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Boeing Throws Space Station Parts Away
Bob Plankers writes: "Boeing staff were seen combing a landfill looking for $750,000 worth of space station parts that were inadvertently discarded. You can get the full details on CNN. " Luckily, there were spare parts still around -- but it's a pretty funny story nonetheless.
Nuff said.
I'm an engineer in Huntsville (not with Boeing, thank goodness!), so we got the details first-hand. Apparently, (or "allegedly", if you prefer), Boeing actually sent workers into the landfill to attempt to recover the parts! They found bits and pieces, but nothing big enough to haul back.
I'm guessing there's a tank with a light coating of peanut butter and banana peels sitting up on blocks in a redneck's yard by now . . .
I don't know the exact size of those puppies, but the ones that I have seen and worked with on other sections of the station (I work for Boeing) were big enough not to be easily "mis- placed." (roughly the size of a standard propane tank on a gas grill)
A good rule of thumb:
If you have a $750,000 piece of equipment in a nondescript crate sitting outside a building;
a) make it descript and label it profusely as NOT trash.
b) have someone watch it so it doesn't get stolen or sent to the trash.
But I guess (or hope) they won't make that mistake again.
IANAL, but I play one on
"Hey, Curly and Larry! Look, those boxes have SPACE painted on them. They must need space and want us to take them to the dump! Let's help them out, fellas!"
These kind of incidents are why we need better policing of dumps. For example, each company should be audited once a week to make sure that aren't disposing of any environmentally harmful material such as gasoline or CFCs. And where the hell are the electric cars? If the government wasn't so busy trying to gouge prices on gasoline, we'd all be driving in flying, solar-powered cars. Anyone who's ever seen The Jetsons knows that an invention like this is not far out of our reach.
Write your Congressmen and Congresswomen. Demand change.
"Say, Kid, you haven't seen a couple of solid-fuel rocket motors lying around these parts, have you?"
"What do you mean, your dad's bolting them to the back of his pickup..?"
That was a dangerous situation for Boeing and possibly the US Government to be in. If a foreign organization found the spare parts then they could possibly steal Boeing's ideas and possibly start a space station.
On the other hand the parts may have been damaged, and if they were to be installed into a running and operational space station they may pose a danger to the crew on board.
This just shows how sensitive technology is these days.
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
And if they can't find them, who did? I think it's pretty funny that there might be someone out there playing with a peice of the international spacestation.
Of course this all might be an exuse to buy more time for the station project to begin with...
"Out of all the things I lost in life, I miss my mind the most." --Ozzy Osborne
There have already been enough problems with the space station. This is the last thing we need. I hope Boeing is going to have to suffer the loss on this one since it was due to their stupidity.
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
I also met a guy when I was in the Navy who was making a bundle buying nuclear grade parts by the pound at military auctions, doing a little research back to the manufacturer and either selling it back to the Navy or the manufacturer. Said he one made $40K off one valve alone.
And you wonder why the government spends so much money. (P/S. I work for a Navy Shipbuilder now, imagine losing a set of screws for an aircraft carrier).
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
"Houston we're, uh, having a little trouble breathing up here...getting a little.... light... headed...."
"Ahhh jeez"
"What?"
"KNEW we forgot something... Sorry guys, theres no oxygen tanks on the station, pretty soon you guys are gonna be breathing pure CO2."
"..."
"Guys?"
How possibly a gas tank (of whatever kind -- it definitely isn't larger than the space station itself, and it is supposed to contain such a simple thing as liquified oxygen or nitrogen) can be this expensive? Doesn't it look like Boeing is being paid much more than what its products can possibly be worth?
(and if I am wrong, I would like to hear the explanation)
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Bet if it was useful to anyone it got salvaged,
people are always finding treasure at the dump.
Like any labyrinthine corporate bueaucracy,no-one
could find their ass with both hands and a map,big
surprise there.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
"Uh, sir... We were on our way to the Bingo Parlor... and Uh..." I wonder if they have an opening in the janitorial dept? "Son there is a difference between dumb people and stupid people. Dumb people don't have a clue that they are idiotic things, while stupid people know that they are doing idiotic things and do them anyways." -- Dad
"Simple words such as 'better' or 'faster' are best used by simpletons. Life [...] is more complicated." - TMC
Ohh yeah ... and 2 new cars ... stupid me I left them too close to the curb ... the garbage people must of just picked them up by accident.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
It's a Lisa!
