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Soviet Union sold titanium to US believing they needed it for pizza ovens

theaviationgeekclub.com

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Re: Soviet Union sold titanium to US believing they needed it for pizza ovens

#131

Post by Yoric »

anoy8888 wrote: post #59
nwallin wrote: post #42

Does any know any more details about this? It's a fun tidbit that gets a link/article on social media every few weeks, but it's never anything more than a tidbit. "The US needed titanium for the SR-71. The only supplier of titanium was the Soviet Union. So the US bought it from the Soviet Union through a shell corporation." But that's it. It's those 3 facts and only those three facts expressed in anywhere between one…

That is what China is doing to US now . Decades from now , Chinese will joke about how they get chips and other secret tech from shell companies in us. They will also joke about how they secretly sell drugs to America to make them useless and make society unstable.

To be fair, this is what US has been doing to US for a while, too.

Re: Soviet Union sold titanium to US believing they needed it for pizza ovens

#132

Post by chii »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #127
chii wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not like the west can complain after what we did in the opium wars? the west isn't one entity. Plus two wrongs don't make a right. Just because in the past, there has been atrocities committed, doesn't mean there's justification to do so now.

“Two wrongs don’t make a right” is a moral play. There are definitely cases in history where wrongs made rights, two or more. Some sort of moral balance has to be achieved before two forces can move forward. It will feel reasonable to both sides when it happens.

Not really - it certainly is wrong to say that because some other country has done XYZ, so now my country have the right to also do XYZ (where XYZ is commonly agreed to be be bad, such as wage war, genocide etc).

Some country might feel that they're justified in what they're doing, because another country previously have done it (and got to a dominant position, perhaps, by doing it). But generally, i dont think this justification is sound, and is an excuse, rather than a real justification. Now of course no country require justification to do what they wish - that is the meaning of having sovereignty, but this also means that other countries must actively stop this sort of practise.

Re: Soviet Union sold titanium to US believing they needed it for pizza ovens

#133

Post by bigger_inside »

eloisius wrote: post #97
sublinear wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they secretly sell drugs to America to make them useless and make society unstable That is quite a non sequitur. Who is being forced to take drugs or listen to extremist propaganda? Those are deliberate choices made by people with low impulse control, and China has nothing to do with that. The instability of American culture is currently seen as an intrinsic virtue. China is not causing any change. They're just app…

> Those are deliberate choices made by people with low impulse control, and China has nothing to do with that. Tell that to historians, especially Chinese historians, regarding Britain’s opium trade.

I was about to comment on the obvious projection inherent in the "the Chinese are forcing drugs on the US" narrative. But it's a classic. If you want to know the nefarious things the US is doing, just look at what the claim their adversaries are doing.

Re: Soviet Union sold titanium to US believing they needed it for pizza ovens

#134

Post by masklinn »

Dork1234 wrote: post #81
defrost wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can add some details, namely that the USofA began development on the SR-71 in 1957 | 1958 at which time the only ilmenite mine in Australia was a relatively low volume affair in Bunbury, Western Australia. Ilmenite is named after the Ilmenski mountains in Russia where the mineral was first discovered in relatively free abundance , the other principle source for titanium is rutile sands .. typically volume access to…

First flight of A-12 the airplane that became the SR-71 was 1962. Shortening the time frame needed to acquire material. Machining of titanium is very time consuming as well.

> Machining of titanium is very time consuming as well.

And it was way worse back then given it was a field being actively developed.

Not to mention the development and characterisation of titanium grades and alloys, and their treatment (heat and solution).

According to the wiki, at some points Lockheed has to reject 80% of the titanium they got due to metallurgical contamination, and they had to rebuild tooling and processes because of corrosion issues with chlorine (from tap water) and cadmium (from tools plating).

Re: Soviet Union sold titanium to US believing they needed it for pizza ovens

#135

Post by localplume »

deanCommie wrote: post #95
DontchaKnowit wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

systemic discrimination perpetuated by cultish religiosity? can you expound on that?

