Space Shuttle Officials Search High and Low for Vintage Spare Parts

The Internet auction site eBay, a favorite on-line haunt of memorabilia collectors and bargain hunters alike, is also a popular destination for United Space Alliance officials responsible for tracking down hard-to-find parts needed to keep the space shuttle in business.

Designed and built in the 1970s, the U.S. space shuttle fleet relies on a host of diagnostic and ground support equip-ment powered by computer components that are no longer manufactured.

NASA plans to spend about $1.5 billion over the next five years upgrading its space shuttle fleet for improved safety and operations. While most of that money is targeted toward improving safety, about a third of the upgrades budget is earmarked for projects meant to keep the space shuttle from falling prey to technological obsolescence.

From microprocessors predating the debut of the personal computer to first-generation floppy disk drives that were on their way to the scrap heap before the first shuttle rolled off the assembly line, vintage hardware is on the critical path of each and every space shuttle launch.

To cite just one example, NASA currently relies on diagnostic equipment built in the 1970s to check out the space shuttle's solid rocket boosters prior to flight.

Robert Smith, director of space shuttle upgrades development at Houston--based space shuttle prime contractor United Space Alliance (USA), said the equipment does what it is supposed to do, but finding replacement parts gets tougher every year. At the heart of the machine is an Intel 8086 processor, already an antique by the time the space shuttle Columbia made its maiden launch in 1981.

Replacing the outmoded system is expected to cost more than $20 million, with a hefty chunk of the upgrade cost going for translating the complicated software into a modern computer language, Smith said. Qualifying the new equipment, dubbed the Automated Booster Assembly Checkout System, is expected to take a couple of years.

In the meantime, USA will have to rely on its limited supply of 8086 processors, some of which Smith said were salvaged from discarded medical equipment.

Whenever an outmoded microchip burns out or an antique floppy drive finally calls it quits, it often falls on logis-ticians at USA to find an identical replacement.

The space shuttle is comprised of about one billion parts, counting every nut, bolt, screw and wire harness.

USA, which maintains and operates the space shuttle for NASA, stocks some 60,000 individual spare parts that might be needed in the course of a year. It is a big job, with USA employing 750 people in logistics alone.

Mike Renfroe, USAs director of logistics planning and supportability, said the search for rare computer parts sometimes leads his team to Internet sites such as eBay where purveyors of vintage hardware abound.

"Not so many years ago, we would have sent some sort of correspondence to our procurement people asking them to go through the catalogs, pick up the phones and start calling around," Renfroe said. "Now our guys can type in a part number, hit return, and come up with leads."

Renfroe said USA has had some luck locating certain spares through eBay, where specialty vendors can be found seeking buyers for outmoded computer parts -- just the kind of stuff USA needs to keep tons of 1970s-era test equipment in good working order.

When USA has found something it needs on eBay Renfroe said, it skips the on-line auction and turns the matter over to its procurement office, which has been known to contact a vendor and buy out his entire supply of 8.5-inch floppy drives, for example.

While USA often embarks on something of a scavenger hunt to find parts for special test equipment, the company said it does not resort to such hit or miss methods to secure spares for the orbiter itself. Instead, USA and NASA stock-pile thousands of critical flight spares at a depot in Cape Canaveral, Fla. NASA and USA also operate a machine shop there for repairing and producing parts that no longer make sense to buy on the open market.

As companies that built the original space shuttle hardware go out of business, NASA, USA and other space shuttle contractors sometimes find themselves in a race against time to qualify new vendors.

Parker Counts, NASAs acting deputy associate administrator for the space shuttle, said many of the companies that built the original space shuttle hardware have gone out of business. Qualifying new vendors, he said, is a costly, time consuming process.

NASAs current upgrade strategy is based on the assumption that the agency's $4.8 billion Space Launch Initiative will pave the way for a shuttle replacement around 2012.

NASAs new associate administrator for space flight, Frederick Gregory, earlier this month requested space shuttle officials to prepare a report on what kind of upgrades would be necessary to keep the shuttle flying safely until 2020. The evaluation, led by Counts, is due in June. NASAs current upgrade priorities include a health monitoring system for the space shuttle main engine, a new welding technique for the shuttle's giant orange external fuel tanks, an improved main landing gear and a suite of cockpit upgrades.

NASA's plan calls for implementing all of those upgrades by 2007. The space shuttle main engine monitoring system is due to be installed in 2003 and fly for the first time in 2004.

Should NASA decide it needs to maintain the shuttle until 2020, Counts said he would give first priority to upgrading the main engine health monitoring system and cockpits, as the agency had previously planned. He also said he would look closely at replacing the shuttle's thrust vector control system, which uses highly toxic hydrazine, with a new system that poses less of a health threat to workers on the ground. Smith said there is no shortage of systems that could stand to be upgraded or replaced depending on how long NASA plans to keep the space shuttle in service.

"As you look out to 2020, you have to ask yourself what are the assumptions?," Smith said. "What is the flight rate? Is a second-generation system actually coming? It's a hard question to answer until you get a good set of requirements.

Some White House and Congressional officials are asking the same kinds of questions. At an April 24 space policy forum here sponsored by the group Women In Aerospace, White House and Congressional officials said they hope to pin NASA down on how the agency intends to ensure that its launch needs are met beyond 2010.

NASA is a damn joke. It takes two wheelbarrow loads of paper to get permission to defecate. It has become the greatest pork-barrel in the history of the US. They have missed the mark so many times, I lose count. Now they are being outdone by a bunch of internationals launching from an old oil rig. Sea-Launch is the wave of the future. Let business take over space and keep my tax dollars on the ground.

I saw a video the other day on the X-15 rocket plane. It turns out that North American had an "X-20" on the drawing board, a second generation X-15, that would have flown from the B-52 into orbit. They cancelled it in favor of rockets, because the development time was shorter that way.

If we'd had cheap, reusable X-20 class aircraft by say, 1967, all of us would have had the opportunity to fly in space by now.

Even the shuttle was supposed to be much more reusable than it is. The booster was to have been a "Fly back" design. As it is, they "waste" an external tank every time they fly, and the SRBs of course have to be replaced/refilled, depending on whether they recover them or not. This goes back to Nixon era budget cutting, and keeping developement, as opposed to operating, costs low.

Robert Strange McNamara also cancled the USAF Manned Orbiting Laboratory and Dyna Soar programs. MOL would have had a skylab like capability years sooner, while Dyna Soar would have been a resusable fly back orbiter. (the Dyna Soar orbiter was featured in a SciFI movie (Marooned?) with Ted Jansen of "The Fujitive" fame)

Scrimping during developement hardly ever turns out to be a "good thing", but managers and politicians keep on doing it because it means you can have more messed up programs, rather than fewer good ones.

Parts is parts.

I guess. The military has the same sorts of problems, with support equipment, training equipment (simulaters etc) and the actual operational systems. One division of the place where I work specializes in re engineering old stuff to use new parts. They usually don't get any incrase in functionality when they do it, just better supportability.

A simulator system my division built about 2-3 years ago, is already out of date, although it was built on an open architecture, so that replacing those "old" 400 MHz PCs with newer versions (running Linix of course) is not a big problem..yet anyway. But those are not mil qualified parts, since they operate in a "Lab" type environment. Mil qualified parts are almost by definition obsolete before they get qualified.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.