I recall quite a while back, when titanium started first showing up outside of aerospace, that someone had created a titanium-titanium composite by layering plate titanium with titanium cloth and welding it together somehow. Was supposed to be stronger. Wonder if there's a steel equivalent possible.
I think the military was looking at a similar material to replace depleted uranium with something non-radioactive (depleted uranium still experiences alpha particle decay, which is fine if you don't aspirate or ingest it, but a shell can pulverize on impact with a target. Also it's still a heavy metal even if you don't take rads from it).
Re:Starship Prototype Unveiled
by balfirevic on Sunday September 29, 2019 @08:12PM
(#21110576)
> I think the military was looking at a similar material to replace depleted uranium with something non-radioactive
I thought the point of depleted uranium projectiles was simply the density of uranium, giving them large impact energy for a given volume. If that's the case, titanium (4.5 g/cm^3) will not even be as good as steel (8 g/cm^3), let alone uranium (19 g/cm^3).
Nope, it's just steel. Outside shell is the tank.