Thread

1. ggm · 1790747290 · focus · HN ↗

   A couple of questions/observations:

   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.

   1. crote · 1790759658 · focus · HN ↗

      > 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

      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!

      1. nosequel · 1790778186 · focus · HN ↗

         Just to clarify one thing, Edwards AFB still has a lot of those highly-skilled engineers. Edwards has a huge machine shop with all the fancy tools and the engineers in there job is mostly making one-off replacement parts for planes. NASA and the Air Force are still flying all sorts of test planes out there and they often need some part they can no longer get from the manufacturer. They drop the spec for the part and it gets made, sometimes it takes a long time, but I promise there are skilled people on that base who can make it.

         IMHO the SR-71 is going to be problematic due to sourcing the materials and fluids more than finding skilled CNC techs.

         source: worked on Edwards for several years

         1. jjuel · 1790780746 · focus · HN ↗

            No doubt there are highly skilled engineers there, but saying "those" might be a stretch. It is possible someone there has worked on an SR-71A, but it last flew 27 years ago. It was originally introduced 60 years ago. A lot of the knowledge about this plane has most likely unfortunately passed on. That isn't to say people can't learn, but it is a tougher starting point. Honestly, almost like starting over I would guess.

            1. Jtsummers · 1790791258 · focus · HN ↗

               USAF has a lot of TOs (technical orders) that include things like schematics for the aircraft and its components. I'd be surprised if that data has disappeared or was incomplete for the SR-71. IME, TOs have been getting worse and systems from the time of the SR-71's period of service were generally better documented, though not perfectly.

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