nico_h 3y ago
    It’s usually the frame and sides / scales that are made of titanium, never the blade afaik. Except maybe in some multitool keyring single piece doohickeys, but it’s not expected to cut anything beside the tape on your packaging.
    - MeImCounting 3y ago
      Titanium so widely desirable for knife scales because of not only its strength to weight benefits but also interesting finishes that can be applied for instance anodization can give incredibly beautiful iridescent colors in a wide spectrum of potential colors and tones. I dont know how interested you are in modding your pocket knife but there are several very talented people that can do just stunning colorful and textural finishes on titanium.

Ingaz 3y ago

Great article! Sad it's so USA-centric. It would be great to read "Soviet part" of titanium

kylehotchkiss 3y ago
The real story now is how China centric it is - a lot of the worlds machining capabilities for it are still only there.
ratsmack 3y ago
A little info in the subject. https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/28152/when-and-how-did-the-west-lose-its-dependency-on-the-ussr-for-titanium https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/28152/when-and-h...

MeImCounting 3y ago

I collect nice pocket knives. Many nice pocket knives are made from titanium and other fancy materials like carbon fiber. I love titanium above all other metals for its unique properties in being anodized and finished in a large variety of beautiful ways. If you are ever interested in seeing some truly unique and beautiful titanium finishes check out "Knife Modders" on instagram. Combinations of coatings/anodizing/laser etching can produce some truly beautiful pieces.

stevefolta 3y ago

How can titanium be both a "streetwalker" and "incredibly corrosion-resistant"?

kragen 3y ago
same as aluminum, it immediately forms a hard and adherent oxide layer upon exposure to air or especially water

hdivider 3y ago

Huge fan of Titanium. If only we could find a cheap way to get the metal out of titanium dioxide. Like a Haber process-level breakthrough. Then we could start replacing steel with titanium in many applications. Think entire freight trains, cargo ships, containers, cars, trucks, tractors -- all that heavy steel replaced by titanium alloys. Enormous quantities of fuel and energy saved by lower density and higher strength. In many applications, it would likely make stainless steel obsolete. Trillions of dollars of value may be locked up in such a breakthrough.

pocketstar 3y ago
Fatigue is why we use steel for everything, no other alloys have the practical strength and infinite life.
- petertodd 3y ago
  Like steel, titanium alloys have a distinct non-zero fatigue limit, and thus can be engineered to have infinite fatigue lives. Though the exact details differ and steel or titanium can be better depending on exactly what the conditions are.
- softfalcon 3y ago
  You are correct in that steel is harder and stiffer than titanium. Steel is also more re-usable, smelt-able than titanium. However, when it comes to fatigue (which I assume, you are referring to fracture strain) titanium has a significant edge. The fracture strain for steel is roughly 15%, but for titanium alloys, it often reaches and exceeds 50%. I don't say this to contradict you, but to point out that as with most things in life, "it depends". Source: https://www.ulbrich.com/blog/titanium-versus-steel-a-battle-of-strength/#:~:text=Titanium%20also%20has%20good%20fatigue,best%20choice%20for%20these%20applications https://www.ulbrich.com/blog/titanium-versus-steel-a-battle-....
  - Gibbon1 3y ago
    A better argument for steel is it requires 5-10 kwhr/kg to produce vs 60kwhr/kg for aluminum and 250kwhr/kg for titanium. So for the same energy you get 6 times more steel than aluminum and 25 times more than titanium. Which seems to say when the properties of steel are acceptable it's the cheaper option. https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/06/how-much-energy-does-it-take-on-average-to-produce-1-kilogram-of-the-following-materials/ https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/06/how-much-energy-do...

painted-now 3y ago

I owned a carbon road bike - which unfortunately I wrecked due to a problem with my chain. I then bought a used titanium bike, and I have peace of mind since then. It might be just a psychological effect - but it just feels good to have a bike frame that's extremely difficult to destroy.

vermooten 3y ago

Come back, zinc! Come back!

