[HN Gopher] The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of...
___________________________________________________________________
The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its own
stealth bomber
Author : alrs
Score : 138 points
Date : 2021-03-03 20:04 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thedrive.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thedrive.com)
| jaytaylor wrote:
| Dupes / other identical submissions:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26321523
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26322477
|
| ---
|
| As an aside, does it still qualify as a dupe if there wasn't any
| significant discourse?
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Re aside:
|
| Generally no. Some submissions just don't take due to poor
| timing (not lining up with when an interested audience will
| catch, upvote, and discuss it).
| jb1991 wrote:
| This is _exactly_ the sort of problem that Jon Blow talked about
| in his talk about preventing the collapse of civilization [0] --
| the human race forgets how it does amazing things.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25788317
| Pokepokalypse wrote:
| This is not new.
|
| Older planes and other hardware have LONG had to be reverse-
| engineered (including microchips).
| dmurray wrote:
| Reverse engineering seems like a good skillset for the DoD to
| nurture, anyway. Yes, the US is going to be at the cutting edge
| of weapons design at least through the medium term, but the
| leadership isn't arrogant enough to think that _all_ engineering
| innovations will come domestically. If the US acquired a next-
| generation Chinese fighter, wouldn 't it be handy if someone had
| the expertise to tell you exactly how its parts were made and
| machine replicas if needed?
|
| So, the tinfoil hat interpretation of this story would be, _of
| course_ the Pentagon has the original blueprints in
| quintuplicate, but it 's identified reverse engineering as a key
| strategic advantage China has over the US (pretty reasonable so
| far, right?) and has announced this as a way to shuffle some
| money into building up domestic RE expertise in the defence
| industry.
| [deleted]
| jandrese wrote:
| As someone who works with the government a fair bit, this kind
| of forward thinking is extremely unlikely to be the case. This
| is the kind of government competence that only exists in the
| most wild conspiracy theories.
|
| The idea that it was made by some long defunct subcontractor
| and nobody knows what happened to their blueprints and
| production notes is far more likely. Also, even if you had the
| blueprints you still need to be able to make the tooling, which
| is at least half of this project.
|
| That said, if some contractor does come through with this and
| does a good job (on time, on budget, parts work, etc...) they
| could likely find plenty of other programs with similar needs.
| In some cases the original contractor does still exist, but
| they're asking way too much money to reconstitute an old
| production line so a scrappy startup like this could prove
| themselves valuable.
| nullserver wrote:
| My dad was talking to an engineer at one of the major
| airlines manufactures apparently some critical part was foam
| injection or some such.
|
| Anyway the process as such did not work as documented.
|
| You had to add strings to the inside of the mold to get it to
| set correctly. This was not written down anywhere.
|
| Part of it may have been job protection. The union was bad
| about that. New hires would not be able to complete the work.
|
| Always stuck with me that at some point the ability to make
| that part would be los-tech.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Conversely, a lot of management have zero interest in
| knowing this kind of detail. It may not be possible to get
| the info fed back. People may be punished for not following
| the process, even if it's impossible to get the job done by
| following it exactly ( this is a very common dysfunction!)
| jessaustin wrote:
| Yeah this sort of "why didn't the lowest-paid employee do
| more work without permission so her boss's boss's boss
| wouldn't have to think too hard" suggestion surprises me
| a lot more often than it should surprise me. Sure, it
| would benefit shareholders, but companies are run by
| executives.
| hinkley wrote:
| The return of guilds.
