@Robert G. Oler wrote @ January 12th, 2011 at 7:14 am
‘Next year’ means next year. ..

yeap and that is either 12 or 23 months away.

this is a goofy argument…sometime in 2012 Space X will in my view fly a person…take that

Robert G. Oler

“What one doesnt know is that if sub par metal got into the tank at one place…where else is it?”

That’s the big question – why did their 30 year old processes break down? If they failed for this part, who’s to say it didn’t fail on some other hidden part of the ET?

The symptom has been treated, not the problem.

Getting back to Das Boese point, you don’t just grab whatever material is laying around when you’re manufacturing meaningful products. The raw stock is identified by material, and the bills of material and floor work orders call out for the specific material.

And since the material is inventoried by material type and size, one of the many double-checks should have been that they had too much of the right material, and too little of the wrong material. Who OK’d the inventory corrections? Where is the accountability?

This being one of my areas of expertise (Production & Inventory Management), this leads me to believe that they lost control of their manufacturing system long before they finished the last ET. They need to go back to Michoud and do a full audit to determine what else might be bad.

Anywhere else in our economy, this would merit a recall. This is scary.

@ byeman wrote @ January 12th, 2011 at 7:32 am
Uh huh. It has taken years to flush out the ‘can’t fail’ mind set out of a ‘can do’ agency and ‘can’t doers’ have to go. If you feel ‘belittled’ then ‘be gone.’ Bye-bye, byeman.

yes but as you point out what they dont have is a root cause as to how the sub par alloy got into the manufactor of the stringers…

that root cause is the ultimate problem (as you note).

What one doesnt know is that if sub par metal got into the tank at one place…where else is it?

Robert G. Oler

I would add to it that they have no root cause for the problems that they are having…

Well, the article I linked says they’ve identified the root cause: a batch of sub-par alloy was used in the manufacture of a majority of the stringers. Kinda what made me wonder about QA at LM and its suppliers, and how NASA is involved.

That it is now known to be a material flaw they want to fix with bolt-on support structures makes it all the more scary.

yeap you have hit all the high points…I would add to it that they have no root cause for the problems that they are having…

Shannon and all the other folks have simply tossed good engineering management out the window…

Robert G. Oler

You know, rigorous QA testing throughout multiple steps of manufacture is only standard, oh, in every major, modern industrial production process all over the world.

Oh yeah, found yesterday on spaceflightnow:
In any case, engineers are proceeding cautiously in the wake of an incident in which a technician, working to drill out a stringer fastener so a cracked segment could be removed, inadvertently drilled into the underlying skin of the liquid oxygen tank. The damage was minimal and technicians were expected to simply buff out the blemish. But as a result, NASA managers have decided to leave each stringer’s top-most fastener in place and to install radius blocks over fasteners two through seven instead.

“It’s tricky working in the area when they’re that close to the tank,” an official said. “So they decided not to worry about fastener No. 1 on any of these stringers.“

IMHO to even think about flying this tank, unless it’s taken back to LM and completely rebuilt… is insanity.

Leaving an orbiter in orbit is not feasible, especially as a lifeboat is not feasible, plain and simple. The term "feasible" also describes cost aspect.

And the fact that DCSCA challenges this shows another hole in his knowledge about spaceflight.