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pozorvlak's avatar

Great article! I was sorry you didn't mention the Soviet titanium programme, though - according to https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP86T00591R000200170005-0.pdf, by 1984 the Soviet Union was producing five times as much titanium as the USA, and was the only country to use titanium extensively in the production of submarines. They used titanium in ways that made no economic sense - after the fall of Communism, Western mountaineers sometimes funded expeditions to the former USSR by buying cheap titanium ice screws in-country and selling them at huge markups on their return.

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David R.'s avatar

“Titanium metal was essentially willed into existence by the US government”

The entire modern world was willed into existence by the US government, lol.

Telecommunications, semiconductors, nuclear power, metallurgy, petrochemistry, modern agriculture and ecology, genetics, fiber composites, plastics, , mass production and modern logistics.

Basically, after WWII, the Germans birthed modern machine tooling and CNC processes, the Japanese modern shipbuilding and manufacturing/logistics process integration, and the US basically everything else. And almost all of it was a spin-off from defense and government usage, just as the chronograph stemmed from British government prizes all the way back when.

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