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NASA Parts Scroungers Resort To eBay For Parts
beggs writes: "The New York Times is running this article about NASA using ebay and other web resources to find for sale stock piles of old hardware it needs to keep the Space Shuttle fleet up and running -- things like 8086 chips from pre-PC days!" Come to think of it, this might be a better way to take care of most NASA bidding anyhow.
What is NASA's feedback rating, and do they take/pay by Paypal?
NASA has a good feedback rating
it would definitely suck to get into a bidding war with them either way..
NASA outbid me on a set of Star Wars collectable Burger King glasses from 1983. This is your tax dollars at work! Those fuckers won the auction too! They must have used some space-based technology to outbid me at the evry last second!
...but it'll increasingly be all of our problems in the future. A lot of really smart people are worried about the computer industry's quick pace and are worried that it's unsustainable. If I have a computer that I bought 15 years ago that's running a critical function in my workplace, it quickly becomes more expensive (in hardware costs) to support that piece of equipment than it does to buy a whole new machine. That's fine except that we then need to convert all the data over to new formats and operating systems, interface all our surrounding systems with the new system and generally spend a bunch of time and money replicating the functions of the old machine.
Sure, it's rarely ever that simple a scenario, but the computer industry should spend a bit more time thinking about sustainable growth rather than the next 300 Mhz of CPU performance.
Couldn't Transmeta chips (which are programmable to a degree) or FPGA's be an answer in the longer term? Obviously, a lot of the reason for requiring 8086 chips is down to form factor etc, but couldn't converters be made to help out?
Go ahead an mod me down because this is basically an emotional outburst, but I really think it is completely sad that society lacks the collective intelligence to see how important organizations such as NASA really are. The possibility of impact by an asteroid or other large space object alone justifies financing NASA adequately.
NASA is not so stupid as to not contract for replacement parts for the actual shuttle from subcontractors. This is just for support gear. Probably quite a bit of this gear is custom-built by NASA engineers, like programmers who build their own toolkits. As the article says, it's easier to just scrounge up a board than pay someone to redesign some piece of equipment to use updated components.
Why are you making fun of this. More private enterprise and being cost effective will really help NASA. Although I suppose there is something that's just funny about NASA bidding on e-bay, although it's possible it's just a joke/hoax.
I used to have the same problem in the Navy. Ever try and find a D.C. power supply for a VT100, or how about a head assembly for a RL02 disk drive? I finally started scrounging in local collage electronic surplus piles to keep my systems running. Just goes to show that systems made 20-30 years ago were built to last.
i have very strong apathetic feelings...
Oh Lord, I can see the auction titles now.
"FIRST CLASS! Slightly used moon capsule, 8/10, L@@K!"
"Tired of having no way to get to low earth orbit? Click here! BEST SHUTTLE ON EBAY!"
"VINTAGE EMPTY SATURN ROCKET STAGE--W0W! MAKES GREAT GRAIN SILO!"
(and yes, i know they're buying, not selling.)
Hey Taco! Looks like you're using the "infinite monkeys and typewriters" scheme to generate Ask Slashdots again...
If all the protocols and standards you use are open, then this shouldn't be a problem. Replacing a 10 year old mail server doesn't mean going back to the company that sold it to you, it means finding new SMTP software that fits your need and then using SMTP to transfer your email from one system to the other.
Obviously, this is a simplified example, but striving for openness and transparency in your original buying decision should make upgrading a lot easier.
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it seems like we can't make any cool, upgradeable large-scale systems, anymore.
a ce1.htmlmodel. ), and let's start mining those asteroids! NASA can do science, while the Solar System is pioneered by those imbued with that most useful of human motivations - pure, unadulterated greed.
What did we do when we needed large, mobile cruise-missile & artillery platforms? Why, we loaded up then-forty-year-old Iowa-class battleships, ships so old that it was tough finding personnel who knew how to work the guns!
The shuttle uses early-70s technology. The B-52, the first prototype of which flew in 1949 (!), is still our #1 conventional heavy bomber, and is a testament to forward-thinking in terms of modularity. But it seems that the trend is towards more monolithic, use-it-and-then-throw-it-away-and-buy-a-new-one systems.
