MIflyer
1st Lieutenant
Back around 1980 I was the USAF Program Manager for the Thor space booster. At the time we had ten Thors left in the inventory and no payloads for them to launch. The last payload that was planned to fly on the Thor had outgrown it and moved to Atlas and a national decision had been made ten years before to phase out all expendable launch vehicles and use the Space Shuttle, so no suitable payloads would be forthcoming. We were planning on shutting down the program and I had to contend with people asserting that there were payloads out there, somewhere, and we just had no looked hard enough.
One possible use for some of the Thors arose, testing to determine the vulnerability of ballistic missiles to high power lasers. Five of the Thors were still in essentially the IRBM configuration and had been among those that had been stationed in the UK back around 1960. Those Thors would be suitable targets for the USAF Airborne Laser Lab, but had earlier model engines than the rest of the fleet and used different igniters. So MDAC got a quote to manufacture some of the old igniters and then asked me to look over the response to their quote and see if any of the material substitutions were a problem; some items available in the late 50's could no longer be purchased.
I looked at the materials list and something caught my eye right away, 1 pound of solder was $250. Okay, so that was special space/missile solder, right? Uh, no, I recognized the spec; QQ-S-571 was what you got if you went to Radio Shack.
I started looking at the rest of the items. Some epoxy was specified and an expert told me that product was what you got if you went to the hardware store. Then I saw another couple of items, "Opener, Can" with a military specification, Quantity: 2.
The igniters were stored in cans and the original specification called for a couple of can openers to be included in the box. After all, it would be very embarrassing to miss participating in WWIII because you could not find a can opener. So these were special anti-sparking explosive qualified military grade can openers, right?
Looking up the milspec, I found that these were modern versions of the legendary WWII C-Ration can opener, called the "P-38" (by the way there was a larger version called the P-51, too).
Those two P-38 can openers were only going to cost us $3000.
I realized what had occurred. The igniter manufacturer sent out its own quote and got back a response from the can opener maker. The minimum order quantity probably was several thousand and they would take the two them needed out of the shipment and surplus the rest. I suddenly understood why so much brand new material ended up on the surplus market.
I went to K-Mart and bought a couple of similar can openers for less than $2.00, to illustrate to our three star general how procurements can go wrong.
One possible use for some of the Thors arose, testing to determine the vulnerability of ballistic missiles to high power lasers. Five of the Thors were still in essentially the IRBM configuration and had been among those that had been stationed in the UK back around 1960. Those Thors would be suitable targets for the USAF Airborne Laser Lab, but had earlier model engines than the rest of the fleet and used different igniters. So MDAC got a quote to manufacture some of the old igniters and then asked me to look over the response to their quote and see if any of the material substitutions were a problem; some items available in the late 50's could no longer be purchased.
I looked at the materials list and something caught my eye right away, 1 pound of solder was $250. Okay, so that was special space/missile solder, right? Uh, no, I recognized the spec; QQ-S-571 was what you got if you went to Radio Shack.
I started looking at the rest of the items. Some epoxy was specified and an expert told me that product was what you got if you went to the hardware store. Then I saw another couple of items, "Opener, Can" with a military specification, Quantity: 2.
The igniters were stored in cans and the original specification called for a couple of can openers to be included in the box. After all, it would be very embarrassing to miss participating in WWIII because you could not find a can opener. So these were special anti-sparking explosive qualified military grade can openers, right?
Looking up the milspec, I found that these were modern versions of the legendary WWII C-Ration can opener, called the "P-38" (by the way there was a larger version called the P-51, too).
Those two P-38 can openers were only going to cost us $3000.
I realized what had occurred. The igniter manufacturer sent out its own quote and got back a response from the can opener maker. The minimum order quantity probably was several thousand and they would take the two them needed out of the shipment and surplus the rest. I suddenly understood why so much brand new material ended up on the surplus market.
I went to K-Mart and bought a couple of similar can openers for less than $2.00, to illustrate to our three star general how procurements can go wrong.