Xah Lee's Unixism

[Coby Beck]

"Rupert Pigott" <roo at try-removing-this.darkboong.demon.co.uk> wrote in
message news:1094285694.404322 at teapot.planet.gong...
> Larry Elmore wrote:
> > Rupert Pigott wrote:
>
> [SNIP]
>
> > http://www.ae.utexas.edu/~lehmanj/ethics/srb.htm
> >
> > "Competition for the SRB Contract"
> >
> > "Four companies bid for the contract to design and manufacture the solid
> > rocket boosters (SRBs). Aerojet Solid bid the program at $655 million,
> > United Technologies at $710 million, Morton Thiokol at $710 million, and
> > Lockheed at $714 million. All the bids were relatively similar in both
> > price and technology. Based on cost, the NASA advisory panel recommended
> > that the contract be awarded to Aerojet; they believed that money could
> > be saved without sacrificing technical quality by choosing the lowest
> > bid. NASA administrator Dr. James Fletcher overruled this recommendation
>
> [SNIP]
>
> Even if hypothetically superior Aerojet boosters were used I would
> bet a life's salary that mismanagement would nail them in the end...

You will never understand past mistakes with an attitude like that.."Oh
well, who knows?  It could have been worse!"

> Consider this : If the tables were turned and an Aerojet booster
> exploded in the sky I'll bet the armchair QBs would be asking why
> were Aerojet chosen over Morton-Thiokol who had more experience of
> building large solid-fuel rockets.

And there would have been a clear answer:  they had the lowest bid and a
committee responsible for technical evaluation approved them.

-- 
Coby Beck
(remove #\Space "coby 101 @ big pond . com")