Sure.
I can guarantee you that the tools the guys retrieving the B-29 were not cheapest tools they could find. Having fixed aircraft at well-below-zero temperatures, I can tell you that you want the sockets, wrenches, screwdrivers, etc. to seat cleanly and easily and without any unnecessary energy expense.
Pffft…US…Drift off topic? Never!
LOL… In all honestly this thread is more than ripe for termination. I think the topic we tried discussing…was discussed…at length.
Just my 2 cents
Blackbird
I have often heard that some of the stuff the government pays what seems like insane prices and a waste of taxpayer money for are highly specialized items made to very specific standards, such as for NASA and all. You aren’t going to use a Harbor Freight anything when the most exacting specifications and reliability are required. So the tool NASA buys may cost a fortune but not be any better than anything else for a shade tree mechanic.
Then there was a story about a $1500 toilet seat. The actual reason was that it was being used in an extremely cold climate and it had heated antifreeze circulating through it so people wouldn’t freeze to the toilet seat.
Now I am not saying the government doesn’t just waste money because they can or because one part doesn’t know what the other is doing. My initial experience with the healthcare exchange wasn’t exactly fun. No one seemed to have an idea of what was going on and even after I was signed up, they told me I wasn’t, then I wasn’t paying although I had automatic payments setup. The data management of this thing is or was horrible.
You have to be careful who you listen to about waste. The key waste areas are travel, building empires with your buddies (including grants), and lack of coordination and planning. If you have to have a one-off item meeting certain conditions, a company needs to be paid for the time and effort. This versus what a normal company would do to develop an item then do a 10,000 piece production run. The per piece cost is naturally different but not many journalists are accountants, managers, engineers, etc.
Cwatkin, that’s a common myth. Truth is that the toilet seat was actually more just the seat, was specifically designed for a specific aircraft, had to pass environmental testing, the design needed to be DOD-STD-480 compliant (meaning no design changes without government approval), the materials needed tracability, and the quantity was not that high… too low to benefit from economies of scale.
Many years ago I worked or a company that had to provide a wrench with a system. The wrench needed to pass environmental testing including sand & dust, the entire design was 480 certified, the quality systems had to be MIL-Q-9858, the materials had to be certified and the wrenches needed to be accepted by the Defense Contract Administrative Services Plant Resident Office (DCASPRO) before it could be shipped… with its multimillion dollar system. It all sounds like overkill… except to the poor guy who has to use the wrench in combat who does NOT want to discover under fire that somebody cut corners and the wrench doesn’t fit.
Then there was a story about a $1500 toilet seat. The actual reason was that it was being used in an extremely cold climate and it had heated antifreeze circulating through it so people wouldn't freeze to the toilet seat.
Most of that stuff is myth…or needs explaining. One of my first jobs out of college was designing radar systems for DOD contractors. One contract - there was a $10,000 price tag for an ashtray. And it actually was that price…HOWEVER…there’s a lot more to the story. Seems that after the radar console was already designed and built the air-force wanted to add an ashtray. That required the designs to be completely redone. The blue-prints were already approved and the first consoles already built. Blue-prints had to be redone…approval process had to be redone…all-in-all over 100 man-hours of work to add a $1 ashtray.
And now you can’t even smoke on base any more.
And now you can't even smoke on base any more.
About time.