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Incorrectly Built SLS Welding Machine To Be Rebuilt
schwit1 writes A giant welding machine, built for NASA's multi-billion dollar Space Launch System (SLS), has to be taken apart and rebuilt because the contractor failed to reinforce the floor, as required, prior to construction: "Sweden's ESAB Welding & Cutting, which has its North American headquarters in Florence, South Carolina, built the the roughly 50-meter tall Vertical Assembly Center as a subcontractor to SLS contractor Boeing at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans.
ESAB was supposed to reinforce Michoud's floor before installing the welding tool, but did not, NASA SLS Program Manager Todd May told SpaceNews after an April 15 panel session during the 31st Space Symposium here. As a result, the enormous machine leaned ever so slightly, cocking the rails that guide massive rings used to lift parts of the 8.4-meter-diameter SLS stages The rings wound up 0.06 degrees out of alignment, which may not sound like much, "but when you're talking about something that's 217 feet [66.14 meters] tall, that adds up," May said.
Asked why ESAB did not reinforce the foundation as it was supposed to, May said only it was a result of "a miscommunication between two [Boeing] subcontractors and ESAB."
It is baffling how everyone at NASA, Boeing, and ESAB could have forgotten to do the reinforcing, even though it was specified in the contract. It also suggests that the quality control in the SLS rocket program has some serious problems.
ESAB was supposed to reinforce Michoud's floor before installing the welding tool, but did not, NASA SLS Program Manager Todd May told SpaceNews after an April 15 panel session during the 31st Space Symposium here. As a result, the enormous machine leaned ever so slightly, cocking the rails that guide massive rings used to lift parts of the 8.4-meter-diameter SLS stages The rings wound up 0.06 degrees out of alignment, which may not sound like much, "but when you're talking about something that's 217 feet [66.14 meters] tall, that adds up," May said.
Asked why ESAB did not reinforce the foundation as it was supposed to, May said only it was a result of "a miscommunication between two [Boeing] subcontractors and ESAB."
It is baffling how everyone at NASA, Boeing, and ESAB could have forgotten to do the reinforcing, even though it was specified in the contract. It also suggests that the quality control in the SLS rocket program has some serious problems.
The article does not mention where the cost of this error is going to fall. This seems like an important detail. On a sufficently complex project, one of the bevy of subcontractors fucking something up isn't a huge surprise; but I would be very, very, disappointed if NASA wasn't able to contract sufficiently vigorously to make the vendor eat the cost of delivering the goods as specified, rather than paying them for their effort no matter how well or badly they do.
Age old story of outsourcing - you still need to retain enough people to watch the contractors so they can't cut corners on the expensive bits.
One blatant example I saw was with non destructive testing of welds in high pressure pipework leading to portions of a turbine in a coal fired power station. At those welds it was done by spraying on thing white paint, using a magnet and spraying on a fluid with suspended magnetic "dust" that would collect wherever defects disrupted the magnetic field. Access was a bit tight so the contractors tested the top of the pipes and they ran the magnet around the bottom of the pipe without looking at it so that some scratches would be left to show that the magnet had been used. The lazy pricks were caught doing that so we had to send someone along as an observer and make them do a couple of weeks worth of work over again, because with their scratch trick we had no way of knowing is any inspection had actually been done or not.
So MBA types - that person standing off to the side not doing anything during a concrete pour may be there solely to reduce fuckups due to dishonest contractors.
If we're doing something important, like killing Hitler, or trying to beat the Commies to the moon, federal procurement can be remarkably efficient. Clear goals, and the stated willingness to accept some waste as long as the job's done, can do that.
Unfortunately since about the mid-1970s (Watergate you say?!), approximately zero "waste," of any kind is tolerated on any federal project, as this is "profiteering" or "wasting the people's money," so a lot of contractor time is spent on compliance. This makes the process incredibly loss-averse, and probably too risk-averse to actually accomplish anything.
The reality is that Elon Musk is able to do a good job, because he can destroy two or three recovery barges in a row and he doesn't have to explain it to anybody but his accountant. If the SLS had only one slip-up like that there would be a bloodbath of firings, senate hearings, press conferences with the President, and maybe the entire program might be scrubbed. Back in the late 50s NASA screwed up these kinds of operations all the time, but the American people tolerated it because of the Cold War. Nowadays the budget is so tight and public accountability is so fierce that frigging welding assembly subcontractors are apparently front-page news. We probably built and destroyed five facilities on the scale of this thing during Apollo and nobody batted an eye at the expense.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Since I'm working in a large organization I have come to realize that the amount of documentation in many projects is huge - often so large that essential key information is masked away, or right out FUBARed.
It's also not uncommon that the customer requirements are "interpreted" by people with no technical knowledge whatsoever and they have a tendency to eradicate information that they think is "too technical", or information that they think drives unnecessary cost. Some people also have a tendency to rename things to a semantic that is to common people fuzzy. Even obfuscation occurs. At the same time documents are filled with a large number of pages listing old or discarded alternatives.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
The contractors that NASA has used have squandered and bilked NASA for all they are worth - If you give the goal of what the SLS does to SpaceX - (and not micromanage it) Elon Musk will have it completed in a much shorter amount of time.
I work for NASA. While I don't have direct involvement with the commercial crew program, major portions of it go on around me so I am familiar with how it works. (There was a 3 hour briefing on the various aspects of it in our department a few weeks back.)
SpaceX does some cool stuff but the biggest reason they're able to do things so cheaply is that they have pretty lax testing standards. They lack the analysis experts NASA has; Lockheed does too, but have more experienced people. Everyone at SpaceX seems to be under 30 (really) and it's a bit of an edgy place to work thanks to Elon Musk's propensity to walk through the workplace, question people at random, and occasionally fire them if he doesn't like what he sees. In fact, a lot of the analysis that should be done on SpaceX stuff is done by NASA because 1) SpaceX doesn't want to do it, and 2) they don't really know how.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that SpaceX is an accident waiting to happen, but their standards are more like the Russian ones. And their attitude toward higher standards is pretty much "whatever."
If you're wondering, the reason SpaceX got so much less money than Boeing in the recent commercial crew contract is that they asked for a lot less. They don't have as much experience as Boeing and it is felt they significantly underbid the contract due to not having done a project of that type before.