Up till three or so years ago the VLA (Very Large Array radio telescope) was using a PDP 11/70. Most of the workstations were Sun Ultra 1 systems that were horribly outdated to a point where I had already sent mine to land fill a few years before. Now they have a spiffy Linux cluster on modern hardware, but the old system was as old as me.
-Bob On Sat, Dec 17, 2011 at 6:44 PM, Jim Lux <jim...@earthlink.net> wrote: > On 12/17/11 9:14 AM, J. Forster wrote: > >> I suspect turret lathes are still used for shortish runs of some of the >> simpler parts, like bushings and similar parts. >> >> Not every shop looks like a NASA facility. >> >> > Oddly, NASA facilities aren't necessarily the most modern or sophisticated. > > It takes an act of Congress to build a new building or make non-repair > improvements. My office and lab at JPL is in an 3600 square meter 2 story > semi-temporary building (161) built in 1954 (before NASA even existed). The > frequency and timing lab is in building 298, an 1800 square meter building > built in and was built in the 70s. Our big highbay spacecraft assembly > building was built in 1961. (To be fair, there is a general plan to > demolish a bunch of small buildings and replace them with larger buildings > sometime in 2020-2030 time frame, if Congress approves). Much of the > infrastructure at Johnson Spaceflight Center (and KSC, as well) was built > for Apollo and followons in the 60s and early 70s > > We don't depreciate equipment, it's bought with capital expenditure or > project funds, and then we pay for maintenance and calibration. A big > project might buy a whole bunch of some piece of gear (e.g. HP8663A) which > we will then use for the next 20-30 years (I just counted about 30 HP8663As > in inventory.). I think we bought a whole pile of those 8663s in > connection with upgrades for Voyager or maybe Cassini. > > As a result, we tend to keep gear forever.. > > Students coming on interviews are always amazed (and not necessarily in a > good way). > > > At least we've moved beyond slotted lines for the most part. > > > ______________________________**_________________ > time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com > To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/** > mailman/listinfo/time-nuts<https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts> > and follow the instructions there. > _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.