Processing materials under microgravity results in monster-sized crystals, which makes them resistant to creep and corrosion damage but makes them considerably weaker.

Indeed, and now we have a tunnel....

Doesn't it remind of you of Kip Chalmers and his Ma?

And wasn't it a few years ago they were screaming they had to be self sufficient? Now they are too big to fail...or too many voters use it..or too many politicians...anyways too many of someones.

I thought Megyn Kelly's argument with all the people wanting to immediately blame it on politics, funding and "infrastructure" was telling. She seemed frazzled with the idea that it just couldn't be the case the engineer was in a hurray to get home, or oops...was texting..the demand to instantly determine the cause and find a way to manipulate it was very apparent. I was glad someone called Bullsh@t.

T. Roosevelt began the debacle, Wilson continued it, but his nationalization did buy new equipment and the US Railroad Administration consolidation plan was genius till FDR scrapped it prior to its enactment. Then he started the Airline and motor truck infrastructure subsidies, destroying the free market in transportation. Truman came in and his labor policies combined with his refusal to pay back the War Bonds placed the lid on the casket and Eisenhower hammered home the lid by creating the Interstate System. After that , take-over was a sure thing, it was just a matter of time.

So much we will probably never know. But thanks to our Representative in Congress we do know it was not terrorism. Thank God. I thought those derailers that were stolen might have found their way into some terrorist hand or that those FBI warnings about derailing being another way to terrorize the US. we're accurate. But less than 24 hours after the "accident" be assured ,"it was not terrorism

I can just see it. NTSB would take over the investigation, classify it all Top Secret, then declare Dagny guilty.

I can't imagine them being any good compared to soldiers. Unless it's an outfit like Blackwater, and he hates them.

The process for making such an alloy would be mighty hairy, to say the least. It might even have to be done in orbit.

Inept conductor let the train get to 106 mph going into a curve rated for 53 mph. At the last minute he threw the emergency brakes and derailed the train. If this was a private train, they may not have had a driver or at least they would have had a GPS based speed override.

Well, that can only mean Miss Rand blew the gaffe on that particular point. But I wouldn't think one needed a > 4000 F melting point for rail, or a metal trestle.

All of the above are possible, but not with a > 4000 Fahrenheit melting point.

That makes sense. The few clues we have, state that Rearden Metal was cheap, ductile, malleable--and tough. And lightweight.

Besides ductility, Cu is the cheapest of the three great electrical conductors in the periodic table.

And Cu is Group 1b. What could it contribute, except somehow to make the metal more easily workable?

I missed the 4000 degrees Fahrenheit part. That means that Sn is definitely out, and the metals are pretty much restricted to Group V to Group VIII. Of those, the only semi-common ones are Mo and W, both of which are not at all cheap. W has the highest strength at high temperatures.
4000 F is definitely possible, but not cheap.

I've seen those plots--we went over metal-alloy compositions for at least one lesson during that year.

But at one point Rand said Rearden Metal could stay solid up to 4000 degrees F. Feasible? Or not?

Eutectics are the minimal temperatures for liquid-solid phase transitions on a temperature vs. composition plot. For example, the reason that electrical solder (Pb-Sn) is sold as 60 wt. % Sn is because that composition gives the minimal temperature required to melt the resulting alloy. Cu would keep the cost down. The difference in cost between carbon steel and stainless steel is a factor of five, so cost is not a small consideration.

I had just enough physical chemistry as a freshman at Yale College (with advance placement in chemistry) to understand what you were getting at. The thing I couldn't understand was: how could the eutectic tolerate temperatures higher than ordinary steel? You're the specialist. Would you still say such a thing was possible, and Cu would be a good contributor, and keep the cost down?

Your description of Rearden Metal was how I envisioned it as well. Interstitial compounds used to be my area of specialty 20 years ago. Now I just teach about them.

You are quite correct. By your definition, Rearden Metal would be both a steel and a bronze. Bronzes sometimes also have interstitial hydrogen. I would expect Rearden Metal to have both interstitial carbon and hydrogen, likely being carbonized from a methane source.

Stainless steels, however, have very little carbon, and have Mo and Cr added to provide a sacrificial oxide (with pardon to those who disagree with sacrifice. In this case, it means that the Mo and Cr oxidize to protect the Fe underneath.) and Ni to stabilize the austenitic form of Fe.

A little Sn would likely help as well and could definitely give Rearden Metal the glimmering blue described in AS.

Even today finding the eutectic on such a multicomponent phase diagram would be PhD worthy. Developing the accompanying time-temperature-transformation diagram would still likely be a ten year endeavor as it was for Rearden.

Tell me this: can you suggest a workable model for Rearden Metal? I suspected it might be a combined substitutional/interstitial alloy, with carbon blended into the interstices of a crystal lattice alternating between iron and copper. It therefore becomes difficult to tell whether to call Rearden Metal a "steel" or a "bronze."

As a materials scientist, it was also easy for me to identify with Hank Rearden. And to top it off, I had a few years in my life like Tony the Wet Nurse, too, before reading AS.

Fair enough. I tended to read AS from Henry Rearden's perspective. He is the other hero in this peace. (John Galt, Francisco d'Anconia, and Ragnar Danneskjöld were anti-villains, not heroes. Heroes must change their outlook in the course of a narrative. Villains and anti-villains need not. I call them anti-villains because their cause is just, rather than unjust.)

Well, Henry Rearden simply is primarily trying to protect what's his, and secondarily to fulfill what he always thought was his role in society. He did suffer, and greatly, when Ragnar sank a load of copper bound for his mills. And he didn't appreciate Francisco coming between him and Dagny. Nevertheless, he finally turned his back on a society that could select leaders like James Taggart, Floyd Ferris, Tinky Holloway, and the two other men who met him at the Wayne-Falkland that fateful night. He concluded he was no longer in a society of rational men. He had made that decision even before he came back to a riot, witnessed the death of Tony Wet-nurse, and then got clobbered.