Bidding Against NASA

From: Joe <rigdonj_at_cfl.rr.com>
Date: Mon May 13 14:02:26 2002

   I asked a friend of mine at NASA about this and here's his reply. As Dick said, the whole thing is "Greatly Exaggerated."

  For the ones of you that may not be aware of it, NASA, military contractors, universities and many businesses are ALWAYS looking for old hardware to keep their specailized systems going. I've sold a ton of HP equipment to many of them for spares. I even sold one HP 9000 that is now in Antarctica. Their old one died suddenly and they flew someone from South Africa to the US to pick this one up and then flew with it to Antarctica. In many cases the users would have to go through a lengthy and costly process to certify new systems so it's better to buy replacement parts for the old system instead of upgrading. For example, last year I repaired two HP-41 calculators for Air France and I was WELL paid for it. I asked them why they didn't upgrade to HP-42s that are SW compatible with the HP-41 or to a newer calculator with rewritten SW. They said that since they were using them INSIDE the Concorde it was considered flight hardware and that it would take at least three years and !
 cost in excess of $20,000 to certify a replacement.

   Joe


>> Ray,
>>
>> Have you heard anything about this? It sounds pretty wild to me.
>>


>
>Very possible. The old Launch Processing System (LPS) uses "Micomp"
>floppies. NASA is using the Shuttle way beyond the life expectancy. Many
>of the old instruments are breaking down. NASA goes looking for an exact
>replacement because it would cost too much to re-qualify new hardware. This
>probably goes for firmand software too.
>
Received on Mon May 13 2002 - 14:02:26 BST