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Unless Boeing comes public with a pledge that they'll absorb the cost, the perceived effect on the taxpaying community will be that the taxpayer gets to absorb the overrun resulting from Boeing's egregious mistake, and that Boeing suffer's a mere moment's bad PR. Perhaps the rest of /. finds this to be high comedy, but I'm of the mind that the space station and the space program in general suffer enough from public image woes as it is.
I'm looking forward to the day that the public looks upon our ailing space program (and, by extension, nationally funded R&D) as something more than an enormous public works project. No amount of positive spin can undo the damage caused by a handful of silly mistakes such as this.
Okay, 750 Grand would be more then enough to keep me more then happy for life. But in Aerospace Industrial terms, that is about the equivalent of me throwing away a box of Lil' Debbies that still had a bar in it.
This could be just about anything...plumbing fixture, space shuttle pain, gallons of tang. Who knows?
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
CAPE CANAVERAL, FL - A tragic day for the Earth as two astronauts have perished in space due to the idiocy of Boeing engineers. Two air tanks which would have provided air to the astronauts aboard the shuttle Endeavor were mistakenly left upon the ground, and in fact, in a land fill.
Amazingly, our under cover agents have been able to obtain a top secret audio recording of the communications just before the untimely death of America's newest heroes. Unfortunately, names are not yet known of the deceased:
[Astronaut #1] Mission Command, we have a problem. Our instruments show we're losing air up here. Please confirm.
[Mission Control] Uhh, Affirmative Endeavor. We show a slight drop in breathable air. Give us a minute, we'll get back to you on that.
[Astronaut #2] Tell them to hurry the fuck up! This dial isn't going anywhere but southward!
[Astronaut #1] Just.. give.. them.. some.. time. I'm.. sure.. they'll.. have.. an answer.
[MC] Endeavor, this is Mission Control. We recommend you use your suicide capsules within the next few minutes
[Astronaut #2] WHAT!? You're telling me..... there's no air.... aboard this fucking ship!?
[Astronaut #1] Stop yelling fool! You're wastin all the air!!
[MC] Well, guys, have a good one. Everyone down here is hailing your mission as a victory for all mankind... Make us proud gentlemen!
[Astronaut #1] Well, fuck... what do we do now?
As you can see, a shameless show of disregard for the lives of these brave astronauts. And all because Boeing couldn't keep track of a couple of fucking air canisters.
THIS WAS A JOKE. IF YOU CAN'T ACCEPT IT AS SUCH, DON'T READ IT
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
-Brad
I'd like to think that the largest tech-worker strike in history counts as "news for nerds" (After all, _I_ work there...). Propaganda at http://www.speea.org. Also photos of about 25 undelivered planes sitting out on the line. Good news collection at Yahoo .
-a Boeing Employee
Moe: Hey Larry, remember those nitrogen and oxygen tanks I gave you last month? Do you remember what happened to them?
Larry: Sure Moe, I gave them to NASA. They said they needed them to decorate the 'Mars Polar Lamp' or something...
Curley: Nyuk, Nyuk, Nyuk!
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
I had a clean up department at a hospital trash $10k in parts, but leave empty boxes next to the parts. If they could be used on anything but what I was using them for, I'd expect to see the parts show up on ebay. blah.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
If it had been Seattle instead of Huntsville, they probably would have ended up in Boeing's Surplus store for $0.10/lb or so. I've seen everything from machine tools and empty VCR cases to office equipment (yes, even PC's) to 737 landing gear parts and aluminum beams sold by the pound. No doubt someone simply hauled them away from the landfill for nothing, so Boeing didn't even get the ten cents per pound they could have in Seattle.
Landfil worker to supervisor, "Think we should look around again for them tanks?"
Supervisor, "Nah, don't waste your time lookin', it ain't been found by now, ain't gonna be. Go on and take a break."
Worker with cigarette to supervisor, "Got a light?"