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| > Always stuck with me that at some point the ability to
| make that part would be los-tech.
|
| https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Lostech
| banana_giraffe wrote:
| It's also possible it was "Hey! The foam injection machine
| isn't working, I've tried everything", "There's this string
| trick I used once, try that", "Great, that fixed it, we
| should document that", "Sure, once we get all parts made
| that have backed up"
|
| Or, maybe I'm reading bad practices in my industry to
| everywhere else.
| nullserver wrote:
| From the conversation, admittedly 20 years ago. Not
| documenting was highly intentional, and why I was being
| informed.
| mywittyname wrote:
| It makes sense that new employees are trained on the job
| from actual line workers, rather than by reading
| documentation.
|
| It is totally possible that the line workers have no idea
| what the documentation on the tooling says.
| mavhc wrote:
| Makes sense in the short term, but not the long term, as
| the entire article makes clear
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I would be very interested in reading case studies where
| a company both does documentation well and does not get
| bogged down in vast amounts of paperwork.
|
| As yes, plenty of fixes for things are not written down
| anywhere.
| nullserver wrote:
| Reproducibility.
|
| Have others come in and follow the directions.
| jaxx75 wrote:
| If you haven't read it, you'd probably enjoy (and anyone
| interested in process) The Toyota Way by Liker.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Thanks!
| goatinaboat wrote:
| _Part of it may have been job protection._
|
| Management gets exactly the behaviours from employees that
| it rewards and incentivises.
| csours wrote:
| It might have been protectionism, but also life is just
| complicated. Documentation is always incomplete and much of
| it is out of date as soon as you write it down. Humans have
| so many cognitive biases, we don't even notice half the
| things we do.
|
| Many scientific studies cannot be replicated either due to
| errors or ambiguous steps.
|
| You only have what you test. If you want working
| documentation, you have to do a blind test. That can be
| pretty dang expensive, and most people don't think that
| way. Running production is heavily motivated to just keep
| running, and not worry too much about all of the potential
| problems - there are just too many potential problems.
| ericmay wrote:
| Why does it seem to be that we always assume that our own
| government is incompetent and unable of forward thinking, but
| all other governments (China, etc.) are?
| dylan604 wrote:
| >As someone who works with the government a fair bit, this
| kind of forward thinking is extremely unlikely to be the
| case. This is the kind of government competence that only
| exists in the most wild conspiracy theories.
|
| No, but we'll totally sponsor/fund research into things like
| mind control and astral projection. Funding something totally
| useful like reverse engineering skills is totally anathema.
| Just really sad commentary
| Jtsummers wrote:
| > No, but we'll totally sponsor/fund research into things
| like mind control and astral projection. Funding something
| totally useful like reverse engineering skills is totally
| anathema. Just really sad commentary
|
| I don't get your point. The government _does_ invest in
| reverse engineering, and _much_ more than they invest into
| mind control and astral projection. It 's nonsense to say
| that investing in useful skills is "totally anathema".
|
| What GP was saying was _not_ that they don 't invest in
| reverse engineering, but they wouldn't try to backdoor it
| or secret the experience into the industry with some
| project like this. They wouldn't try to "trick" the
| industry into developing the experience by putting out
| smaller contracts like this. They _do_ invest in it, but
| directly. That one program office has put out a contract
| for reverse engineering of one system does not mean that
| the general capability is ignored, within the government or
| the industry.
| goatcode wrote:
| >This is the kind of government competence that only exists
| in the most wild conspiracy theories
|
| And, possibly, before the 1960s.
| TheCondor wrote:
| I've heard from various acquaintances that it's not unusual for
| the contractor to be required to destroy documentation and
| tooling for certain classified projects upon completion.
| structural wrote:
| It is absolutely standard practice for this to happen. At
| contract completion, the contractor must destroy or return
| all classified materials: these sorts of designs would
| certainly be included.
|
| It's pretty interesting, but a lot of this stuff is
| structured specifically so that the contractor organization
| doesn't retain knowledge that it's "not supposed to have", as
| wasteful as that ends up being. Even stuff like a list of
| personnel who worked on a project or production line might be
| included... so that a few years after the project is
| completed, the management of the contractor might not even be
| able to figure out who to ask, because they've destroyed even
| their knowledge of the list of people who worked on the
| component's design and manufacturing.
| enkid wrote:
| Read about the history of NASIC and the other service
| intelligence centers [0]. Understanding foreign technology is
| one of their core missions. I'm pretty sure they have already
| been reverse engineering stuff for a long time.
