After a helium leak and thruster problems in Boeing's Starship capsule, NASA announced that it had postponed the return of the spacecraft from the International Space Station to Earth. It may be said that Boeing's spacecraft may not come back. Although there are a large number of supplies on the space station, and there is no need for the Americans to bring two astronauts back to Earth immediately, the planes built by Boeing are becoming more and more unreliable, and even building spacecraft can have such a big quality problem, which is difficult for the Americans to accept. So, the U.S. Department of Defense began an investigative process to find out: What happened to Boeing in the ship's supply chain?
The U.S. Department of Defense has launched an investigation and has finally set its sights on a new alloy of Indian-made "broken bridge space aluminum." Of course, the so-called "broken bridge" space aluminum is actually a joke made up to ridicule the Americans. This paragraph stems from a reasonable reasoning: because of the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, the United States has banned the use of titanium alloy valves produced in Russia in recent years; And because of the sanctions on China's aviation, it is impossible to directly purchase Chinese parts, so it found India, a space power in South Asia. And the Indians directly used "broken bridge aluminum" for the United States. The so-called "broken bridge" is to deliberately add a thermal insulation layer in the middle of the material in order to reduce the heat conduction efficiency of aluminum in the manufacturing process. Of course, this statement is rather unreliable and should not be the direct cause of the helium leak from the Boeing spacecraft. More likely, there is a problem with the space aluminum materials or processing processes used by Boeing, and these materials may come from India.
An investigation published by Western media shows that the investigation into the origin of these titanium alloys initially pointed to a Chinese company: Aviation Industry Corporation of China Shaanxi Hongyuan Aviation Forging Technology Company. The reply given by the Chinese side is that it exported a batch of titanium alloys to Turkey in 2019, but the technology of Chinese products is professional and qualified. Turkey sold titanium alloys to Italy, which in turn sold them to Boeing. No, the Italians added a little Indian product to the Americans. That is, the titanium alloy made in China was kept for its own use, and the so-called "titanium alloy" in India was sold to the United States. Did Boeing find a problem with the curry-flavored titanium alloy? This seemingly unthinkable thing really happened, and the Americans said to the Italians that the quality was fine.
There is another knowledge point here: it is normal for space aluminum to be used on spacecraft, because space aluminum is not ordinary aluminum, and its yield strength can be increased by 10 times compared to pure aluminum, reaching 300 megapascals. The main material of the return capsule used in manned spaceflight often uses aerospace aluminum for the main material of its sealed shell, mainly to reduce weight. However, the yield strength of space aluminum is still much worse than that of titanium alloys of more than 1500 megapascals. Therefore, titanium alloys are often used in the most critical parts of spacecraft fuel storage bottles, fuel pipelines, valves, etc. It can be seen that Boeing, because it obtains aviation materials through the international supply chain, ends up using components of questionable quality, which may be the real cause of the helium leak.
So, can Boeing blame India for the spacecraft failure? Of course not. Because the Indians said: Who made you cheaper at that time? Next, Americans may have to check how much so-called titanium alloy or aerospace aluminum produced in India is used by American military enterprises in order to increase profits, because these raw materials are not only used in spacecraft, but also in high-end weapons such as F-35 fighter jets. It is said that some of the aluminum alloy fittings used in the F-35 may be the secondary processing of aluminum for doors and windows by the Indians, and it is also very interesting whether this hidden danger will be dug out.
Now the problem of Boeing's spacecraft quality can be summed up in one sentence: Obama's "Indo-Pacific strategy" seems to have failed, but Boeing has made the "Indo-Titanium Strategy" a success.