What is the Relevance between Tungsten Blockage and US Rocket Engine Explosion?

Looking back into history, tungsten in US was difficult to import from China in the early 1950s, at the same time, the US Polaris missile solid rocket engine exploded unexpectedly during the test launch. What is the relationship between tungsten blockage and explosion of US rocket engine?

On May 13th Beijing time, the United States publicly listed a tariff of about $300 billion on Chinese exports. Before the list was published, US Trade Representative Wright Heze had claimed this list would be open to all Chinese products that are not currently subject to tariffs. However, in this list, we found that “The all products” do not include rare earths and other key minerals.

Adamas Intelligence company held a viewpoint that: "The resource such as rare earth and rare metals are vital to US industry and national defense. There are no other suppliers to replace China in the short term. If tariffs are imposed, the United States will suffer more than China.”

Recently, Rengeng Wu, a professor at Harbin Institute of Technology, recalled that he led the team to tackle the problems of hydrogen embrittlement and stress corrosion of ultra-high-strength steel in 1978. In this research, they discovered the significant usage of tungsten in national defense technology. 

Hydrogen embrittlement and stress corrosion of steel was a hot topic globally in 1980s. Many foreign scholars are head-scratched at these multidisciplinary and intertwined topics. Stress corrosion cracking is the damage caused by stress and electrochemical corrosion acting on the metal. Since this damage often occurs when stress is far below the yield limit, even the environment can be a very weak corrosive medium, and there is no plastic deformation or other obvious signs before the fracture, this is an important factor to the safety of nuclear power plant, so study of stress corrosion cracking is significant.

In the early 1950s, the shell of the US Polaris missile solid rocket engine was unexpectedly exploding during the test launch.

After the low-stress fracture of solid rocket engine casing and many failures of low-stress fracture in ultra-high-strength steel of aircraft landing gear, the Western countries’ academic interests developed Fracture Mechanics rapidly, and simultaneously developed stress corrosion cracking of high-strength steel and a series of new disciplines such as hydrogen embrittlement and delayed fracture, they began vast research works from the theoretical to practical exploration to solve the problem of low stress fracture.

After investigation and research, we learned that US develops tungsten-free steel because they lack this source. Tungsten ore is a rich mineral resource in China and is unique in the world. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, it was no longer for US to obtain tungsten resources from China, as the US government pursued a hostile policy toward China. For this reason, America has listed tungsten as a strategic resource, and limiting the usage of it in structural steel, and they use the limited resources to ensure the manufacture of high-speed steel for cutting tools. Therefore, none of the ultra-high-strength structural steels developed in US contains tungsten.

Tungsten blockage has led to the development of ultra-high strength steel in US, which means tungsten as well as rare earths are indispensable to the manufacture of high-tech military and civilian equipment, can be used as weapons to safeguard national security.

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