Titanium Submarines: The Soviet Secret Which Shocked The West (Really)

While titanium oxide is rather abundant, refining titanium out of it is a REAL prick.... it's also a a total cunt to weld - as in it's a good metal and all, but it dissolves it's own oxides back into it's self - the crap does not make a crust and sit on the top and you MUST use a purged welding chamber with ONLY argon in it... and it can be open air welded, but with TIG and hugely wide gas shielding, and gas shielding on the back of the weld / inside the tube and when your melting it - it dissolves anything that can be used as a crucible - and so it has to be melted under vaccum, in a water cooled copper pot, with a layer of cold titanium inside the pot and a huge moltern pool of liquid titanium in the cold shell of titanium... So it's NOT an evil metal and all that - but the welding areas, need to be basically surgically clean other wise any contamination in the weld can cause HUGE problems, so welding is a BIG issue, and this is why the base metal as big plates etc., it costs 5 x as much as steel - A Nukleer submarine costs shitloads... and adding a hull that costs say 6 or 7 or 8 times as much to make (material and assembly) compared to steel, makes the novelty of it, rather expensive indeed.