A Space Junkyard

Today's Los Angeles Times has an article about a North Hollywood junkyard that stocks a huge quantity of used aerospace parts, from valves to rocket engines. Norton Sales Inc. got started in the early 1960s. The junkyard had fallen on hard times, with the collapse of the Los Angeles-area aerospace economy in the 1980s, but it's making something of a comeback now with NASA's new plans for moon and Mars missions. The customers used to be rich Hollywood types; nowadays they are as likely to be private space entrepreneurs. "It's dangerous coming to a place like this," said Dave Masten of Masten Space. "It's like shopping on an empty stomach."

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Space junkyard, eh?

[cy_a253]

Watto: How are you going to pay for all this?
Qui-Gon Jinn: I have twenty thousand Republic dataries.
Watto: Republic credits? Republic credits are no good out here. I need something more real.
Qui-Gon Jinn: I don't have anything else
[waves hand]
Qui-Gon Jinn: but credits will do fine.
Watto: No, they won't-a.
[Qui-Gon waves his hand more firmly]
Qui-Gon Jinn: Credits will do fine.
Watto: No, they won't-a. What? You think you're some kind of Jedi, waving your hand around like that? I'm a Toydarian, mind tricks don't work on me. Only money. No money, no parts, no deal!

Re:Space junkyard, eh?

[LarsG]

That is also such a marvelous example of the high moral standard of the Jedi.

Re:Space junkyard, eh?

[CRCulver]

I'm a Toydarian, mind tricks don't work on me.

First draft of the script probably read, "I'm a lame and creepy stereotype of a dirty foreigner like other alien races in this film, in my case an Italian, mind tricks don't work on me."

LA has amazing surplus

[NixieBunny]

My current favorite surplus place in LA is Apex Electronics, which is the electronics version of Norton's. Same idea - so much stuff you can't wrap your head around it, and aisles that collapsed in the '94 earthquake and haven't yet been restored to a vertical condition.

This place looks quite fun to visit. I'll have to check it out the next time I'm in the area.

Re:LA has amazing surplus

[Otter]

Also, an hour out of town there's the junkyard associated with the Planes of Fame aircraft museum. You walk around half-dismantled F-4's and F-14's and check out parts.

The most LA part of the article, though, is "Some of its best customers have also been car customizers looking for cheap, spaceflight-grade hydraulic valves." LOW-RI-DER!

Is this the place...

[shmlco]

Is this the place where all of the Farmer's go to buy their parts?

Yeah right.

[Anonymous Coward]

The guy buys the crap for a penny on the dollar and then asks for insane prices. The rocket engines are only worth scrap or as a museum piece as they have not been stored correctly to ensure they have not deteriorated or corroded.

fallen on hard times means he has to start charging sane prices instead of his government prices.

The apollo 1 command module engine he is trying to scam $1.5 mill out of is only worth 15 grand in scrap metal and is actually only worth that as it is not safe to use in it's current condition let alone relied upon for the safety of a crew or 22 million dollar sattelite.

Junkyard owners always think their turds are gold plated rare. in fact there is a good reason why he was able to buy that crap for the few dollars here and there. It's not worth anything.

Re:Yeah right.

[Mercedes308]

I go to junkyards a fair bit to get bits and pieces and what you said is so bloody true. No matter how much they gloss that turd it is, at the end of the day, just a shiny piece of shit. Also when talking down a part I often say "It's not a bloody space shuttle part, it's just a [insert name here]" That could actually catch me out at Norton Sales and end up looking the complete Muppet.

Re:Yeah right.

[The Breeze]

All junkyards are like this. They charge prices higher than what they buy it for because it costs money to store that stuff, costs money to dismantle it, costs money to keep the lights on, costs money to insure it. They have a facility where stuff is stored for years gathering dust, bringing in no revenue. They most likely sell 1% of what they have. That 1% has to cover the cost of staying in business and putting food on the table.

And, an Apollo engine is not worth $15 grand in scrap metal. It is worth whatever you would save on R & D if you were working on a similar project and needed to reverse engineer the thing. Even on a smaller scale, if you have an old rocket engine, and you're building another one, and spending $10000 on an old piece of junk to study leads you to ask, "hey, why is that like that, I should research it some more" and you discover something that prevents your shiny new engine from blowing itself up you're ahead of the game.

Without junkyards and their "outrageous" markups, new parts would be much, much more.

Re:Danger

[ScrewMaster]

On the other hand, a lot of those parts were probably built to specs that no commercial entity could afford. You might be better off with used mil-spec and NASA parts.

film industry

[edwardpickman]

Norton has always been popular with the film industry. I think back in it's heyday a good share of the profits came from selling to film companies. Unfortunately they got a double hit because as the Aerospace industry cranked down the film industry got nailed with runaway production so most of that went out of country. C&H was another good surplus company. There used to be half a dozen good ones in the LA area but I know several have gone under. I haven't lived in LA for five years so I don't know who is still in business. People underestimate the film industry. I know of several dental houses and medical supply places that sold more product to the film industry than their regular doctors and dentists. I remember one company stopped selling to us becuase we were cleaning them out all the time and they weren't able to supply the hospitals.

