Government surplus

[John Brownlee <jonnie@chronic.lpl.arizona.edu>]

	There -MAY- have been a time where NASA kept all their old parts,
but I have never heard of any such thing as of late. This is largely
because since the 70's, NASA has moved to a more product oriented approach
to contractual labor, so the contractor would be stuck with the
out-of-spec parts and not the taxpayers. At least this was my experience
with the imager on Mars Pathifinder and a few other like projects. 
	Now, whether or not -SCRAP- steel lots might contain useful parts
is another story. I haven't ever bought any metal other than stock to
machine into smaller parts. Perfect is of course a relative term at best; 
I am doing the analysis now on my pressure vessels to determine and
characterize the tolerances on those assemblies. I would expect that the
actual tolerances would differ considerably from one hull geometry to
another and with operating depth.

							John

John Brownlee
Lunar and Planetary Lab
University of Arizona
jonnie @ lpl . arizona . edu