TV News Anchor, "Just minutes ago an explosion ocurred here at the landfil, killing two, others have been injured. Cause as yet is undetermined but there is concern that the lost Oxygen tank may have caused or enhanced the explosion."
"Open code, in other words, can be a check on state power." -Lawrence Lessig
They didn't "loose" the tanks. The tanks were placed in an extreemly low geosyncronous orbit in advance of final component assembly.
First, the hardware is being designed for human use in space, so there are an incredible number of specifications it must meet -- and each specification carries with it at least one test, and probably more. The final hardware must be certified as having been tested to each of these specs, and having passed. So a very large part of what's being paid for is the cost of meeting the required specs, and then maintaining the paperwork trail. (It's a common saying in the aerospace industry that you can't fly something until the paperwork weighs more than the vehicle; this is way too conservative for space stuff, though.)
Second, because it's space hardware, NASA is paying for it to be light weight; with each pound orbited by the Shuttle costing between $5K and $10K (depending on how you do the accounting, but I won't go there), time-consuming design work and lightweight-but-expensive construction is cheaper than orbiting a quickly-designed (and overdesigned), heavy version. Added to this is the complication that it is for space use, and there are design considerations you don't face here on earth (things like the zero-gee environment -- you have to stir liquid gasses, because there's no convection -- safety requirements for both on-orbit use and for transport in the Shuttle's cargo bay, and so on). All these add to the cost, too.
Third, the production run on these parts can be counted on the fingers of one hand, probably -- one set for the station, one or two sets of spares, and two or three more sets for testing here on earth. So there's no cost savings from amortizing the upfront engineering costs over a large production; it's all on the handful that are produced. And note that the cost of the ones used in testing is absorbed into the station set and the spares, too -- so they cost something like double what you might expect just from that alone.
Having said all that in defense of the cost, I do have to confess that it probably doesn't cover the entire price quoted in the article. There is no doubt a pretty fair chunk of the cost that exists solely because it's an aerospace contract for NASA; some of this is because they can get away with it, and some is because they have to put up with NASA being a pain in the ass... (I've worked on a number of contracts for NASA; it's hard to charge enough for PITA, because they are pros at it!). If the parts were spec'd, designed and built in-house, for a Boeing-funded project, I suspect they would cost a fraction of the quoted value -- even for the identical application.
And now that you know, I'm going to bet that it doesn't really make you feel all that much better, does it?
---
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Politics is about making compromises. Religion isn't. --Michael Horton
Some of us would rather carry around large bills than dollar bills and coins. What about us? Shall you to oppress us?
In the early days of planning for the ISS, NASA officials were not gaga about the project. However, do you want to piss off Congress?
For those of you who would be inclined to critize NASA for this, I would like to say the following. Don't totally blame NASA. NASA does not really want the ISS. NASA wants cheaper, faster, woops...where did it go? (Sorry, I couldn't resist:-))
Nah man,
LISA was much smarter than the people responsible for this
When I was a little boy I found the most annoy statements where the ones starting with When I Was a Little Boy, dont you
Not NASA, Boeing. NASA certainly has it's problems, but this isn't one of them.
Now, if they go ahead and pay Boeing to replace the tanks, then it will become NASA's problem.
For god's sake, it's only 3/4 of a million dollars worth of parts.
.02 ;)
When I was in the Marine Corps. somone lost a pair of Night Vision Goggles in the field. These were old Army hand-me-downs that were probably only worth a few thousand bucks brand new.
Once they realized they were lost they made the entire company (~250 men) go back out on the weekend and cover about 15 miles of terrain looking for them.
We eventually found them in a muddy-mire by having us all get in a line and going through it on our hands searching.
If these Boeing and NASA Engineers (I'm an engineer now too, BTW) want to piss away my tax money, they should have a seargeant there putting his jungle boot up their ass to find it.
Just my
They didnt "loose" the tanks. The tanks were placed in an extreemly low geosyncronous orbit in advance of final component assembly.
Either that, or they were undergoing performance tests in the field to demonstrate the rigorous construction of the tanks.
Insert mind here.
Wow...something gets screwed up involving astronauts and space! i'm surprised Lockheed Martin didn't have a hand in this! hehehe
-FluX
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"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
Sheesh, those tanks cost a lot!
What the hell is so special. Are they made out of platinum?
