Does Michoud Have Welding Issues?
Incorrectly Built SLS Welding Machine To Be Rebuilt, Slashdot
“A giant welding machine, built for NASA’s multi-billion dollar Space Launch System (SLS), has to be taken apart and rebuilt because the contractor failed to reinforce the floor, as required, prior to construction: “Sweden’s ESAB Welding & Cutting, which has its North American headquarters in Florence, South Carolina, built the the roughly 50-meter tall Vertical Assembly Center as a subcontractor to SLS contractor Boeing at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. ESAB was supposed to reinforce Michoud’s floor before installing the welding tool, but did not, NASA SLS Program Manager Todd May told SpaceNews after an April 15 panel session during the 31st Space Symposium here. As a result, the enormous machine leaned ever so slightly, cocking the rails that guide massive rings used to lift parts of the 8.4-meter-diameter SLS stages The rings wound up 0.06 degrees out of alignment, which may not sound like much, “but when you’re talking about something that’s 217 feet [66.14 meters] tall, that adds up,” May said.”
Keith,
Perhaps you could get someone at NASA to answer these questions:
1. Where does Todd May work? Michoud or Huntsville or somewhere else? If Michoud, how did he not see this?
2. Are there any NASA employees from the SLS project at Michoud?
3. Are they supposed to be performing contract oversight?
4. How could they not notice that the floor and foundation of the Michoud facility was not dug up and rebuilt prior to the installation of this welder. It has to be in excess of 8.4M. Kind of hard to miss.
5. What is the cost of this error? In dollars and time (and with any government job time is money because they don’t layoff employees while they wait for something to do.)
6. What is the penalty that Boeing will incur because of this mistake?
Thanks,
1) his workstation is listed as being at MSFC
2) maybe one or two
3) no, they just inspect the final product before taking over, there are suppose to be mandatory inspection points
4) it wasn’t in the QC report submitted to them by the contractor
5) who knows, but probably less than you think
6) so far, ZERO, I wouldn’t be surprised if Boeing doesn’t make money on this, that is how it usually works, screw something up and get paid even more
‘Asked why ESAB did not reinforce the foundation as it was supposed to, May said only it was a result of “a miscommunication between two [Boeing] subcontractors and ESAB.”‘
How do we reconcile that with Boeing previously talking about the big job that was done reinforcing the foundation? Were they hallucinating? Was the work done, but done incorrectly? What delay will this cost?
From a March interview with:
Virginia ‘Ginger’ Barnes
Vice President and Program Manager,
Space Launch System,
Boeing Space Exploration
… Everything at Michoud goes through that tool.The 50-meter-tall Vertical Assembly Center uses a technique called friction stir welding to bond pieces of metal without melting them or using filler material to seal joints. Credit: NASA
Q: And what’s the status of the Vertical Assembly Center?
A: We are still in the process of checking out the tool. We expect it will be fully functional around the midsummer time frame, which is later than we had hoped. It should have completed certification in the first quarter but we’re moving that to the second quarter.
Q: What’s the problem?
A: We have run into an issue with alignment of the tool, and we’re working to sort out our options for recovery. The rails that guide the material lift ring were slightly misaligned and wouldn’t allow complete translation over the entire height of the Vertical Assembly Center.
Q: In other words, the ring cannot lift the different parts of SLS’s stages as high as it needs to. What caused that?
A: That’s part of what we’re studying right now. There are a lot of things that could cause the alignment to be wrong: if the tool was not built properly, or if it was not checked out properly, or if the foundation under the Vertical Assembly Center shifted. We have been clipping along and have actually had very few issues. This is one we’re working through right now and I have every confidence we’ll work through it.
Q: How could the foundation be a problem?
A: The foundation that was already there at Michoud was too weak to support the tool.
We had quite a job to reinforce it, to dig it out and then put it back so it could hold up the Vertical Assembly Center.
To give you context for the magnitude of the new foundation, Louisiana is not known for its hard soil, and the new foundation that we laid for the Vertical Assembly Center would hold the largest building in downtown New Orleans, 1 Shell Square.
” the new foundation that we laid for the Vertical Assembly Center would hold the largest building in downtown New Orleans, 1 Shell Square.”
