Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ncrlnk!ncrcae!hubcap!gatech!uflorida!haven!uvaarpa!hudson!bessel.acc.Virginia.EDU!gl8f From: gl8f@bessel.acc.Virginia.EDU (Greg Lindahl) Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle Subject: Re: New Topic Message-ID: <801@hudson.acc.virginia.edu> Date: 21 Nov 88 21:22:37 GMT References: <804@hadron.UUCP> Sender: news@hudson.acc.virginia.edu Reply-To: gl8f@bessel.acc.Virginia.EDU (Greg Lindahl) Organization: Dept. of Astronomy, University of Virginia Lines: 28 In article <804@hadron.UUCP> klr@hadron.UUCP (Kurt L. Reisler) writes: > [...] >Avtech (probably misspelled) is located in Winchester Virginia, not West >Virginia, and has been back in business for the past two weeks. Seems >that when the shuttle program went on hold, NASA canned the contracts to >purchase the rayon that is used for the shuttle engines. Avtech is the >ONLY supplier in the US. Avtech did shut down for about a week. The >resulting fast shuffle and finger pointing did result in 2 large >contracts (one from NASA and one from the DoD) which will keep Avtech >running (and polluting) for the next few years. > >It is interesting that this was allowed to happen at all. NASA only buys a tiny fraction of the plant's total output. The agreement is that the company is going to run off a several year's supply for NASA, and if they go belly up NASA owns the technology to make the necessary stuff and can get somebody else to do it. It happened in the first place because the company is apparently managed horribly. NASA did the right thing by making sure they have the technology and can arrange second-sourcing. -- greg ---------- Greg Lindahl internet: gl8f@virginia.edu University of Virginia Department of Astronomy bitnet: gl8f@virginia.bitnet "grad students don't need disclaimers; the department doesn't care what I think"