Which is great for the suppliers, but not so great for the consumers (and in the case of NASA and DoD, the taxpayers).
I can generally get about 2 years of useful life out of a desktop PC, perhaps upgrading the RAM, video adaptor and CD/DVD/latest-useful-removeable-media drive along the way. I can get about 18 months of use out of a laptop, upgrading the RAM at some point. I can get 3-5 years out of a car, a (potentially) lifetime of use out of a good watch or a gun.
But the design principles I see in operation today are very much oriented towards disposability. Which is a bit of a problem when we're talking about multibillion-dollar systems.
What's the answer? For space, let private enterprise develop their own, market-driven Pull out of the Outer Space Treaty (http://www.state.gov/www/global/arms/treaties/sp
For defense, I'm not so sure. The bureaucracy is so bloated and elephantine, and so many different factions are constantly trying to keep their rice-bowls from being broken, I'm unsure -what- it would take to reform their procurement methodologies. If September 11th isn't enough of a wakeup call that we need to move both quicker and smarter, I don't know what would serve.
They could get an IBM Mainframe running Linux , then partition it out to 40,000 virtual instances, and have each one running Bochs to emulate all the 8086 chips they need.
You know, it would probably still be cheaper then maintining what they have now in the way of hardware.
Problem is that they would need a third booster to get it and the power plant off the ground....
I remember reading somewhere, that in order to supply parts to the military or NASA, you have to contractually agree to continue producing (or be able to produce) the purchased parts for something like 30 years, because equipment like jets and space shuttles are built to have a 30 year life span. Intel, when contracted, presumably agreed that they have to be able to make an 8086 until the space shuttle is no longer used.
So either the contract has expired and the shuttles have exceeded their lifespan, or Intel has broken its contract.
Intercarve Networks, LLC
- That old computer in your basement? NASA is not interested.
Trolls will be disappointed !Why dont they just set up an extranet for suppliers to bid on? That would be a great tool for them, and a way to get some good prices while they're at it!
I agree that its really sad that they are "reduced" to this, but is it really so bad? hell I think its about time, at least ONE government org has some sense.
The other thing that this probably encourages is aggregation. They could potentially plan across many disciplines, and buy in a larger volume that way, satisfying more groups, and cutting costs.
of course maybe the tiny area in the shuttle that contains a single 8086 processor may be just a little too small to fit a new zSeries, or PC for that matter.
Photos.
So to keep the shuttles flying, the space agency has begun trolling the Internet -- including Yahoo and eBay -- to find replacement parts for electronic gear that would strike a home computer user as primitive.
Considering NASA's lack of enough public support to prevent funding cuts in its budget, I find it odd that they have resorted to "trolling the internet"... Seems like the would be better off without all those negative mod points.
Doh!
Sept 11 didn't make people any smarter. No they sent off the army to a country that has more problems then just the taliban. Beat up the taliban and now what? Try to prevent civil war from starting up again? I think the situation there has great potential of becoming another festering pocket of trouble ready to burst uppon the world again.
What pure science is involved in the Shuttle program? Was Dennis Tito doing pure science? Is the NSync guy going to do science? Please. NASA is WELFARE for NASA engineers.
I can generally get about 2 years of useful life out of a desktop PC, perhaps upgrading the RAM, video adaptor and CD/DVD/latest-useful-removeable-media drive along the way. I can get about 18 months of use out of a laptop, upgrading the RAM at some point. I can get 3-5 years out of a car, a (potentially) lifetime of use out of a good watch or a gun.
.38 caliber relvolver. A fine piece of craftsmanship. It will be working long after I am rotting in the ground somewhere if I take care of it. It does one thing, it shoots little chunks of hot lead at subsonic speeds.
Tsk Tsk, you propose a radical answer, when your "question" is fundamentally flawed.
I buy a gun, lets say a
If I buy a computer, and I keep using the same software that came out designed for said computer, and I take care of it, I don't keep it in humid environments, I don't let it overheat, etc, then I'm sure it will last long after I am dead too.
It's only because you want to run new, bloated software, designed for new, bloated computers, that you have to upgrade so often.