Damn.. and they cut 40% off my salary to waste on
"space program" and alike.. here is how it spent.
90% gets lost or stolen here on earth and the
rest is used to make space station they cant find.
I hate that..:( I work hard and this is what i get..
That you might not have all the details on this? I've seen a lot of posts castigating Boeing for this. Did you stop to think it might be NASA's fault? Or maybe the Redstone Arsenal trash contractor's? This happened at Marshall Space Flight Center, didn't it? So what if it was a part Boeing made. Who put the part outside the building in the first place? We have very few facts, and there are numerous possible explanations for how this could have happened. And no, I do not work for Boeing. I don't even work in Huntsville.
Getting tired of Slashdot... moving to Usenet comp.misc for a while.
At the very least, Boeing didn't double-charge the government.
They could have, y'know? They could have charged the gov't for things that are "needed", no matter if those things were thrown away in the first place or not.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Of course they didn't find the tanks. I got 'em first, and sold them to Fidel Castro. Suck on that, Bill Clinton. hehehehe :)
#define X(x,y) x##y
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,
About ten years ago I was working for a government "think tank" here in Los Angeles. One afternoon a frantic supervisor yanked me out of my office and, along with a few other fellas, drove us about 1/2 mile down the street to an intersection covered with THOUSANDS of sheets of paper... all SECRET documents!
Seems the messenger between facilities had taken off with a box left on TOP of the van; a few blocks down the road the box fell off and burst into a rain of classified schematics! (I think that particular project had something to do with hypervelocity missiles).
We spent the next half hour frantically snatching up documents-literally ripping them out of curious onlooker's hands. Around the time we finished cleaning up the last of the visible strays, a dark blue sedan pulled up with two Men In Dark Blue- Pentagon security auditors. They ended up pulling the clearance of the van driver (a serious career limiting move) and we suffered from increased ultra-paranoid security in our facility for the next few months.
In the end, 17 individual sheets were unaccounted for, although we received reports of individual sheets washing up on the beach (they had been carried down to the ocean in storm sewers) for the next few months. The more cycnical employees "pshawed" the whole thing... saying "you couldn't find a Russian to buy it off you, they had all that shit six months ago."
Note for non-guvmint types: "Secret" was one of the three levels of classified documents we worked with; "Confidential," "Secret," and "Top Secret." Each individual is cleared to one level, which allows access to documents at that level and below. My classification was "Secret."
Marc Siry || interactive media professional, motorcycle enthusiast ||
Another reason it was not real: There were no typo's or spelling errors, yet it was signed with the mark of the 'Taco. Hmmmm, something strange about that, I must say. :)
#define X(x,y) x##y
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,
I'm sure they can find them on ebay. Some redneck has probably dug them up and auctioned them off already. Why not? Everything else is up there.
I am that that is, not that that is not, that is.
Speaking of people who don't know WTF they're talking about: They're not worried about the *reactor* on that there probe, they're worried that there may be Terran life left on it that would contaminate Europa - which, by the way, we don't think Europa has life on it. We *don't know*. It might have life on it. It might not. We don't know. Not knowing and not wanting to obfuscate the issue for later is very different from "we now think..." Furthermore, Galileo's pretty damaged as it is: they're not wasting it, they're just trying to get the most useful (or interesting) data out of it before it dies completely. Jupiter orbit isn't the safest possible place to put a space probe - it's damn unhealthy for electronics. And what this has to do with Boeing accidentally sending parts for the ISS to the landfill, I haven't a clue. Why not try to grind your ill-informed axe somewhere more appropriate?
Do you work for a local TV station or something?
Medicines That Kill When Taken In Extremely Large Doses! Is your family in danger???
Details after this crap about the local fire department...
Search first, ask questions later.
Landfills are something I have great personal experience with as a former designer/inpector (no I'm not kidding).
People invariable come to the landfill looking for something they threw away (wallets, rings..), usually they never find it. If they get there befor the truck they can get the truck dumped out to the side and look.
My favorite was a consered looking woman who showed up at 7 am and wanted to know if any of us had seen a silver box she threw out a week before. No we told her, although she was welcome to look for it.. What was in the box? "An awfull lot of money...." She never found it, and we didn't either.
ooops.
