Stainless steel valves/titanium valves

[Clinton L. Corbin : Backgrind/Gold : Pager 0544]

>Someone wrote about titanium valves.
>I think you mean Titan-nitrid coated (once seen in a Harley sportster)

Nope, they mean TITANIUM valves.  They are extremely light weight and have
a very high temperature resistance (the reason the SR-71 was made out of it)

> The best currently used valve material is "Inconel", once
>used in Bell's X-15 aircraft (or rocket?)
>to resist air-friction at Mach 23 and more. It is temperatur stabil

I don't know what the best current valve material is (personally, I would
like to see popet valves go the way of the flat-head engines), but the
X-15 only ran in the Mach 6 to Mach 7 range.  Currently, there is no
(that "they" are talking about) AIRCRAFT that can go Mach 23.  All of the
spacecraft pass through Mach 23 on the way to orbit, but they are not 
aircraft.  And, they do not spend much time at speed in air.  NASA was
working on the X-30 (or is it the X-31?) Mach 25 aircraft, but the 
material problems were killing them.  Don't know what happened to that 
project.  

Sorry this was so far off base.

Clint
ccorbin at intel7.intel.com