Iron was more expensive than gold at the dawn of the iron age. The only way humans obtained iron was from meteorites.

This is so incredibly badass. I mean, just imagine that the only practicable place to get this new, incredibly strong material, was from space.

On the topic of found vs made materials: I’ve read that shipwrecks are getting mined as a source of steel because it’s more or less impossible to make new steel that isn’t contaminated by trace amounts of radiation from 20th century nuclear testing. While not a problem for skyscrapers, certain lab equipment requires the relatively more rare variety of found steel.

More on the latter point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel

The same effect was also used in understanding brain development by looking at Carbon isotopes in brains of people born before WW2 to determine which cells were formed when.

That's fascinating to me, I didn't realize anthropogenic radiation levels were significant enough to offer a control for molecular examination of human brains in the general population.

It's almost a bit unnerving.

It’s not “radiation levels” per se. Nuclear bomb testing in the mid 20th century dramatically increased the amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere, which has subsequently been gradually declining. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon-14#Origin

Yeah, I recall reading that a couple years ago. Indeed a fascinating topic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel

I don't understand this statement, they could not mine iron ores but could gold ones?

Mining the ore isn't the problem. Extraction is. Gold is native gold, so easy to seperate. Iron requires clever furnaces and processing to produce, and it's not until recently we could make mild steel consistently.

Iron extraction is not very high tech after one has the know-how. But it took time to develop the knowledge.

https://primitivetechnology.wordpress.com/2016/07/29/forge-b...

On a more-than-proof-of-concept scale, you have https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuCnZClWwpQ, a traditional blacksmith family in Burkina Faso mining a few kilograms of iron with several person-days of work, which is probably about 1000× as productive as the Primitive Technology guy achieved (perhaps a gram of iron after about a person-day of work). But the US steel industry employs 87000 people to produce about 120 million tonnes of iron and steel per year, which works out to about 5000 kg of iron and steel per person-day. (And that's why Burkina Faso imports its iron instead of smelting it in the way demonstrated in that documentary, the way they had done for the previous 2500 years, until some French guys wrecked a Jeep there in the early 20th century.)

So there are something like six or seven orders of magnitude over which "high-tech" machinery can increase your iron productivity, or, to look at it another way, over which the price of iron can vary even once you have the know-how.

Thanks for sharing, this is a really great documentary!

They could not attain high enough smelting temperatures to produce quality iron.

And FYI where I just heard that this week was in "The Podcast History of Our World", which is totally awesome. In one of the three "The New Kingdom" episodes.

Sounds interesting. Thanks!

In Napoleon's day it was more expensive than gold. By the time the Washington Monument was constructed the price had dropped to roughly the level of silver. Titanium might be poised to follow in its footsteps after the discovery of electrolysis of titanium oxide in molten calcium chloride, analogous to the cryolite process.

IIRC the difficulty with titanium was not in the production, but rather the difficulty in machining the metal afterwards.

Titanium isn't worse to machine than stainless steel. Sure, it's not as straightforward as mild or annealed steel, and not as buttery as aluminum, but the "hard to machine" rep is fairly overstated.

Titanium stock is at least 5x more expensive than steel at retail, so I think the material scarcity is still the major problem.

I'm curious, what are some of the places we would start to see titanium if the prices dropped?

Cheap titanium bikes are high on my list but I think the killer application is titanium hinges. Springs will last a lifetime.

Looks like this is starting to happen alreadt: https://www.alibaba.com/showroom/titanium-hinges.html

$0.25 for a hinge

Titanium is light, but my favorite thing is it is next to impossible to bend. So anything that shouldn't bend will be better with titanium.

You can already buy a titanium bike (sourced from China) for a very reasonable place from Bikesdirect.com— mine was cheaper than a steel Surly Straggler for similar specs.

Habanero also sells them for low, but not quite as low, prices: https://www.habcycles.com/

There seem to be a bunch of low-cost titanium manufacturers in China selling directly on eBay.

Ti bikes are all over a thousand on bikesdirect. I am thinking that ti bikes will cost just a hundred more than steel when ti becomes common.

There's very little actual titanium in titanium bike frames. Most of the cost is in the machining and labor, so I doubt prices will drop much. And the majority of riders seem to prefer carbon fiber anyway.

>Most of the cost is in the machining and labor, so I doubt prices will drop much.

I'm not sure why that would be the case. Titanium alloys are only marginally more difficult to work with than aluminium alloys. The tubes are hydroformed and die cut, so the only difference is a touch more die wear. Titanium is a bit finicky to weld, but that can't possibly account for the ~500% price premium over aluminium frames. There's a tiny bit more surface preparation and your fixtures need to be more complex to provide adequate gas purging, but the differences in a mass production environment are quite marginal.

>And the majority of riders seem to prefer carbon fiber anyway.

Carbon is better for competition road bikes, because it offers the absolute lowest weight and can be easily formed into complex aerodynamic profiles. Entry-level bikes tend to be aluminium for cost reasons. For touring and audax bikes, many riders still prefer steel for durability and comfort. Titanium has the corrosion-resistance and light weight of aluminium but the comfort of steel, so it's considered by many to be the ideal material for non-racing bikes, but the cost is often prohibitive.

As far as I can see, the bike industry would be transformed if titanium were to achieve price parity with aluminium.

