B4Ctom1 posted:

Hannibal Rex posted:

That's the peak of the thread, right there.

Phanatic posted:

There are probably still NT computers in DOD.

Murgos posted:

Plane was designed 30 years ago (40?).
Aviation company made/procured a few hundred 'sets' of galley equipment and spares based on a 20 year expected use.
25 years later spares are expired, planes are expected to remain in operation for 20 more years.
Maintenance dude sees that a cup handle broke, orders new cup handle. Cup handle order rejected as unable to be fulfilled.
Maintenance dude orders whole new cup. Order completes.
Supply officer misses $1200 replacement cost cryptically described line item in spreadsheet tracking 28000 different piece parts with $200 million total budget.
Other crews notice Crew A has cup with handle after they smuggly wave it out the window and make dumb videos about it to Sail by AWOLNATION. Everyone orders new cups.
Supply officer say's, What the gently caress is this > $300,000 order for, "Potable fluid chamber, thermal vacuum, sealed x 300 ea poo poo?"
Some admin geek somewhere in the chain leaks story to make a couple of bucks try and still fail to get into reporters pants.
Media attention forces a 3 star and staff to resolve issue immediately, delaying other critical planning
Staff options:
1. Redesign galley to use COTS cup, RoM cost from Boeing/General Dynamics/Northrop Grumman all agree minimum 1.2 billion USD
2. Deprecate use of cup - risk noted that that crews use Mr. Coffee hacked into aircraft maintenance panel with high loss of crew readiness hours due to scalds and burns also high likelihood of eventual aircraft loss due to electrical fire. Estimated cost 18.7 billion USD over 20 years in lost hours, airframes and cargo
3. Reopen original production line to generate more spares. RoM cost $220 million in tools and machining
4. Punt and hire R&D firm to resolve issue on a 'Highest Priority' drop everything and solve this issue open ended 'back up the money truck' T&M contract
#4 selected as it's the easiest path forward and can be seen to be 'resolving issue' immediately.
Engineering contractor firm is hired to resolve issue, charges $400,000 in Time and Materials* to generate a CAD drawing for a thermal printer to make the handle.
$0.50 for each future replacement part.


* 3 months time each Program Manager, Technical Director, Mechanical Engineer, 3D printer operator, Test engineer, Integration Engineer. Materials cost: Software licenses, Tech support, environmental test facility rental, lot of aviation grade raw materials, 20 $1200 cups to make sure it fits and run the testing with

priznat posted:

Potatoes and corrupt senators mostly.

darthbob88 posted:

I had kinda an opposite reaction to all of these. I grew up in SW Washington, and spent a week or two visiting a friend up in Alaska a few years ago. It was properly wondrous, looking at this marvelous new place, and then one morning I was sitting on his porch and realized "Wait, this view is basically the same as I could see from my porch back home. Mountain over there, medium-large trees, little bit of scrub in between." and all the wonder seeped out.

On the other hand, my mother, who also grew up in Western Washington, told me about traveling through the Texas desert with her sisters and being off-put by the emptiness. Then they stopped at a gas station and mentioned this to the attendant, who said something like "Yep, isn't it marvelous? And not a tree to block the view for miles."

Problematic Soup posted:

Amazon is now a nuclear power.