A_D_E_P_T 3y ago

Almost everything about the article is wrong, oversimplified, or misleading. Take this paragraph, for instance: > But despite its abundance, it's only recently that civilization has been able to use titanium as a metal (titanium dioxide has been in use somewhat longer as a paint pigment). Because titanium so readily bonds with oxygen and other elements, it doesn’t occur at all in metallic form in nature. One engineer described titanium as a “streetwalker," because it will pick up anything and everything. While copper has been used by civilization since 7000 BC, and iron since around 3000 BC, titanium wasn’t discovered until the late 1700s, and wasn’t produced in metallic form until the late 19th century. As this is basically a bunch of bullet points in paragraph form, it'll be easier to handle if we break it down: > But despite its abundance, it's only recently that civilization has been able to use titanium as a metal (titanium dioxide has been in use somewhat longer as a paint pigment). The same also applies to aluminum, magnesium, nickel, etc. > Because titanium so readily bonds with oxygen and other elements, it doesn’t occur at all in metallic form in nature. The same also applies to aluminum, magnesium, and even iron. (I mean, there's some meteoric iron, but it's very rare.) Pure metals are very rare in nature. What distinguishes iron and copper from aluminum and titanium is the energy required to split the oxide into metal. > One engineer described titanium as a “streetwalker," because it will pick up anything and everything. Titanium is not more reactive than aluminum and it's far less reactive than magnesium. In fact, it's slightly less reactive than iron overall. (i.e., more chemically stable under normal conditions and in contact with common acids.) > While copper has been used by civilization since 7000 BC, and iron since around 3000 BC, titanium wasn’t discovered until the late 1700s, and wasn’t produced in metallic form until the late 19th century. This has everything to do with the temperature required to separate the metal from the oxygen atoms binding it, and nothing to do with anything else. What's more, it applies even more strongly to aluminum, which was discovered in 1825 -- three decades after the discovery of titanium. (1791.) So there's absolutely nothing unique about titanium in this regard. I could go on. But basically this is an "I hecking love science" article that barely scratches the surface of the subject -- and still manages to be subtly misleading.

kragen 3y ago
> The same also applies to aluminum, magnesium, nickel, etc. the oxides of aluminum, magnesium, and nickel were not in use as paint pigments > What distinguishes iron and copper from aluminum and titanium is the energy required to split the oxide into metal. (...) Titanium is not more reactive than aluminum the particularly relevant issue here, as i understand it, is that titanium has a stable carbide, which prevents you from reducing it carbothermically; you end up with titanium carbide instead of titanium metal. aluminum's carbide is unstable even in water, while iron's carbide is mechanically strong but still easy to reduce to iron with air. copper's carbide is poorly characterized and even more unstable, and it even occurs native there are other things that titanium reacts more strongly with than aluminum does. titanium tetrachloride, for example, which is mentioned in the article, isn't a mere salt like normal chlorides; it's a volatile fuming liquid, because titanium forms covalent bonds with the chlorine like a motherfucking nonmetal. you can argue about whether this makes it more or less reactive than aluminum in this context; the reaction produces more energy per metal atom but less energy per chlorine atom this kind of dirty trick is why titanium wasn't isolated until decades after the creation of metallic calcium, sodium, potassium, aluminum, and even the isolation of some of the rare earths so i think the characterization in the article is fair

euroderf 3y ago

Great discussion here. I can pretty much see why people would make a career of metals engineering.

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dave333 3y ago

There is evidence titanium may be the cause of the rare disease yellow nail syndrome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_nail_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_nail_syndrome study ref: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3176400/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3176400/

Animats 3y ago

Machining titanium is possible, but remains difficult. It's slow and you go through a lot of cutters. Now this is just showing off.[1] Daishin and Open Mind started with a 60 kilogram cylinder of titanium and milled a very detailed crown out of it. 300 hours of CNC machining time on a very good 5-axis mill. Most of the metal ends up as scrap. The software for this is called HyperMill. If you have to ask how much it costs, you can't afford it. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bqv5SjC4s6w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bqv5SjC4s6w