If the crates of space stuff were noticed, they are probably in some landfill workers back yark or were sold for scrap.
CNN needs to start using the "foot" icon for some of their own stories. Or maybe a foot icon as the new Boeing logo?
Something smells fishy with this story; no pun intended.
I wonder how extensive the landfill search was, and how long ago the tanks were "discarded"?
Maybe it's possible that a sanation worker or boeing insider decided to appropriate these tanks! =)
Of course, I haven't a clue what they would be any good for... hmm... what would one do with such a tank... put it in the living room? Y2K bunker maybe? I wonder how big the tanks are?
4 March 2000: Boeing's missing tanks not explosive, Huntsville Times
"Huntsville workers for Boeing accidentally threw away the two $375,000 tanks last month and later found a piece of their protective covering in the Huntsville landfill.
Boeing has said that if the tanks must be replaced, then NASA, not Boeing, must pay for them, due to terms of a contract between the organizations."
By coincidence, this month is "Property Awareness Month" at NASA MSFC ...
It made the Monday morning addition in the paper I read. So it was being sent out by AP on Sunday. Guess more than /. is "behind" on this one.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
Here's the URLs:
The Nasa Watch site
Boeing's missing tanks not explosive
Pay for the snafu
Space Station parts go in trash
Workers Seek Space Station Parts
>If these Boeing and NASA Engineers (I'm an
>engineer now too, BTW) want to piss away my tax
>money, they should have a seargeant there
>putting his jungle boot up their ass to find it.
How exactly do you piss huge LOX canisters up your own butt-hole? And what hope has any sergeant alive got of extracting them with a jungle boot? Sorry, I know you might not find this funny, but I just love the sick images your statement conjured up.
"What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist." Salman Rushdie
The rumour going around here regarding the Mars polar lander is that it got to within 1 foot of the ground just fine. There was supposed to be a cutoff switch built into each of the 3 legs that automatically killed the retro rockets upon contact with the ground, but during the software design phase someone accidentally disabled the cutoff switch. The rockets kept firing . . . the lander kept trying to `fly' while sitting on the ground . . . it kicked up a huge cloud of dirt (thus incapacitating itself with dust), or maybe skidded along the ground until it flipped over.
Nothing on the space station is very new, technologically. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt . . . now let's stop pissing around in low earth orbit and do something useful in space.
What would be useful? How about
Well mister ninja, you may have temporarily set back Boeing's plans, but did you know that those missing tanks were actually MAPLE SYRUP tanks, destined for use in the Maple syrup Pancake Logistics Module (MPLM)?
The MPLM is a sophisticated pressurised pancake container built by the Alenia Company in Italy. It's true! They are building three of them and naming them Leonardo, Raphael, and Donatello. (I dunno what happened to Michaelangelo).
Silly Italians think they're named after famous artists, but we PANCAKE engineers know that they're really NINJA TURTLES! Can you dig it?!
Boeing junks two pieces of perfectly good equipment, and NASA (and by extension you and I (assuming you're a US citizen, like me (sorry to nest parentheses))) has to foot the bill!? So Boeing can MAKE MONEY off of tossing stuff out?
I can see it now "Uh... hi, remember that space shuttle, I think it was called Atlantis? Well, funny thing, it got hauled away as garbage and we can't find it... so, will you be paying for a new one by check, or just expensing it?"
Damn, why can I ever get involved in contracts where the other guy pays for our stupidity. Oh wait, that's what for-pay tech support is for...
Considering the policies of some landfills, they probably had to pay by the pound to get rid of them.
That said, there ARE other reasons for these to be so expensive. When something is in space, it is subject to a harsh environment completely different than what a gas grill tank is. There is radiation, pressure (or lack thereof), temperature extremes, and major reliability needs.
There are other costs that are coupled into the $750,000. R&D is a major section of this. This involves the 20 engineers designing it and the 400 managers who sat in meetings for a year to come up with the acronym ;)
Another cost is in the manufacturing: tooling, machining, building, etc. After a few are built (prototypes, test subjects, etc) they have to be certified for space and this costs A LOT.
"Space Certification" for a CPU is on the order of $1 million. This is a reason why almost all of the CPUs on the Space Station are 386's instead of PIII 800's.