|
| [0]https://www.nasic.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-
| Sheets/Article/611728...
| time0ut wrote:
| I don't think we need the tinfoil hat. This sort of thing
| happens sometimes. Like the time we forgot how to may part of
| our thermonuclear weapons and had to reverse engineer that [0].
|
| 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOGBANK
| tablespoon wrote:
| > I don't think we need the tinfoil hat. This sort of thing
| happens sometimes. Like the time we forgot how to may part of
| our thermonuclear weapons and had to reverse engineer that
| [0].
|
| The really interesting thing about that is one of the main
| things they had to reverse-engineer was an _impurity_ in one
| of the ingredients that the original designers didn 't even
| know they were depending on.
| est31 wrote:
| Reminds me of how NASA had to design completely new rocket
| engines for SLS because while they still had the plans for
| the Saturn-V rocket engines, back then plans weren't
| followed to such high accuracy as nowadays a 3D model would
| be followed. Each engine was custom tailored with small
| modifications here and there. The knowledge to custom
| tailor them was lost, so they went with designing new
| engines from scratch instead.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovD0aLdRUs0
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > Each engine was custom tailored with small
| modifications here and there
|
| This was true of lots of things outside NASA. This was
| one of the problems that killed the UK attempt to
| modernise the Nimrod maritime patrol aircraft [0]. They
| wanted to fit new wings to the old planes, but only
| discovered after the contract had been signed that the
| different airframes had not been built identically, but
| were different interpretations of a common plan. Each of
| the nine planes was in effect a completely new refit
| challenge.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAE_Systems_Nimrod_MRA4
| subsubzero wrote:
| I was going to comment about fogbank as well, this article
| explains the efforts the Govt. tried to reverse engineer the
| substance - https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/weekly-
| standard/the-fog-o...
|
| Also it is no longer known how to make the Saturn V rocket
| which flew to the moon -
| https://www.nytimes.com/1987/05/26/science/hunt-is-on-for-
| sc...
| cratermoon wrote:
| Wikipedia calls it an "aerogel", but rumors have it
| originally being closer to ordinary "closed-cell extruded
| polystyrene foam", which is often sold under the brand name
| Styrofoam. It might be something else entirely now. It's role
| is said to be absorbing the x-rays generated by the fission
| stage and turning into a plasma to help ignite the fusion
| stage. Edit:
| https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/201814/fogbank/
| mattnewton wrote:
| I wish my tax dollars were going to some galaxy-brain forward
| thinking group of men and women capable of making such reverse
| engineering challenges for itself; but it almost certainly is
| the case that what looks like sheer incompetence is just that.
| prox wrote:
| Most of the companies are Initech ;)
| tablespoon wrote:
| I don't think this kind of thing is all that uncommon for
| military airplanes that have been long out of production. I
| recall reading a decade or two ago that our local air guard
| wing had to fabricate some of its own replacement parts for its
| F-16s (IIRC, then some of oldest that were still in service).
|
| I also recall that Lockheed had to take special effort to
| preserve production know-how and tooling for the F-22 when they
| shutdown production early, so it would be _possible_ to restart
| if needed. You can 't capture everything you need to know in
| blueprints and documentation.
| benzene wrote:
| >Long out of production.
|
| The difference in technology likely plays a large role -
| these parts were designed without CAD and modern fabrication
| protocols have changed.
|
| It reminded me of NASA's endeavor to reverse engineer the
| Saturn rockets
|
| https://arstechnica.com/science/2013/04/how-nasa-brought-
| the...
| [deleted]
| hondo77 wrote:
| > The difference in technology likely plays a large role -
| these parts were designed without CAD and modern
| fabrication protocols have changed.
|
| Actually, the B-2 was one of the first military aircraft
| designed with CAD.
|
| https://www.northropgrumman.com/wp-
| content/uploads/B-2-Spiri...
|
| (search for "NCAD")
| jyounker wrote:
| Preventing the loss of manufacturing capability is one of the
| reasons for offering military aid to friendly countries. We
| give them money to buy weapons, but they are obligated to buy
| certain weapons systems with that money.
