03-15-2023, 02:06 AM
Buzz wrote:
Yeah, that's the biggest hunk of titanium I've ever seen.
About the titanium used in a plane:
https://theaviationgeekclub.com/did-you-...iet-union/
also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_SR-71_Blackbird
Excerpt from link above:
Acquisition of titanium
Titanium was in short supply in the United States, so the Skunk Works team was forced to look elsewhere for the metal. Much of the needed material came from the Soviet Union. Colonel Rich Graham, SR-71 pilot, described the acquisition process:
The airplane is 92% titanium inside and out. Back when they were building the airplane the United States didn't have the ore supplies – an ore called rutile ore. It's a very sandy soil and it's only found in very few parts of the world. The major supplier of the ore was the USSR. Working through Third World countries and bogus operations, they were able to get the rutile ore shipped to the United States to build the SR-71.