NASA asked several former SR-71A staffers to help secret restart
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NASA asked several former SR-71A staffers to help secret restart
Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.
ggm · · focus · HN ↗
1) when people say "destroyed the jigs, tools and spares in 2007" What do they actually mean? Burying things isn't destroying. Putting them in a furnace is destroying. Is it possible that both parts, and tools actually are recoverable e.g. from the seabed? The dimensional stability might be off, but to help reconstruct tools, it's not nothing. Likewise digging up something buried in its packing crate is not rocket science.
2) "that would be ludicrously expensive" doesn't mean much any more. It's not unlike "we can't make a saturn 1 any more because the tools were destroyed and it would be ludicrously expensive to make an F1 engine" -well yes, but thats not impossible, it's just unlikely and expensive. So maybe this is unlikely, expensive but ... has a unicorn sugar daddy?
3) there are craft in all sorts of places. Not just on sticks outside NASA property. I am not a historian or a federal government employee, but I wouldn't think it impossible for people to ask other agencies to let you inside the shell and remove the bits you want, or even ask for it back. The one on a stick in Balboa Park San Diego might have associated boxes of bits-and-bobs..
4) its a titanium alloy. It's temperature and corrosion resistant, noting some things (like chlorine according to the web) are bad for it. It's not made of pure chinesium or balsa wood. Interior surfaces would be in pretty good shape.
crote · · focus · HN ↗
The bigger problem there is that we don't have the people any more.
The Rocketdyne F1 was the pinnacle of hand-crafted engineering, with each engine being slightly different and the people having to account for those differences during assembly. It has a whole bunch of complicated welds which require a lot of tweaking, adjusting, and literally days of welding work? Neil's got to go to the moon, so you better get to it!
Those highly-skilled highly-specialized engineers don't exist any more, and for a good reason: with CNC and robots we can achieve far superior results for a fraction of the cost. It just requires the designers to make it automation-friendly from the start. Those skilled people retired (and by now died) without a replacement, because the job had become obsolete.
So no, we literally cannot build a new Rocketdyne F1. We can design and build a better F1-like engine, though!
throwawayffffas · · focus · HN ↗
As far as I know that is still not true. Manual welding provides less defects and higher quality welds. Provided one has experienced welders. The cost is much lower for robotic welding but the results are still not as good as manual welding.
> Those skilled people retired (and by now died) without a replacement, because the job had become obsolete.
The skills can be acquired by new people.
Regardless I believe the industry has moved to 3d printed parts for engines due to lower costs, higher throughput. And in either case rigorous inspections are the way to get reliable parts.
I do agree that they cannot build a new F1, but they can build a new better model. But I believe that has to do with engineering and the loss of the contextual knowledge and experience building these things, the loss of why the design settled at what it did, why the processes settled to the ones documented, the undocumented knowledge the people building these had.
This knowledge can be rediscovered, but it would be easier/cheaper to start with a new design and acquire that knowledge organically.
bluGill · · focus · HN ↗
They can be. However it will be expensive to train them. (starting with figuring out what training is needed - probably a lot of trial an error because not all of this was written down) Also you will need to pay people to get this training - they won't pay for it themselves since it is unlikely to be a useful job anywhere else anymore so they have better investments in their time/money.
Tangurena2 · · focus · HN ↗
I remember a Wall Street Journal article about 25 years ago where business leaders were upset that there was a "terrible" shortage of Swiss-style machinists in the US (whose daily output of tiny stuff would fit into a shot glass). And that they had to import those machinists from Germany.
Buried in the lede was that to get the skill level needed requires an apprenticeship that took at least 10 years. Germany provided that with trade schools and subsidies for hiring apprentices. In the US, the Cold War provided the money and incentive for aerospace and defense companies to subsidize that apprenticeship. High schools used to supply much of that trade education. I remember the high school that I was going to attend in NJ had vocational programs (for boys) in vending machine repair, machine shop and auto repair. Vocational education moved from high schools to community colleges. Along the way, community colleges went from free (for students) to something students have to pay for.
So the question becomes "who is going to pay for this?" I don't believe that what would be needed can possibly be done in America.
lovich · · focus · HN ↗
Everytime it’s come up people always argue that if you train the employee they’ll just leave for more money once they’re skilled.
Somehow just paying them the market rate so they stay, or even making a (shudders) contract with the employee to stay for X number of years in exchange for the training costs is never an option.
They’d rather have the position stay empty or outsource outside the country even if that has associated issues with shipping costs or quality control.
MentalM · · focus · HN ↗
But your competitors can pay them more anyway, because they have not spend their money on training.
> a (shudders) contract with the employee to stay for X number of years
Literally shudders. Employer has no practical way to ensure adequate quality of work from their employee. Generally it is not a problem, because employer can get rid of those workers one way or another, but when you have spent money upfront... Shudders.
lovich · · focus · HN ↗
> But your competitors can pay them more anyway, because they have not spend their money on training.
No, they spent their time without even having a partially trained employee and just having empty positions. If they are still outcompeting you, access to labor wasn’t your problem.
You can structure a contract so that the company has the right to fire for performance still. It’s how moving bonuses are normally done with a “you’ll work here for X year/s or return the bonus”