Re:film industry

[Fred_A]

the film industry got nailed with runaway production so most of that went out of country.

Not to mention that 3D rendering cycle prices went wayyy down. Much cheaper than building lifesize realistic looking stuff in lots of cases.

Re:film industry

[Hans Lehmann]

Not to mention that 3D rendering cycle prices went wayyy down. Much cheaper than building lifesize realistic looking stuff in lots of cases.

From the film industry's standpoint, Norton Sales provides props and set decoration, not entire backdrops. Renting a three foot tall rocket engine for a few hundred dollars to place behind the actors will be cheaper than setting up a green-screen shot for quite some time. Heck, it's probably cheaper to rent the real thing than it is to build a realistic facsimile out of Styrofoam and vacuum-form plastic. If Norton Sales goes under any time soon, it won't be because of cheap CPU cycles.

Wow....

[Nemus]

I'm just surprised that some of this stuff is legal. I mean, I have no problem with the idea of a Saturn rocket engine being sold, or any of this other stuff, per se. But, one would figure that the same people who brought us bans on 20 oz. cokes and gel shoe inserts on planes would have freaked the @#%! out if they found out you could get workable rocket parts at some dive in California. I seem to recall a few years ago N. Korea trying very, very hard to figure out how to make their own version of the Saturn V work, and failing horribly. I guess they just didn't know how to shop around right =/

I imagine this is just one of those quirky things that has managed to escape the notice of the hyper paranoid Homeland Security people. One would think though that since many of the parts NASA used that wound up in this junkyard are considered 'military grade' that this place would have wound up on some kind of list. Oh well. Someone pick me up a friggin' space laser while they're over there, please.

Re:Wow....

[linoleumcp]

You can't buy a turbopump from a J-2 at Fry's. While you wouldn't want to use them, parts like that are very...instructional. I seem to recall SpaceX scoring a gimbal mechanism out of there that was an interesting reference piece.

Re:Wow....

[rhyder128k]

You have to remember that many of the people who read a board like this will give the appearance of a man hiding a space shuttle in their jeans after visiting a electronics/aerospace surplus place of that sort.

Big screen to real life

[Strained Brain]

Now we're going to have a bunch of astronaut farmers building rockets in their barns, now that they know where to get parts .. thanks Hollywood.

Surplus is not what it used to be

[Animats]

Here in Silicon Valley, surplus is not what it used to be. The military stuff is gone. No more satellite parts. No beautiful little electromechanical units. It's mostly failed computer brands. Lots of older Sun and SGI gear. Older rackmount networking gear too bulky to use any more. Endless piles of old PC motherboards. Unsuccessful consumer products.

Several of the surplus stores have gone out of business. Anything good goes on eBay now. What remains is scrap.

JATO

[Greg Lindahl]

I wonder if they have any JATO rockets?

article punchline

[Alien54]

You got to love this bit

Although Guzman said his business is doing well with the new commercial space boom, there are still challenges, especially since 9/11.Tougher export rules prevent him from selling much of his stock overseas. It's no longer easy to obtain old rocket parts, either. "This stuff is tough to get nowadays," he said.

Even before the attacks on the twin towers in New York, Guzman said he had to be wary. He recalled getting a visit from the FBI after one of Norton's customers put a Peacekeeper missile motor up for sale on EBay.

Where, the agents asked, did you get that particular piece of equipment?

"We bought it from the government," came the reply.

I betchya...

[catdevnull]

I betchya Joel could build a bad-ass robot out of all that!

Tom Servo 2.0! :D

The ACME corporation can help you out...

[BertieBaggio]

I suggest you consult a Mr Wile E. Coyote, who has experience in these matters.

Rocketry isn't brain surgery. ;)

[Medievalist]

Unlike taking away the country's right to freedom from unwarranted search and seizure, keeping North Korea and Iran and Iraq from learning how to build a missile is simply a no brainer: they don't know how to build missiles capable of hauling a nuke halfway across the world,

OK, that's probably not correct. "Knowing how" and "being able" are two different things, and the knowledge is already easily available.

but they sure might if they got a hold of these rocket parts.

Nope. I was pretty deeply involved in the MX (Peacekeeper) program back when I was in the biz. You can't learn jack from one of those motors that isn't already available in any decent library or mail-order encyclopedia set.

Even normal jet engines and gas turbines at GE can't be exported (source: friend who works at GE that I just asked online) for national security reasons: both the direct "don't let them learn how to make one" because they could blow us up, but also in the economical sense-- if we let other nations get the tech, they could find a way to undercut us.

Turbine blade geometry is an art form, and a whole 'nother thing than conventional rocketry. You could definitely learn a lot from studying turbines, much more than you could from even the most sophisticated rocket motor. And while it's at least theoretically possible to stop a ballistic-path rocket-driven missile, there aren't any good defenses against terrain-hugging turbofan-driven cruise missiles, so you can see why both the fedguv and GE might be concerned.

But really, restricting knowledge (either at home or abroad) won't stop armageddon. The only way to stop people willing to become suicide bombers is to make their lives worth living... social justice is required for any peace that won't closely resemble genocide.