MovieChat Forums > Atlas Shrugged: Part I (2011) Discussion > Steel... The Movie loses me everytime.

Steel... The Movie loses me everytime.

posted 13 years ago by SnoopyStyle
107 replies | jump to latest

Everytime Steel become the subject, I couldn't stop rolling my eyes. By the end, I got Soooo Dizzy.

1. Nobody would care if the rail steel is lightweight. It's not that big of a selling point.

2. Steel would have to reduce weight incredibly before it becomes competitive in aircraft use. I mean today Aluminum is being phased out by carbon fiber.

3. Every time steel is mentioned, I feel like this is based on a book from the 1930s when steel was still a newish building material.

4. It would be SOOOO easy to test the material. Any place where there are a few run of the mill testing equipment would easily test the new steel all they want. There are literally 10000s of places that could do the test. And running the train once does nothing to prove it's resistance to fatique.

5. When the old rails are taken out, they are usually recycled. So this idea that the new rail line would eat up too much Iron Ore is ridiculous. And there is no shortage of iron as far as I can tell or any future shortage either.

It's a simple fix, but I guess nobody with a brain was at the helm. Instead of steel, call it something new. Heck call it meteor material if you want, or something futuristic and fake. And don't over-explain it. Alfred Hitchcock would call it a MacGuffin.

[–] Anon45876 9 years ago

Carbon fiber? This novel was written in the 1950s. At the time the novel was written, something with half the weight of steel but twice the strength is a quadrupling of the strength to weight ratio. This means it is stronger both in absolute terms and strength per unit weight which means it deforms less under its own weight. This is a win-win situation. Steel is an important metal, people still understood that in the 1950s whereas people tend not to see its importance these days. It is still very valuable in many applications. Steel, as we think of it in the modern sense by using coke (a form of coal, not what you think) and the Bessemer process, is a fairly recent development. They are what allowed production to be economical and strong enough for modern use.

[–] ficoce 9 years ago

They first started messing around with Titanium alloys on a commercial basis in 1950, right around the time the book was written. While Beta C wasn't really available until the 60's, the early alloys that combined Titanium with iron, moly, aluminum, zinc, and possibly zirconium could have been thought of as "light weight steel" to the general public at that time. It just wasn't commonly known at the time. Even today we think of Titanium as being relatively new, but it's been around for a long time. It is made with iron, light like aluminum, but strong like steel - and used on airplanes.

Rand probably just did a little research when writing the book. Today an author might write a novel based around IBM's Roadrunner super computer and it would seem futuristic and impossible to the average person, even though Roadrunner has been around for years.

[–] mindthinkr 8 years ago

You made me think of the Pulaski Bridge (now I think they're calling it skyway) near NYC in NJ. They're redoing it. It's 3.5 miles long and undergoing a costly renovation. For awhile the idea of just tearing it down and replacing it with something,other than its original steel, was entertained. Then (all this comes from someone who lives near there and has traveled it too many times to count...a photojournalist) he mentioned that the Japanese were interested in buying it if we were tearing it down because it's tons of steel. It made the powers that be scratch their heads and wonder gee, what's so important about something we want to get rid of that they'd want to buy it? The answer is it's weight in steel. Yes, there might be new and better but we don't always see the value of what we have. The Japanese did. Anyway, they decided not to tear the bridge down and sell it for scrap. They're doing a lengthy costly repair. It's a traffic nightmare but a fortune in steel.