It's like trying to shoot 357 magnums out of your 38. Sure, they fit in the chamber, but that isn't the gun that bullet is designed for. Don't be surprised if it doesn't work.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
From my computer architecture class we learned that Intel, instead of building processors from scratch, builds new processors on top of existing ones. In other words, you can set a bit on the P3 or P4 to emulate the 8086. Why can't they just do that? I mean, you will need to build an "adaptor" per se to have it set a bit to get the chip into 8086 mode, but after which, it will function exactly like an 8086 chip.
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"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
I don't believe NASA is actually buying things for use on actual Shuttle hardware, either. However, this reminds me of thinking which got NASA in big, big trouble, and left seven astronauts very, very dead.
Part of the conclusions of the Rogers Investigation of the Challenger disaster discovered that NASA was severely underfunded for Shuttle flight hardware, requiring them to cannabalize parts between Shuttles to keep them operating. The shuttle Enterprise (a test vehicle that never made it to space) certainly has no flight hardware to speak of as it was removed for use on actual flying orbiters.
Why would NASA, an agency that should be using cutting-edge technologies in its missions, want old hardware for ANYTHING? (I know, I know--read the article...this is a knee-jerk post.)
Some food for thought that's a little off-topic: shuttle Enterprise was supposed to be refit for space flight, but engineers found it would be more expensive to refit than to take a spare orbiter fuselage used for structural tests: STA-099.
STA-099 was renamed Challenger. If it weren't for cost cutting, it would've been a nastier history, particularly to naval historians, WWII and "Star Trek" fans, to hear instead that a ship named Enterprise was destroyed on 1/28/86.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
One of my coworkers was a crew chief in the early 90's for a B-52 that was built in 1962. He said, even though the plane may be fourty years old, so many parts (nose, wings, tail, fuselage sections, navcomp, weapons, et cetera) have been replaced over time that the build date of the plane is more like 1980-something.
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LV
Woot w00t w007.
Or maybe they think they are paying intel to much, and know they can get it cheaper.
And they might think why bother with a contract for older parts.
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive
I disagree.
B-52's did a fine job in the gulf war of 1991 and kosov. Why upgrade? I believe the b-52 bombers and the more modern aircrafts still use the same old early 20th century technology. They are more expensive but only slightly more efficient. Something newer may not be a whole lot better but would cost alot more. As a taxpayer I do not want a more modern jet. I pay too much as it is for military operations and for more b-52's. The b-52 was made to be modular and upgradable. You can just upgrade the computers and put more modern gps guided missiles on them as tine goes on. The stealth jets just use some fancy materials and designs to knock radar beams away from it but its still based on the same concept.
http://saveie6.com/
Up until about 4 years ago, I used to work for a major/small satellite company. One of my last tasks was to update the processor board used in many satellites... you guessed it, it was based on the 8086. What was my upgrade? I added an 8087 to it! These math coprocessors are even rarer - we bought the last 50 bare die in existence to eventually custom-package in a special high-density radiation shielding ceramic package.
:)
It was about that time that I decided that the company was going in the hole. It's not that the 8086's were particularily good processors... True, they are made with a bigger geometry and suck more power -- things that make them generally more radiation resistant than anything produced in the 1990's. But, they were never designed to tolerate radiation. (NASA isn't stupid - they have high-performance radiation tolerant parts like the RAD6000).
Since my company wasn't making even minimal internal investments (they had a '386 based system that they built but never applied power), I decided that, for my career, I should leave. I notice now that they are hiring people with 5 years of PowerPC experience -- eventually they must have decided to get with the times, but since they didn't keep their employees current, they shot themselves in the foot and now have to hire outsiders.
p.s. I'm back on the job market - anyone need a kick-ass PowerPC engineer?
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
In this article. I think it is just probably cheaper to find the replacement parts than to redesign the system again, it was probably designed well, robust and stable, unlike most modern systems. The engineers trust it, and perhaps are working on something to replace it eventually, but anything new would need a lot of testing, probably about 10 years. Maybe they'll upgrade to a 386 or a 486 soon.
I'm no aerospace engineer, but I know that the space shuttle has been around for quite some time. It seems to me like it is about time to redesign the shuttle. I'd think that NASA would need to do this anyway if they wanted a vehicle capable of making the long journey to Mars.
Unfortunately, I wonder if that will happen since NASA seems to be a big target for budget cuts nowadays.