Vicinity9635 3y ago

I have a titanium chainmail shirt: https://www.etsy.com/listing/505806057/titanium-chainmaille-t-shirt https://www.etsy.com/listing/505806057/titanium-chainmaille-... (me in 2nd pic) It weighs just 6.6 lbs. (the page says 6.5 but I had to have him add a bit cause I got too swole in the lats a couple of years ago.) It's fun to have someone try it on then watch them struggle as they can't figure out how to get it off lol If you bend over and stick your arms down it basically slide off on its own. What's really interesting is the ringing sound it makes when you play with it or move around wearing it, it's a noticibly higher pitch than steel is. I also have a necklace/spacepen lanyard, wallet chain, and coif made of titanium by Bim also. My keyrings and bottle opener are also titanium. It's such a cool metal. Kind of a pity it makes a very poor knife blade. Speaking of: I also replaced the screws and hinges of my bespoke Benchmade knife with titanium ones, because why not? A bit obsessed as you can tell. tl;dr I have a mithril shirt

redman25 3y ago
Curious how durable a Ti shirt would be. Could it save you walking down a dark alley at night?
- NickNameNick 3y ago
  Looks like they're just butted rings, so you're relying on the rididity of each ring to resist opening up. Welded or rivited rings would be much more robust. Especially vs piercing weapons, like arrows or fighting knives. But much more expensive.
  - Vicinity9635 3y ago
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- Vicinity9635 3y ago
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AngryData 3y ago

Titanium is a wonderful material but I think many people are way more idealistic about how great it is than it is in reality. In nearly every category other than weight constraints steel still wins out and is so much easier to work with.

rendaw 3y ago

> After the war, the Bureau’s work on titanium accelerated. By 1947 it had successfully scaled up Kroll’s process The article so far can be summarized as "people played around with titanium, but had no idea what to use it for" so why is the bureau suddenly trying to scale up production, or even mass producing it in the first place? It wasn't until 1948 that they identified engineering applications.

garbanzoPDX 3y ago

> it formed the literal backbone of the most advanced aerospace technology on the planet. I'm going to be pedantic here, but I feel like it needs to be said: no, it was not the "literal" backbone aerospace technology. It was the "figurative" backbone. There, I said it.

dreamcompiler 3y ago
Since the A-12 was 93% titanium, it's virtually certain that its skeletal frame was made of the metal. The word "literal" applies.
messe 3y ago
It does not need to be said. The use of literally as an intensifier goes back centuries, and is well-accepted. Move on. Why choose this hill to die on when there are far more interesting things to discuss?

SV_BubbleTime 3y ago

Heads up… except for mine almost none of the comments here mention Grade 5 (6AL4V). This thread is a ton of people talking about things they think they understand but haven’t actually directly worked with. Just making things up or repeating things they heard once. Anyone who actually uses it will know Grade 2, 5, 12, 23 etc. I don’t mind particularly, there are some clearly educated people talking about chemistry, but it is important to note how many people here are talking out their asses. The top current comment is about being unable to dent 4mm Ti plate with hammers - complete BS.

mingabunga 3y ago
Maybe you can educate us then..
zardo 3y ago
> The top current comment is about being unable to dent 4mm Ti plate with hammers - complete BS. It is about children with hammers.

the-mitr 3y ago

Of possible interest Tales About Metals https://archive.org/details/VenetskyTalesAboutMetals https://archive.org/details/VenetskyTalesAboutMetals On Rare and Scattered Metals https://archive.org/details/OnRareAndScatteredMetalsTalesAboutMetals https://archive.org/details/OnRareAndScatteredMetalsTalesAbo...

peter_d_sherman 3y ago

Great article! >"The earth contains a lot of titanium - it’s the ninth most abundant element in the earth’s crust. By mass, there’s more titanium in the earth’s crust than carbon by a factor of nearly 30, and more titanium than copper by a factor of nearly 100." >"Titanium was nearly as strong as stainless steel, but weighed 40% less." Consider Steel I-Beams, used in construction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-beam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-beam Observation: If the workability difficulties of Titanium could be solved, at scale -- then not Steel, but Titanium I-Beams -- could be produced, en masse... If this could be done cheaply enough, then, in the future, Titanium I-Beams -- produced in the U.S.A. -- could retake the worldwide market for construction I-Beams that was historically lost when other countries started producing Steel I-Beams cheaper than the U.S. did... Anyway, an excellent article!

rkagerer 3y ago

Great article, though I'm surprised they didn't mention how the CIA clandestinely purchased much of the titanium for the SR-71 Blackboard (and it's predecessor) from Russia through front companies. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/crazy-story-how-russia-helped-build-sr-71-blackbird-187431 https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/crazy-story-how-russi...