|
| For example, the Saudi's really don't need all those M-1s
| they buy from us (with money we give them), but we offer the
| it keeps our production lines open and active.
|
| It's a devious way of laundering military readiness expenses.
| godelski wrote:
| Even if you're not innovating everything you want to reverse
| engineer enemy systems because you want to discover
| vulnerabilities. This is common practice.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| US DOD and their industry partners definitely has this
| capability already. If they're putting this call out there then
| there's a real need, not a covert effort to promote the
| discipline of reverse engineering.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Also, to quote Independence Day:
|
| > You don't actually think they spend $20,000 on a hammer,
| $30,000 on a toilet seat, do you?
|
| The budgets they use for secret reverse engineering aren't
| booked as any kind of reverse engineering.
| jessaustin wrote:
| One fears we'd be shocked by how much is actually going to
| General Smith's brother-in-law's toilet-seat dropship
| company. We'd like to think that Pentagon auditors could
| find that sort of thing, except that Pentagon people tell
| us continuously that they are _unauditable_.
|
| https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/pentagon-audit-
| bud...
| magtux wrote:
| This happens even outside Defense in all specialized industry. I
| was once asked if I could reverse engineer a part for a 30 year
| newspaper stacking machine in a printing press. Very interesting
| stuff and a consequence of being niche.
| starpilot wrote:
| Also in auto repair. A shop told me they wanted to take a
| gasket from the engine, draw the part, then send it to a
| machine shop to have it fabricated.
| [deleted]
| pvarangot wrote:
| Large scale printing machine setups are insane. I've seen very
| old installations go for prices that are higher or comparable
| to a new setup just because you know the throughput and you
| know the civil engineering is sound.
| foobarian wrote:
| Try most web companies :) I'm a week into reverse engineering
| ancient URL canonicalization at my new place... sigh
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Exactly. We're dealing with:
|
| - Limited production run. These aren't Ford Mustangs or Toyota
| Priuses with hundreds of thousands and millions being produced.
| There were 21 built over 13 years. This also leads to the
| consequence that each one should be considered a bespoke
| creation and not a "copy" of the others (even ignoring the 20+
| years of individual maintenance work they've each had).
|
| - Time. It's been 21 years since the last one was produced in
| 2000. Whatever facility produced this has long since lost that
| capability.
|
| - Aging workforce. Whoever designed it is likely retired, and
| could even be dead at this point. Certainly the senior
| engineers who may have been 40+ when the project started in the
| 70s/80s. Even if they weren't retiring and dying, the people on
| the project have been doing other things for 20+ years.
| lambda2001 wrote:
| The last part is extremely true. I have known many engineers
| that worked on the B-2 and have since retired. There's very
| little chance many of them would come out of retirement and
| honestly I don't think the government would pay for that.
| azernik wrote:
| And even if they did, no one remembers that well the things
| they did decades ago.
| whalesalad wrote:
| The B-2 is ancient, doesn't seem very surprising.
| Voloskaya wrote:
| It is by no mean ancient.
|
| The introduction of the B-2 in service was ~24 years ago, this
| is one of the most recent jet in the US air force. By military
| standard it's definitely young.
|
| There are only 2 planes in service in the US more recent than
| that, the F-22 and F-35 (not counting transport aircrafts).
|
| Those planes are designed for lifespans of 50-100 years.
| whalesalad wrote:
| My dad was at the Skunk Works for 20 years. He then went on
| to work at Northrop for a good chunk of time as well.
|
| The B-2 was started in the 70s and the maiden flight occurred
| while I was still baking in the womb.
|
| I realize aircraft can live a long time and can be
| retrofitted and upgraded with modern technology - but all
| things considered it is old.
|
| Not saying ancient is bad, either, but as far as
| organizations go, org knowledge, handoffs of info and books
| and writing etc... I am not surprised to see the need for
| reverse engineering.
| Daho0n wrote:
| It first flew 31 years ago. If that is ancient what is the F-16
| that first flew 49 years ago?
