Word: titanium
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...first swing-wing supersonic strategic bomber ever produced, Backfire is believed to have been designed by Andrei N. Tupolev, 82, who also developed the Soviet Union's TU-144 supersonic transport. Aerodynamicists believe that the 131-ft.-long, 250,000-lb. Backfire is made of stainless steel with titanium to resist the heat stress of supersonic flight, and has an airframe skin bonding (instead of riveting). The plane's wings are in a forward position for long-range cruising and are jackknifed back about 40° for speeds of Mach 2.1 (about 1,400 m.p.h...
President Nixon, mourning the death of the Russian spacemen, said that they had contributed greatly to "the widening of man's horizons." Pope Paul interrupted an audience to announce the sad news. In Geneva, officials postponed the dedication of a gleaming titanium space monument that had been donated by Russia to the Palais des Nations. There was particular gloom in the U.S. space community, especially among the astronauts. Beyond their sorrow for the dead cosmonauts, they felt that the accident-coming as it did on the eve of the Apollo 15 moon shot-might well diminish public enthusiasm...
...history of the moon is revealed by the different types of rock found there. Most of the rocks brought back from the lunar seas by Apollo 11 and 12 are titanium-rich basalt and gabbro. They appear to be once-molten lava from inside the moon which broke through the crust made of lighter anorthosite and crystallized to form the seas about 3.5 billion years...
...vote against exploring the unknown. It is not a triumph for the hysterical foes of all technology. For one thing, the SST was vulnerable to the criticism that it does not represent a genuine technical advance. Much of the know-how necessary to build a Mach 3 aircraft-in titanium metallurgy and engine intake design, for example-was already in hand from development of the X-15, the SR-71 and the B-70. Says Harvard Sociologist Daniel Bell: "The technology argument made no sense to anybody who followed it seriously...
...blades out of lightweight carbon fibers. But the fibers could not stand the crunch when hail or birds were sucked into the 7-ft. fans. Last April, Rolls managers decided to keep working on the fibers but to forge the fan blades for the first few engines from titanium; this meant that they had two expensive development programs going. As time to deliver the engines ran short, Rolls started cutting corners on production, putting parts into manufacture without giving itself time to modify faulty components...