[url]http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/12/technology/ebusiness/12NASA.html[/url]
For Old Parts, NASA Boldly Goes . . . on eBay
May 12, 2002
For Old Parts, NASA Boldly Goes . . . on eBay
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
NASA needs parts no one makes anymore.
So to keep the shuttles flying, the space agency has begun trolling the
Internet - including Yahoo and eBay - to find replacement parts for
electronic gear that would strike a home computer user as primitive.
Officials say the agency recently bought a load of outdated medical
equipment so it could scavenge Intel 8086 chips - a variant of those chips
powered I.B.M.'s first personal computer, in 1981.
When the first shuttle roared into space that year, the 8086 played a
critical role, at the heart of diagnostic equipment that made sure the
shuttle's twin booster rockets were safe for blastoff.
Today, more than two decades later, booster testing still uses 8086 chips,
which are increasingly scarce. NASA plans to create a $20 million
automated checking system, with all new hardware and software. In the
meantime, it is hoarding 8086's so that a failed one does not ground the
nation's fleet of aging spaceships.
The same is true of other obsolescent parts, dozens of them.
"It's like a scavenger hunt," said Jeff Carr, a spokesman for the United
Space Alliance, the Houston company that runs the shuttle fleet. "It takes
some degree of heroics."
Troves of old parts that NASA uncovers and buys, officials said, are used
not in the shuttles themselves but in flotillas of servicing and support
gear. Such equipment is found, and often repaired, at major shuttle
contractors around the nation, as well as at the Kennedy Space Center in
Florida, where the shuttles blast into orbit.
That old computer in your basement? NASA is not interested. The agency and
its contractors want stockpiles of old parts to buy in bulk for repairing
old machinery and building inventories of spare parts.
Recent acquisitions include outdated computer chips, circuit boards and
eight-inch floppy-disk drives. "One missing piece of hardware can ruin our
day," said Mike Renfroe, director of shuttle logistics planning for the
United Space Alliance at the Kennedy Space Center.
Recently, Mr. Renfroe said, his team swept the Internet to find an
obsolete circuit board used in testing the shuttle's master timing unit,
which keeps the spaceships' computers in sync. None could be found. A
promising lead turned false. Finally, a board was found. It cost $500.
"That's very inexpensive," Mr. Renfroe said. "To hire a design engineer
for even one week would cost more than that."
NASA's growing reliance on antiquated parts is in some ways a measure of
how far its star has fallen. In the early 1960's, the agency played a
leading role in founding the chip industry. Its mass purchase of the
world's first integrated circuits set the fledgling business on the road
to profitability.
-- continued --