| Jtsummers wrote:
| I had to check, it's not as ancient as some other bombers with
| B-2 first flight occurring in 1989. I met a pilot who flew on
| the same B-52 as his father, and his grandfather had flown some
| of the first B-52s. This was in the 00s, about 15-18 years ago.
| aphextron wrote:
| It's impossible to overstate how long these things have been
| in service. The oldest B-52 airframes still in active service
| were built longer ago than the first flight of the Wright
| brothers was when they were built.
| rstupek wrote:
| And likely to be in service for another 30 years. A 100
| year airframe
| [deleted]
| feralimal wrote:
| Yes, as the US cedes the economy to China, they will also surely
| become stronger militarily. And with the US (and other Western
| countries) in a perpetual lockdown in the coming years, which
| will accelerate the transition - we had better make sure we are
| able to copy the tech!
| flyinghamster wrote:
| This brings up an important principle: the higher the tech, the
| shorter its lifespan. A cellphone from the 1980s won't function
| anywhere but in a Faraday-caged lab equipped with a suitable cell
| site, while 2G and 3G systems are fast disappearing. Only
| recently have landline telephone exchanges begun to drop support
| for pulse dialing, but otherwise, a rotary-dial desk phone from
| 100 years ago would still work today, and DTMF dates to 1963.
| projektfu wrote:
| I read once that if you tried to build WWII-era aircraft
| according to specs and mechanical drawings, they wouldn't fly.
| The real design was found in the dies and jigs that were adapted
| after many iterations and test flights.
| Qw3r7 wrote:
| You might have fitting issues with what I like to call "slide
| ruler error".
|
| How things came to be and are, are often at times not
| documented. Dimension and tolerancing is lost over time too.
| LeonenTheDK wrote:
| That's an interesting though, like software documentation that
| hasn't been updated over years of patches.
|
| Do you remember where you read that? Sounds like an interesting
| bit of history.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| Also sounds like a git repository where people were working
| on local branches to do production work and then when they
| left the company, never pushed their branch upstream.
| kelchm wrote:
| That's assuming there is a git repo or any kind of version
| control at all.
| oehtXRwMkIs wrote:
| They're not assuming. They're analogizing.
| azernik wrote:
| A long write-up of an equivalent for the F-1 engine is here:
| https://arstechnica.com/science/2013/04/how-nasa-brought-
| the...
|
| The analogy to out-of-date software documentation is very
| apt. As problems or inefficiencies popped up in the factory,
| they'd change things and just not write them down (because of
| deadline pressure, often). If you wanted to build new ones
| you'd have to either get the factory workers to show you how
| the thing was _actually_ built, or tear down a working
| example to reverse engineer it. (Which has been done!)
| tpmx wrote:
| I only worked tangentially in the field, but I get the feeling
| that modern semiconductor manufacturing is sort of the same,
| except with more excel sheets and the like?
| smhinsey wrote:
| If you find this stuff interesting, pick up a book aimed at
| hobbyist metal lathes. Just reading a little about how you set
| up a tiny home version can give you a whole new level of
| understanding and respect for this kind of stuff. Structural
| components are different but in that era and even to some
| extent today, most precision parts were machined with two
| primary tools: the lathe and mill. Today both would be CNC and
| you'd add other modern tools but the CNC lathe is still a lathe
| and they work the metal in the same fundamental way.
|
| Due to the dispersed mass production in WW2 it's probably not
| totally true that they wouldn't fly without a custom tooling
| setup (it'd be a maintenance nightmare if two examples of the
| same model from different plants diverged dramatically, altho
| of course it happened) but you can be certain that it's of
| critical importance.
| Aeronwen wrote:
| It's because the designs weren't made for mass production.
| The given tolerances were nominal and you were supposed to
| hand-fit parts together.
|
| For mass production, they had to be re-tooled with larger
| tolerances which also allowed for interchangeable parts.
