Scandium International Mining Corp (SCY)

[TMLonggun]

This post is about winglets. A decade ago I learned about winglets and their importance. This may seem completely unrelated to SCY but please bear with me.

Okay so first off, what the heck is a winglet(Aside from it being incredibly fun to say)?

Basically it is a where the end of a plane's wing is modified from a traditional flat wing to one with a curved, sort of check mark end, changing the craft's aerodynamics and thereby increasing overall fuel efficiency.

This is a winglet:
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/k-12/airplane/Images/winglets.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wingtip_device

I learned about winglets from West Jet, a Canadian company that was among the first to outfit their fleet with them (along with TVs for everyone).

Now why is this important? Because West Jet executives didn't care at all how stylish they are or whatever - all they cared about was the simple math - will installing these save us money? The answer was yes and so they outfitted the entire fleet and increased their flight distance for the same tank of gas by about 3-5%. They did this quickly, since it made so much sense and the payback was quick. Multiply those savings by millions of liters of jet fuel and many years and they have saved themselves a fortune. Nowadays winglets are common on passenger planes because they make economic sense.

Scandium will do something similar in my estimation - how much remains to be seen but I think there is some huge potential for the airline industry to save a huge amount of money. Regardless of how much the scandium costs, as long as the savings are greater it will be pursued. Amortize those savings over the lifetime of the jet and I bet a tiny, upfront bump will have little effect on the unit price (like the gold and silver in an iphone).

I forget where I heard this idea from so, credit to whoever it was, but they pointed out that Sc allows aluminum to be welded with much greater plasticity and strength. Great, again, what does it mean? Planes that are significantly lighter and perfectly smooth, containing not even a single rivet. Airplanes will be a single, perfectly aerodynamic piece. This may unlock an entire new area of the aviation sector.

Scandium is a much more significant technological development than a winglet! Imagine if they could save an additional 10-20% on top of the winglet? Multiplied my millions of flights - we'll save enough gas to build even more spaceships - which we'll build out of scandium.