Giorgio wrote:Il looks amazing to me that they need 2 weeks to quote it.....
I suspect you are the "launch" customer for titanium. Now that someone (you) is ready to pull the trigger, they (imaterialize) actually have to get ready to do what they say they can do. They may be finding the difficulties greater than they had anticipated.
At least. this is the most charitable interpretation I can put on the subject.
This situation sort of reminds me of the time our Colonel decided to take a satellite out of storage and launch it. Then the chief of our Aerospace Corp. contingent had to summon the moral courage to go back and to tell the Colonel launching that particular satellite wasn't going to be a simple (it needed retrofitting of a complicated fix) or short (a complete series of tests would be needed) as the Colonel had originally been told.
Well, I am told the Colonel threw the Aerospace guy out of his office.
Long story short: we launched that satellite and it worked fine, but it was a tough road getting there. The interesting thing about this story is what happened later, but that is a different story.
rjaypeters wrote: Now that someone (you) is ready to pull the trigger, they (imaterialize) actually have to get ready to do what they say they can do. They may be finding the difficulties greater than they had anticipated.
At least. this is the most charitable interpretation I can put on the subject.
Not a bad interpretation of the situation. I didn't actually think to an interpretation like that.
rjaypeters wrote: The interesting thing about this story is what happened later, but that is a different story.
You might as well disclose it as there is not much going on at the moment to distract us. It might be a good time for an interesting story.
The Rest of the Story: So our Colonel bit the bullet, summoned his moral courage and informed his superiors about the delay, increased cost, etc. ...and we launched the satellite and it worked fine.
Then our contractor walked in and submitted an additional bill (tens of millions of dollars) and schedule delay (months) on the follow-on contract (for a new generation of satellites - for which I was partially responsible) because of the work the Colonel had caused to be done (pulling the older satellite out of storage, etc.).
Try though he might, our Colonel could not get around the fact he had used the same resources (facilities and people) at our contractors' (more than one it turned out) which were required to prepare and launch any of our satellites.
The only recourse we had was to punish the contractor on the Award Fee for "my" contract. I remember the look on the contractor's project leader's face when I told him he wasn't getting the full fee. He told me later he had to write letters to his bosses to explain the situation.
All because none of us thought about what inserting unanticipated work would do to the follow-on contract. Our Colonel was hot to launch a satellite (which had been intended to be a hanger queen), the contractor was hot to help out (and they really did), but the customer (the USAF) had to pay for the additional work sometime on some contract.
I believe if the contractor had put in writing and rubbed the Colonel's nose in the fact there would be additional charges and schedule impacts (even if un-specified at the time) to the follow-on contract while everybody was hot to launch the hanger queen things later would have been a lot less difficult. But from this history the junior officer (me) learned to ask: "What question haven't I asked that I should?"
I don't think so. In the end, we (the USAF) should have expected the cost and schedule impacts. We caused the additional work, but concentrated so hard on launching the hanger queen we didn't think about the larger implications.
The Colonel might have had a chance for a star before this episode, but I doubt it (he was just a little bit too rude and crude for higher rank, IMO). He came from flying fighters, what can you expect?
We did launch a good satellite and I believe good quality outlasts a higher price tag*. So, I think our reputations were not damaged by the episode, but the Colonel had it in for that contractor ever after.
* While poor quality trumps a cheaper price every time.
Yeah, the more I look at the above, I realize it is too much.* I'd prefer to put a KCDodd-like Wiffleball surface inside rings and leave it at that.
Even without the ring-close approach leaks it was starting to get a bit "pin-cushiony" for my taste. The cusp leaks provide a convenient way to suspend the core or Wiffleball surface inside the rings but assembling the leaks would be a major pain for the customer. Since the KCDodd-like Wiffleball surface as-is is unprintable, I'll split it (so it will be) and arrange for a hole at the bottom for a short stand (maybe out of glass) to elevate the Wiffleball surface to the right height.
* As much as I dislike this saying, it often is true: "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom; for we never know what is enough until we know what is more than enough." ~ William Blake
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Roger wrote:
DeltaV wrote:Impressive, sir. But, I would argue against the "nub" leaks being so prominent. 14 cusps, not 26.
If the Alphas exit at 8 cusps, is it proper to extrapolate those 8 cusps would be the "leakers"?
I believe Dr. Nebel stated (somewhere; I can't remember where, but it was about a year ago) that the alphas almost all exited through the center of the coils, so they exit (primarily) through six cusps not eight.
rjaypeters wrote:I don't think so. In the end, we (the USAF) should have expected the cost and schedule impacts. We caused the additional work, but concentrated so hard on launching the hanger queen we didn't think about the larger implications.
The Colonel might have had a chance for a star before this episode, but I doubt it (he was just a little bit too rude and crude for higher rank, IMO). He came from flying fighters, what can you expect?
We did launch a good satellite and I believe good quality outlasts a higher price tag*. So, I think our reputations were not damaged by the episode, but the Colonel had it in for that contractor ever after.
* While poor quality trumps a cheaper price every time.
Space policy, a world to its own. Who votes for space based radar?