Given that, how feasable is it for a shuttle redesign to happen within the next ten years?
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
A P4 wouldnt last more than a few minutes in a space environment. Single bit errors galore on something as susceptible as that..
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There are tons of people suggesting that NASA use current chips (Pentium, Transmeta, etc) to emulate the 8086. That's not the issue. The software would be easy to port or emulate, etc. The reason they use old chips is that they can go into space. The electromagnetic radiation as seen in space would totally fry a chip with a small fab. 8086s are large enough that their transistors aren't shorted. Sure, they could shield the computers, but that's expensive and largely unnecessary for the applications they're using them for.
a (potentially) lifetime of use out of a good watch or a gun.
Depends on what you're using it for.
Some uses makes for a very short lifetime...
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
Who would actually benefit from bugging NASA hardware?
Doesn't have to be bugging. I'm sure there are a lot of terrorists who would be interested in crashing a shuttle or two.
Might as well pick that up, too.
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What does this say about NASA, an organization that has been synonymous with advanced technology. What does it mean when they are so intrenched in their current ways that they have to go searching for obsolete technology just to keep functioning?
To me, it says that the US has no real intrest in advancing their space technology. What exists currently is good enough because it functions.
NASA is in such sad shape right now that they are not even innovating in their attempts to solve this problem. On this board, I have read stories of people getting an old Apple to read modern flash cards. I have read about people turning a Commodore 64 into a web server. Rather then come up with a workable and clever hack to fix their problem, they are scrounging for old parts. It may be harder to come up with a workable hack, but at least once it is in place, duplicating it would not be a problem. Sooner or later, those old 8086 chips will run out.
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The computer can't be easily replaced with a modern system. There is a large library of applications, in assembly language, that would have to be rewritten. It isn't a general purpose computer. Its architecture was carefully designed and optimized for a narrow task, and it does that task better than any modern general purpose computer. Duplicating its functionality with modern technology would cost a huge amount of money.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Every few years, they basically take the plane apart and put it together. Since many of the parts are no longer available from the original manufacturers, the facility that does this work has the ability to build pretty much any needed replacement part from scratch by measuring/analyzing/reverse-engineering the originals. (There was a story linked by /. a few months ago about the Air Force sending a B-52H to OCALC to be refitted and turned over to NASA to replace its B-52B launch aircraft, but I can't seem to locate it.)
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When I get to my old age, digital antiques should be quite an interesting hobby. I just didn't expect it to be worthwhile quite so soon.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Well, you're computer may or may not survive for decades if it's taken care of optimally.
On the other hand, numerous subsystems may fail and if they are no longer manufactured, you may have to retool with one of those new machines.
This is the forward thinking planning that has to go on at places like NASA. If we depend on computers that are decades old, then we have to make usre there are still parts.
Dennis Tito and "the NSync guy" paid (or will pay) their way into space using $20 million of their own money through the Russian Space Agency. NASA is not involved. They did not ride the space shuttle. The Russian plan to put tourists in space is problematic, but attempting to blame NASA for it is asinine. NASA has nothing to do with it, and they have expressed their displeasure with it at every possible opportunity.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
Don't bet on it. Those little metal cylindrical cans on the motherboard are generally electrolytic caps with a goo sort of electrolyte... they dry out after 10-20 years. Not sure about tantalum electrolytic chip caps.
Tech Public Policy stuff
What did an 8086 cost in 1976? $1,000? $500? Even with the hassle and expense of tracking them down, and cannibalizing, is it possible they might be paying less now than they did then?
Tech Public Policy stuff
> I can get 3-5 years out of a car, a (potentially) lifetime of use out of a good watch
My oldest car is an '89. (Well, I have a '78 Alfa too, but that's more of a pile of parts than a car as such at the moment and for the foreseeable future). I've only recently bought it, but I expect to get at least three years out of it, and the previous owner got more than five.
And I'm wearing a 1940's watch right now. It was my father-in-law's, and we think he bought it second hand when he was doing National Service in submarines. At the time, there was no such thing as a cheap reliable accurate waterproof watch. These days I could buy six or so equally functional watches for what I paid just to have this one serviced, so it only made sense for the sentimental value.
rant