| elevaet wrote:
| The only possible explanation is that the Stealth Bomber was
| indeed crafted using alien technology. /s
| lurquer wrote:
| For many reasons - limited production run, secrecy, and age --
| the need in this case for reverse engineering isn't all that
| surprising.
|
| Nevertheless, these things may become more common if we are at
| the apex of our civilization.
|
| I could imagine a RFP in Rome from 300 AD or so soliciting bids
| to figuring out how the hell to make an aquaduct, amphitheater,
| or even cement!
| YesThatTom2 wrote:
| Why is the government allowed to reverse engineer AND create laws
| making it difficult for citizens to do so?
|
| Obviously the answer is that it is legal to reverse engineer
| something if you own it.
|
| That said... I think there's an opportunity here:
|
| EFF and other pro-reverse engineering organizations should sue
| and demand that the DOD follow the same laws that citizens
| follow.
|
| If they lose the lawsuit, it be great ammunition (so to speak)
| for stopping anti-reverse engineering laws.
|
| If they win... bonus!
| macspoofing wrote:
| >Obviously the answer is that it is legal to reverse engineer
| something if you own it.
|
| Or the contract allows it.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| > EFF and other pro-reverse engineering organizations should
| sue and demand that the DOD follow the same laws that citizens
| follow.
|
| They'd have to have standing for such a suit and they have
| none. NG and others involved in the design and manufacturing
| might have standing, but they're also unlikely to sue. This is
| not a novel activity for DOD.
| [deleted]
| mgarfias wrote:
| Somethign I haven't seen mentioned here is that the technology
| used to design this thing is waaaaaaaaaaaay old. I know for a
| fact it was designed on an IBM mainframe (dad ran the one that
| the YF-22 was designed on). I can't remember what CAD package
| they used there, but its definitely conceivable that the software
| doesn't even exist anymore. How would you go about building a new
| one if you can't read the CAD files, if you have them.
|
| Hell, the building in hawthorne where dad worked isn't even owned
| by northrop anymore. Its spacex.
| folli wrote:
| Reverse engineering the files night be easier than reverse
| engineering the airplane.
| curiousllama wrote:
| Says the guy not constantly surrounded by aerospace engineers
| :)
|
| What are the odds someone said the phrase "those parts? I
| could mock up copies in a weekend!"
| rlyshw wrote:
| I've done installs of video streaming tech on USAF-managed NIPR
| net and we've had to reverse engineer some of the mechanisms on
| their own network... This does not surprise me at all.
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| > _... Air Force's Rapid Sustainment Office (RSO) was looking to
| industry for a "cutting-edge, automated 3D scanning system,"
| specifically intended to replicate aircraft parts that are no
| longer in production, including at maintenance depots._
|
| You see the real issue? Even if they have the blueprints, it will
| be _difficult_ to even manufacture the parts here.
|
| There's so many more problems like this coming down the pipeline.
| We've effectively lost (or rather acquiesced) almost all
| manufacturing skill to other countries. This was a result of the
| largest corporations taking advantage of labor arbitrage and then
| flooding their home market out of business.
|
| If we really want to reverse this, we need to do what it takes to
| bring manufacturing back to the United States. It's a painful
| reversal of the open-trade policies of the past. Honestly, Trump
| was right to fight so hard for this, even going so far as to
| remove us from NAFTA.
|
| I don't have a good strategy for this, but probably some set of
| minimum manufacturing of _everything_ should happen within our
| borders, say 10%, and accomplishing that target with a
| combination of sticks and carrots.
| wwww4alll wrote:
| Unfortunately, your assessment is very correct. There will be
| no solution and only a slow decline as previous systems become
| obsolete and there no on to fix or upgrade to better systems.
|
| This country is producing more Tik Tok stars than engineers
| that can sustain civilization.
| austinshea wrote:
| What a confident proclamation that is backed up by nothing,
| aside from your limited perspective.
| wwww4alll wrote:
| Name a successful plane developed recently by US military
| or commercial enterprises?
| robotnikman wrote:
| IIRC military hardware (ships, tanks, aircraft, etc) is
| required by law to be manufactured within the country, for
| obvious reasons.
|
| Its some of the little manufacturing the country has left
| Daho0n wrote:
| Yet just landed on Mars, bringing a helicopter. Please don't
| spread FUD.