So, other than the Westernmost parts of Eastern Europe (which we can start including, since the EU has kickstarted their economic development dramatically), the US is by far the most religious country of any in what we might consider "The developed West". But it hasn't experienced a lot of the same cultural changes that it's most significant allies have gone through. Why not? There's a number of other reasons: The St…

[dead]

Re: Soviet Union sold titanium to US believing they needed it for pizza ovens

#136

Post by bigger_inside »

missedthecue wrote: post #41
ezzaf wrote: post #22

Perhaps a more accurate headline would have been this buried deeper in the article "The US worked through Third World countries and fake companies and finally was able to ship the ore to the US to build the SR-71." And to complete the loop, Russia is now importing sanctioned American microchips for its missiles via third parties. I wonder if the order form states they will be used in smart pizzas ovens.

80% of the world's silicon and magnesium comes from Russia/China. US can't make the stealth coating on the F-35 without it. Can't control where the big bang placed mineral deposits... *Technically silicon is everywhere but until the US and EU are willing to rip up their riverbeds to get at it, it's as good as nonexistent there.

the * is the important part. Little to do with the big bang, much more to do with where we export environmentally disastrous mining operations to. The countries the West destroyed by (among many other things) putting the mines there now (at least that) reap a dividend in leash power. Good for them.

Re: Soviet Union sold titanium to US believing they needed it for pizza ovens

#137

Post by hkt »

anoy8888 wrote: post #59
nwallin wrote: post #42

Does any know any more details about this? It's a fun tidbit that gets a link/article on social media every few weeks, but it's never anything more than a tidbit. "The US needed titanium for the SR-71. The only supplier of titanium was the Soviet Union. So the US bought it from the Soviet Union through a shell corporation." But that's it. It's those 3 facts and only those three facts expressed in anywhere between one…

That is what China is doing to US now . Decades from now , Chinese will joke about how they get chips and other secret tech from shell companies in us. They will also joke about how they secretly sell drugs to America to make them useless and make society unstable.

> They will also joke about how they secretly sell drugs to America to make them useless and make society unstable.

This actually happened to China: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars

Weird that we in the west are now projecting about it, especially when our own pharmaceuticals companies are doing so much of the damage.

Re: Soviet Union sold titanium to US believing they needed it for pizza ovens

#138

Post by smcl »

BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #38
cpursley wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire Georgian cuisine is just so good and relatively unknown in the West.

I just learned about it through this thread and there are already several dishes I want to try. Khachapuri and Chashushuli in particular.

Their wine is also really worth checking out too. They use a few grape varieties aren't really used outside of Georgia and some of the wine is still stored/aged in big earthenware things called "kvevri" which are pretty unique - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kvevri

Oh and they'll also ferment + distill the solids from wine production into chacha - a strong clear spirit. When I was there lots of little shops would be selling it pretty cheap in leftover coke bottles etc. I smuggled a few back with me to share with friends.

Re: Soviet Union sold titanium to US believing they needed it for pizza ovens

#139

Post by smcl »

auxym wrote: post #70
LispSporks22 wrote: post #46

Sounds like one of those oft repeated, memorable bullshit stories like the NASA space pen. Does the book site sources?

It's mentioned at least in Skunk Works, which is a first hand account from a Lockheed engineer that worked alongside Kelly Johnson during SR71 development. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/101438.Skunk_Works

It's a good read, but I always wondered how much is embellished. I don't know if the pizza ovens anecdote being present there confirms its authenticity, it could be that Ben Rich had just heard about it through the grapevine or even that this book was how the story got spread in the first place.

Re: Soviet Union sold titanium to US believing they needed it for pizza ovens

#140

Post by smcl »

fy20 wrote: post #45

Factories in the USSR often had a shortage of parts, but they still had to meet production quotas. This usually meant a reduction in quality, but it goes the other way too. I've heard stories that consumer appliance factories would run out of stainless steel, so they would use titanium alloy instead, as it was more plentiful. In my country, one of the most unique consumer appliances they made was a potato grating mac…

Is Titanium not famously quite hard to work with? I imagine that it would be hard to sub in for stainless steel, so for normal white goods I don't know if it'd be worth it.
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