The point is that a modern titanium bike frame costs at least $1200 even though it contains <2kg of titanium, and high purity titanium only costs ~$50/kg. So I can't see how just cutting the cost of the raw material would have a transformative impact on the bike industry.

That is due to tooling but it is an issue because it is rarely used.

Carbon is fragile and breaks but it is cheaper to repair once again because Titanium is exotic right now.

https://www.livestrong.com/article/271286-titanium-vs-carbon...

> Titanium is light, but my favorite thing is it is next to impossible to bend.

This gives an insane amount of tensile strenght since it always wants to retain its shape. TBH I have no idea why we haven't seen Titanium in things like golf clubs, hockey sticks, baseball bats, tennis rackets, snowboards etc, where you could really use its springy characteristics to a huge advantage.

I've always felt like it has a huge potential for widespread use in sports.

As far as I know, they are used quite heavily in golf and tennis equipment.

Hockey sticks tend to be carbon fiber.

<s>I think the baseball wood/aluminum debate can't handle another metal </s>

Snowboards and such do benefit from being able to bend. I could see it more in alpine snowboard equipment, but again, I'm not sure that carbon fiber wouldn't be the better bet.

Baseball has been moving away from lively metal bats. Too dangerous for the infield. Never ending debate when I played 6A baseball in HS.

Now, slow pitch softball had Ti bats in the early 90's that added 10 mph. Even then some of the new composite materials out hit Ti.

> Even then some of the new composite materials out hit Ti

The issue is one PEOPLE DIE because of these bats and balls. (I'm old but I was one of maybe three people that could hit a home run now all 10 players can)

1) The other bats were so thin that you had to rotate the bat when you hit because the bats bend or will break. The ti bats are durable and you can still sue them. The issue is nothing really is better than ti but ti has a cost.

Since someone is doubting what I said here is SBNations take on Ti Bats.

>"The pitcher’s mound for amateur slow-pitch softball varies according to the field and age of players, but is generally between 40 and 50 feet from home. This means that after a ball is hit, assuming an exit velocity of between 78 and 102 mph, the pitcher has between 0.456 and 0.350 seconds to react to a batted ball. Adding exit velocity shaves precious micro-seconds off that time. That was what made titanium bats so dangerous. Softballs became missiles and pitchers became targets. And the dangers are real. Players have lost teeth, eyesight, motor function, IQ points and even their lives when struck by balls hit off hot bats."

https://www.sbnation.com/2015/8/5/9041099/the-bat-doctor-is-...

Diamond-like carbon should be applied everywhere there's wear. It could allow drill bits, gears, bike chains, joints, etc to all last virtually forever.

I doubt it's happening already. Metalysis currently owns the patent rights to the process and is focusing on tantalum and zirconium (higher profit margins) while working on scaling it up.

Tantalum ore concentrate currently sells for over $150/kg. Making metallic tantalum powder from the oxide is barely interesting even if the FFC process works quite well. Tantalum would remain an expensive specialty metal. Titanium dioxide, OTOH, is closer to $150 per tonne. A cheap process to convert that inexpensive raw material to metal would be one of the most impressive advances in industrial metal production in decades.

There's an ugly licensing fight in the history of the FFC Cambridge process. See the section "Commercial challenges" in this article:

http://www.saimm.co.za/Journal/v111n03p199.pdf

In 2000 Cambridge University Technical Service issued a sub-license for the technology that British Titanium Plc used for the purpose of producing bulk titanium and titanium alloys. BTi worked closely with researchers from the Fray group (one F of the Fray, Farthing, Chen inventors whose names make up "FFC.")

The US Office of Naval Research issued contracts to BTi for R&D work in 2000 and 2002. In 2002 DARPA started funding more expensive scale-up work also associated with BTi. In 2004 NASA issued an even larger contract to BTi. Cambridge spun off Metalysis in 2002 with another license, but Metalysis didn't seem to be making much progress compared with BTi. In 2005, CUTS revoked the sub-license granted to BTi and made all of the IP exclusive to Metalysis. The license revocation destroyed BTi.

My interpretation: CUTS crippled BTi because Metalysis wasn't making enough progress on implementation to compete against BTi. But CUTS really crippled the whole concept because the experts that had been working for and with BTi didn't want to work with Metalysis after getting screwed by CUTS. Metalysis "pivoted" to tantalum and has failed to make notable progress there, too. Maybe the application to titanium will finally resume progress toward industrialization after the patents expire.

Not everyone cares about patents. I think Chinese factories do not care and who cares whether the result product was patent-free or not.

I think pipes might be a strong contender. Currently titanium is roughly the same price as copper, but harder to machine -- and it's produced in ugly forms by the Kroll process. Electrolysis produces a metal powder using less energy. Titanium is practically immune to chloride corrosion but is slowly worn down by fluoride, although fluoride is typically present at just 1 PPM in tap water (anything higher is toxic) so Ti pipes should last quite a while. Boats can also be made of titanium alloys. Anything dealing with water gets easier when titanium is in play, for the most part; one of the few things that really affects it is lactate (biofouling), but even that can be inhibited with the right alloying additives. More speculative uses might include offshore wind turbines and underwater (isobaric) compressed-air energy storage equipment.

Cars.