IANAL, but I play one on
Editor's note: word is spreading fast at NASA MSFC that Boeing may have actually sold the two ISS tanks at a surplus property sale for $50. The tanks cost NASA $750,000.
Stay tuned.
Some information about these tanks from a guy who works in the building they were lost from.
First of all, what were these tanks? The space station uses an oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere that approximates sea level composition, without the 1% argon and trace elements. As the crew breathes and uses up oxygen, the Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly scavenges the CO2 and dumps it overboard. The oxygen tank provide the replacement O2 to make up what is lost. The space station modules have many cables and pipes that go through the walls of the modules, and the modules are bolted to each other. There is a certain amount of leakage at these points (on the order of a pound a day). Since the station atmosphere is 80% nitrogen, you need to replace that too.
You need to play with the composition of the atmosphere in the airlock to prepare for a spacewalk (reduce dissolved nitrogen in the blood to prevent the bends), and also to refill the spacesuit tanks afterwards. For this reason these tanks are mounted on the outside of the Airlock module, which is still under construction here in Huntsville.
There are up to three tanksets that can be mounted on the airlock at any one time, each tankset consisting of two pressure tanks, the 'doghouse'
that covers them and provides insulation and protection from space debris, and the structural mountings, plumbing, valves, and wiring. It's not clear to me what exactly was lost, but from the size of the box it was likely one tankset, which is about 3x3x4 feet in size. There are something like 8-10 total tanksets in existence, since full ones would be brought up to replace the ones on orbit that were empty, plus spares for 10 years of operation.
Why do they cost $750,000? Boeing and it's subcontractors spend about $45,000 a pound to design airplanes or space stations. Pound for pound they cost the same to develop, because it's the same guys following the same design standards, using the same type of CAD workstations, etc. And the airplanes sell for $600 a pound. So assume the tankset weighs 300 pounds (I haven't looked up the weight, that's an educated guess based on the size). So the total design cost would have been $13.5 million spread over 10 units, or $1.35 million per unit, plus a manufacturing cost of $180,000 per unit. The quoted cost of $750,000 is less than this because the tankset is simpler than average for the station or an airplance as a whole , being mostly structure rather than a mix of structure and active components like computers and life support systems.
How did they get thrown out? Most likely (I have no official information to go on) sloppy inventory tracking and labeling. I'm pretty sure someone didn't walk out with them, since the storage yard outside the building is behind two barbed wire fences, and with crate you are talking about a 500 pound item. Most of the US portion of the Space Station is being assembled in this building, and crates of components are arriving all the time. A trash contractor periodically picks up dumpsters full of packing materials and the empty crates, and I suspect the screwup was something like parking a full crate over by the empty crate pile, and no one bothered to check to see if it was really empty. The overall impact to the program isn't so bad, since you effectively have lost one of your spare units (you have 9 now instead of 10), and they will simply produce a replacement.
They'll definitely never find the missing pieces. Just a few more parts, a couple thousand gallons of LOX, and BANG- I'm off this rock! Sure ended up being a lot cheaper than I planned. All I've gotta do then is find those moon maidens, or space amazons...~ ~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Artificial intelligence or natural stupidity?
Artificial intelligence or natural stupidity?
Guess which wrote this...
..and we've all seen the videos where an F-14 fails to take off from a carrier, crashing into the ocean beyond the runway. $40 million a pop makes $750,000 fluke look pretty insignificant.
Judging from the media attention this has garnered, I don't think NASA has a habit of throwing away million-dollar toys. Except for the Mars Lander...
License: By reading this you are agreeing that you agree with me.
Mayby they searched every square centimeter of the junkyard - rather than every square inch.
Get the Hell off my planet, you slimy mobster Bush!
I can't believe you moderated to 0, Troll just for puns. I mean, its just a pun, it deserves a groan and to be beaten about the head with a wet noodle, but not that sort of blunt-force moderation. Flamebait at worst.
Friend, Boeing is a private company that picks up government contracts occasionally. So is Whistler, the company that makes radar detectors but on the side supplied some components for the F-4. Amtrak is a government company. Get it straight.
I wish there was a choice that said "Factually Wrong -1" when I mod.