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| How much of the spacecraft was _manufactured_ in the USA? Are
| we able to create another one without our trading partners?
| 1996 wrote:
| I don't understand why you are getting downvoted.
|
| Being unable to manufactures things we did in the past is
| extremely worrying
| wwww4alll wrote:
| Unfortunately, this will result in failure.
|
| This country simply does not have enough skilled engineers to
| design and produce original parts to requirements. Let alone
| reverse engineer a worn out part.
|
| B2 is product of its time and the amount of engineering resources
| that went into design and development simply can not be
| replicated with current society.
|
| Tik Tok stars make multi millions of dollars, so why would any
| smart person spend years in school and solve complex problems to
| build state of art Stealth Plane.
|
| Boeing can't even produce a simple jet without having it fall out
| of the sky few times, 737 Max.
| lambda2001 wrote:
| I would disagree on this point. I work in aerospace with a a
| lot of smart folks. Boeing's 737 issues are a product of many
| years of poor management choices, but I don't think represent
| the talent of the industry as a whole.
| wwww4alll wrote:
| 737 Max is just the poster child for issues in aerospace.
| There are many other examples, F35, 787, F22, are just recent
| examples.
|
| The flow of smart folks in the pipeline are dwindling. You
| may be working with smart folks, but how many are going to
| retire in few years? Who are going to replace them? Does the
| current education system produce the number and quality of
| candidates needed?
| aarongray wrote:
| Proof the B-2 was built using UFO technology :-P
| azernik wrote:
| A related story:
|
| One of the proposals for future upgrades to SLS (ugh) was liquid-
| fueled boosters using new-build F-1 engines (i.e. Saturn V main
| engines). Unfortunately, the specs were not complete; not only
| was lots of stuff different in the factory than in the drawings,
| but parts of the engine were literally hand-built. Think API
| documentation built on a tight deadline, and published while
| software is still under development.
|
| Luckily, some NASA engineers were already taking one apart and
| modeling the parts for previous SLS work. The new Dynetics
| version ended up much simpler and cheaper because of new
| manufacturing methods, but the reverse engineering process
| required to get there was a serious project in its own right.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/science/2013/04/how-nasa-brought-the...
| kgbier wrote:
| Here is a relevant lecture on the decay of specialised knowledge
| across civilisations.
|
| https://youtu.be/ZSRHeXYDLko
|
| Included is an anecdote about Texas Instruments and loss of
| knowledge between generations of silicon hardware.
| mschaef wrote:
| The US nuclear weapons program had to do something similar in the
| 2000's with a material known as Fogbank. This is used in the W76
| warhead as an interstage material, and they needed more of it to
| keep the weapons in operational state.
|
| Unfortunately, they'd forgotten the manufacturing process,
| decommissioned the plant that made it, and the people that knew
| how to do it weren't around any more. They figured it out, but it
| doesn't necessarily look easy to do (nor does the material seem
| easy at all to make in the first place).
|
| https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/201814/fogbank/
|
| p20 here says more:
| https://www.lanl.gov/science/weapons_journal/wj_pubs/17nwj2_...
|
| Edit: I somehow missed this other thread in this story, despite a
| search: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26334367
| [deleted]
| workergnome wrote:
| My grandfather spent the last part of his career doing this sort
| of work--often on classified projects, I'm told. Usually there
| was an assumption made on the project about the useful working
| life of any part, and the expected duration of the program, and
| they made the "right" number of spares.
|
| Things change, and the factory/tooling/people are long gone.
| Also, often the underlying tech isn't available. But the part
| needs to weigh the same amount, meet the same guidelines, and fit
| in the same hole.
|
| It's cheaper to pay someone to spend the time to figure out how
| to make the replacement then to mothball the entire airplane--
| almost regardless of how expensive it might be.
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