"little bit here in the *east* I believe that
   they did it to save $17.99."

Having worked with Mil-spec qualified parts (only
a step or two below space-qualified parts) it's
more likely those parts were *damaged* during
assmbly or some phase of 'testing' rather than
being delivered from the vendor faulty.

I have yet to ever have seen a Mil-spec part pulled
from stock (either general stock or bonded 'project'
stock) that was defective - contrary to conclusions
that the UT (the Unit Test technicians) usually
arrived at when it took replacing the same part two
(or three times) when 'shotgunning' a new board or
LRU during product test ... usually it was a matter
of device tolerances - and one of my projects was
to re-engineer the electronics in the 3-bay
Panavia LRU 1 test set via an RKT (Retrofit KiT)
to eliminate these 'component sensitivities'.

More likely some of the "unit test" types or
other QC personnel damaged the part (as referenced
earlier) during testing and didn't realize it ...

That's my 'feel' having worked in and around that
particular biz for in excess of a decade ...

Jim

----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter L. Peres" <plp@ACTCOM.CO.IL>
To: <PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU>
Sent: Friday, July 19, 2002 1:27 PM
Subject: Re: [OT]: Hydrogen Powered Cars


> On Fri, 19 Jul 2002, Bob Ammerman wrote:
>
> >Yes,
> >
> >This was Apollo 13...
> >
> >The problem was that a thermostat switch got damaged during testing and
then
> >stuck on while in flight.
> >
> >It turns out the t-stat wasn't rated for the voltage/current it had to
> >switch.
> >
> >Seems to me to be a pretty brainless error, but they were trying to get
the
> >rockets off the ground pretty quickly back then. You know, to beat those
> >nasty communist Russians ;-)
>
> This may be the official line but ever since I started to know the ropes a
> little bit here in the *east* I believe that they did it to save $17.99.
> It must have looked good on the accounting sheets and some beancounter
> probably had an orgasm over it.
>
> I do not want to know what the Soviet equivalent of saving $17.99 is.
>
> Peter
>

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