Aluminium - Enriching A Billion Lives

Welcome back! Here's the third post on the history of the wonder metal - Aluminium.  Let's move on in our journey and check out the important milestones that shaped our history. Read our first & second post in this series. 1939: The world’s first turbojet-powered aircraft, the German Heinkel He 178, took to air on the 27th of August, 1939. Powered by a centrifugal-flow engine prototyped by Hans Joachim Pabst von Ohain, Ernst Heinkel designed the aircraft to achieve flight speeds up to 380 miles per hour. Despite the successful flight demonstration, the Reich Air Ministry (RLM) rejected the aeroplane stating that its combat endurance was only 10 minutes which limited its usability as a military aircraft in a war situation. German Heinkel He 178 1948: The production of Series I, the first model of Land Rover cars, started off in 1948. Designed with an aluminium body and a steel-box chassis, it was originally intended for farming and light industrial us...

Audi's latest project is to build a moon rover good enough to win the Google Lunar XPRIZE competition. Thanks to a sophisticated additive manufacturing process, they're well on their way. The wheels of the lightweight rover is made entirely of Aluminium alloy powder to cut down the weight and also help in navigating the harsh moon terrain. It has been calculated that a kilogram of payload to moon will cost 800,000 euros, and by using Aluminium, the rover’s weight can be reduced by 1.6 kgs which will allow additional 1.28 million euros worth of scientific equipment on board. The rules for the rover are straightforward but challenging. The rover has to successfully complete the 384,000-kilometer journey and land safely on the moon. Once there, the unit needs to complete at least a 500-meter drive on the surface, and send HD images back to earth that delivers new, never-seen views. They also have to launch before the end of 2017. That means the clock is ticking...

It is quite interesting what you’ll find on forums hosted by Tesla Motors. Innovation is the DNA of the company which compels it to place value on experimentation and improvement. In a similar forum where the discussions took a turn on cutting down the weight of a car and thus reduce the expenditure of energy from the batteries, the use of aluminium was heavily stressed upon. Its weight is much lesser than steel and can carry a lot more stress. Initially, aluminium was mostly used in making the high end cars like the Audi A8. BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, Land Rover, Jaguar all followed suit after learning the versatility of the metal. But of late, its applications have found way into mass market models like the Ford F150 truck. Audi can afford to include the best of all the worlds in a single car and mark its price up at high premium. But Ford’s insight and courage to make a near  100% aluminium F150 model, a mass market model which has persistently been the highest selling v...