Re: the un-economics of space travel

From: George William Herbert (gherbert_at_retro.com)
Date: 01/30/05 

Date: 30 Jan 2005 01:23:17 GMT

Fred J. McCall <fmccall@earthlink.net> wrote:
>henry@spsystems.net (Henry Spencer) wrote:
>: [...]
>:>Titanium is also difficult to work...
>:>...And performance wise, it's not that much better than
>:>Aluminium/lithium alloys, and for many applications not as good as
>:>Carbon Fibre.
>:
>:It would nevertheless have a fair range of uses, if it were cheap.
>
>But still not as much as one might think. It is inordinately
>difficult to work with and tend to eat machine tools.

It is machineable, however. And completely cleanly machineable
with EDM, waterjet cutting, laser cutting, etc., the tools for
which are now becoming ubiquitous and cheap by machineshop standards.

-george william herbert
gherbert@retro.com