When I saw that comment I thought it was rather odd.
One Shell has 500 piling under it. Each is 210 ft long.
The Michoud contractor must have confused feet with centimeters.
They piled up some cinder blocks and said, Mission Accomplished! Under Budget and Ahead of Schedule!
Indeed. Remember the Superdome snafu? That was back under the Edwards’ regime; the pilings were neither long enough nor sufficiently numerous. What a mess.
Louisiana ‘soil’ is the result of river depositions over millennia. It’s a mucky nasty mess and it’s made worse by nearby mineral extraction. Subsurface geology and structural engineering is, well, sorta like rocket science. I imagine that the foundation issue here is a lot more nuanced than reported.
I was in grad school in Baton Rouge in those days.
Ginger Barnes’ last job was presiding over the disintegration of United Space Alliance. Obviously she’s well qualified for this.
After SLS is cancelled can this and other assembly machines be re-purposed, or will they be scrapped?
BFR
Really doubt that Musk & SpaceX will by interested in acquiring a facility with lots of legacy costs. Especially since SpaceX is already using fiction stir welding on the Falcon 9. More likely a clean sheet new factory for the BFR.
A lot of the legacy equipment is being used around Michoud by contractors (even the movies). I do not know anyone who would use a vertical stir welder that large (now) but then no one ever thought of an 80 meter fan blade and they are building one now out there. I do not think it will be scrapped.
I was making a funny.
There is also the question of whether SpaceX would switch from horizontal to vertical orientation for construction of stages.
The Heavy lift launch vehicle proposed by SpaceX will be to big to move around .. It will be built close to and ON the launch pad.
1. With all due respect, why did no one notice that the floor was not being reinforced? This should have been too big to miss.
2. As a general rule, the chance of screw-ups increases as the square of the number of links in the supply chain.
This is so funny. Countless dogma of how “Only Boeing” can do SHLV because of their “experience”. This is is just rubbish and the sooner Shank and the boys on the hill get off the Boeing money the sooner we can start moving forward.
“Boeing
is leveraging its 50 years of experience in human spaceflight to support NASA’s
requirements with innovative technologies and strategies for exploration beyond Earth
orbit, with the Space Launch System.”
What has Boeing built and flown in the last 10 years? 5 years? 2 years?
Yep.
http://www.boeing.com/asset…
X-37B Military Space Plane, X-51 Waverider, Delta IV Heavy, Ground-based Midcourse Defense system. Those are all within the last 5-10 years.
These photos and the story show the foundation as of Sept 2013 being modified. Must not have been enough.
https://blogs.nasa.gov/mich…
I saw this on Slashdot the other day. It’s interesting that the SpaceNews article it links to is gone. I couldn’t find any other reference to it, other than an article from March (http://spacenews.com/boeing… that said that there was an alignment issue but didn’t specify the cause. I’ve been intrigued about this since I couldn’t find the article.
.001047 radians x 66 meters = 6.9 cm – that would presumable be easily visible. But it should still be possible to realign the rails. Unfortunately it is more difficult to realign the space program.
I wondered the same thing (about the rail alignments).
Are government owned manufacturing facilities still needed? Boeing, Lockheed, and SpaceX all own factories capable of large launch vehicle production, and it may make more sense to give them the flexibility to build and operate their own manufacturing facilities. Moreover, does manufacturing a booster in a vertical jig make sense when it has to be rotated to horizontal for transportation?
I suspect (without evidence in this case) that assembling a huge, but thin walled hollow saggy structure maintains its dimensions better when gravity runs axially. Once everything is stuck together it maintains its rigidity and alignment at all tilts.
There is NO question about it Keith. It is big news here and so many fingers are pointing no one can click a mouse button to get any work done.
Previous job by same team:
http://www.hknet.org.nz/tra…
Barnes’ replacement looks like someone who might be able to rescue the SLS (if that is something worth doing):
http://www.spaceflightinsid…
How will this affect the launch the launch time line? Will it be a 6 month to year delay?
There shouldn’t be any delay in the launch because of this according to SpaceNews. http://spacenews.com/boeing…
Its hard to say. That article was from before they determined the cause. They are at minimum disassembling and rebuilding the system. How long and what else must be done is not clear.