wrote:
Paul F. Dietz wrote:

How idiotic.


Do you have a solution that makes titanium refining no longer an
insurmountable obstacle to producing large amounts of titanium, or were
you just being glib?

I'm commenting on your argument. The problem isn't a shortage
of refining capacity. The problem is that titanium refining is
difficult, which makes the metal expensive, which makes the demand
small.

A lack of capacity is an *effect*, not a *cause*, in other words.

If titanium had been all that desirable for the shuttle, more
capacity would have been added here. The cost of doing so would
have been a small fraction of the cost of the shuttle development.
The metal didn't offer sufficient advantages for large scale use
in the orbiter, so that didn't happen.

Paul