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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
"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
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.
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.
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.
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."
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:-))
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
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 ||
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 ...
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
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
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.