A NICKEL PICKLE

The Problems of Building High-Tech From a Meteoroid Wreck

by Bob Kobres

Part A

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Though a nickel will not buy much today the element nickel is invaluable to our contemporary way of life. Without access to this nonferrous metal, much of what we take for granted would not be practical or in many cases possible.Automobiles would be fragile–hitting a pothole would, as in very early cars, often break an axle. Internal combustion engines could not be depended upon and would also weigh a great deal more per unit of horse-power than the motors we are accustomed to. Airplanes, if they could be made to fly (the Wright brothers used a motor that took advantage of nickel steel’s superior strength to weight ratio), would be terribly unsafe. Jet powered flight would be impossible–the strength that nickel gives to steel at high temperatures made this type engine feasible. No buildings could scrape the sky without nickel’s contribution; steel bridges would be massive, ugly and corrode rapidly as well. In essence, our world would appear and function much as it did one hundred years ago, for it was in the late 1880′s when nickel-steel became a product.

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