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The myth of the $600 hammer (1998)

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Re: The myth of the $600 hammer (1998)

#81

Post by Carioca »

sam_goody wrote: post #28
Carioca wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me a lot of the million-dollar space pen vs pencil story

I understood that anecdote to be true. Fisher spent $1M (of "then" money) creating a "space pen", capitalized on the unique opportunity and publicity, and went from a startup to a $60M company. They knew that the astronauts could use a pencil, but that wouldn't be very profitable for them. For Fisher, it was a capitalist triumph, and symbolized American values. For the U.S.S.R. it symbolized U.S. wastefulness, and wa…

The first version I heard went through a long diatribe on how “the US” (implying NASA) spent a long time and a million dollars creating a pen that would work in space and the punchline was “Well, the Soviets just used a pencil”.

Glad to see that this version has been losing ground to better retellings. If you check the Wiki article[1], the urban legend is mentioned

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Pen

Re: The myth of the $600 hammer (1998)

#82

Post by csours »

crazygringo wrote: post #59
arh68 wrote: post #16

The "myth" is quite real, e.g. the $1,000+ coffee cup [1] https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2018/10/22...

It seems like a key factor is: > Wilson told Grassley that this cup is specially manufactured to plug into aircraft systems, and because it connects to the aircraft, the replacements need to be certified as airworthy by the FAA. I'm actually curious what goes into certifying the airworthiness of a heated coffee cup. Could faulty wiring in it legitimately damage the plane's power systems or something? Or cause interfe…

It costs you twice: Once to pay for the testing, and again for the moat that the testing provides.

Re: The myth of the $600 hammer (1998)

#83

Post by giantrobot »

crazygringo wrote: post #59
arh68 wrote: post #16

The "myth" is quite real, e.g. the $1,000+ coffee cup [1] https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2018/10/22...

It seems like a key factor is: > Wilson told Grassley that this cup is specially manufactured to plug into aircraft systems, and because it connects to the aircraft, the replacements need to be certified as airworthy by the FAA. I'm actually curious what goes into certifying the airworthiness of a heated coffee cup. Could faulty wiring in it legitimately damage the plane's power systems or something? Or cause interfe…

Anything electrical can cause interference. The cost of certification is proving that it doesn't. There's also other factors, like what happens if cabin pressure suddenly drops? Will its heating mechanism overheat and start a fire? Will it explode killing the pilot then the plane comes crashing down on an orphanage?

Re: The myth of the $600 hammer (1998)

#84

Post by [deleted] »

zhobbs wrote: post #47
OrvalWintermute wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not a conventional coffee cup. It is a cup that plugs into the electrical outputs on a military airplane. The more that the DoD stands up 3d printing, the less these kind of things will be an issue, particularly once they start doing more 3d printing in metal.

The manufacturing process isn’t the issue, it’s the layers of contractors, subcontractors, and lack of accountability.

[deleted]

Re: The myth of the $600 hammer (1998)

#86

Post by gpm »

sam_goody wrote: post #28
Carioca wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me a lot of the million-dollar space pen vs pencil story

I understood that anecdote to be true. Fisher spent $1M (of "then" money) creating a "space pen", capitalized on the unique opportunity and publicity, and went from a startup to a $60M company. They knew that the astronauts could use a pencil, but that wouldn't be very profitable for them. For Fisher, it was a capitalist triumph, and symbolized American values. For the U.S.S.R. it symbolized U.S. wastefulness, and wa…

The anecdote usually isn't "a private company invested a million of their own dollars into making a 'space pen'", it's "NASA invested a million dollars into making a space pen, while the soviets just used a pencil".

And I mean, you clearly know that version isn't true. As you say, fisher only recouped $1k from NASA (I think was just the original order, I believe they're still used today), and the soviets also switched over to the pen (incidentally at the same price, $2.39/pen). You say "eventually", but the soviets only took a year to switch.

And while we're at it, NASA used pencils before the space pen just like the soviets did, which makes the "while the soviets did something else" part even less true.

> that marketing ploy may have saved the entire spacecraft - the law of unintended consequences

I'm reasonably confident that "avoiding flammable substances that tends to give off flammable flakes (graphite)" was an intended consequence, not an unintended one.

Re: The myth of the $600 hammer (1998)

#87

Post by joshspankit »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #60
bytheirfruit wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely weird. ;) You should let clients know when it's time to 'put up or shut up'. After all, talk is cheap?

I don't follow. What's the context or meaning of put up or shut up? Did you reply to right thread or did I inadvertently misrepresent anything? My point is that on all my projects for 25 years now, it's normal for many roles to need a significant amount of studying to become productive. That studying may involve project or client specific material such as design and architecture documents, functional specs, process a…

If they are indeed replying to you, I suspect they are coming from a freelance background where it’s sometimes beneficial to have a hard line in order to either get the project moving or drop the client (and move on to more serious ones)

Re: The myth of the $600 hammer (1998)

#88

Post by Talanes »

emodendroket wrote: post #74
Alupis wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course the plaintiffs attorney argued coffee should be lower temperature - it literally was their case. And no, there is no coffee professional (organization, individual, whatever) brewing coffee at 140*F. Additionally - 140*F water is still going to burn if you spill it all over your clothing. Lastly, the customer removed the lid of the coffee while between her legs, which is how the cup was crushed and coffee ra…

Nobody is saying the coffee should be brewed at a lower temperature.

That's not an industry standard either though. With a lot of equipment it would be technically impossible, because the pre-heated brew water is what's keeping the standing coffee hot.

Re: The myth of the $600 hammer (1998)

#89

Post by harry8 »

steveklabnik wrote: post #19
NotYourLawyer wrote: post #2

Not surprised. So many stories about an organization doing something that’s evidently crazy turn out to be bullshit. The truth is always more nuanced than what gets reported. People are (almost) never as incompetent/crazy/malicious as it might seem on a cursory review.

The hot coffee lawsuit is the first thing I think of here. Heck even the name is like… whew.

> The hot coffee lawsuit ...

So much lawyers' propaganda. We are engineers here. We are aware that coffee is water that boils at 100 degrees centigrade and gets no hotter than that. Every damn idiot and those more intelligent know full well that writing "Caution: contents hot" in microscopic text does absolutely nothing to make recently boiled water more safe.

Sure we should all feel sorry for someone who is badly burnt. Absolutely we should. It is inhuman not to feel so. And who can fee sorry for a corporation? Nobody should.

And we've let the lawyers use that sympathy to run riot writing themselves cheques on society's labor. As engineers we look at it and cry "Tort reform now!" and it is further and further away? Is it what killed Carter's presidency? Dunno. Last time it was anywhere near having anything done and that was 4 decades ago?

But go ahead and keep repeating it like the water was super heated to a 1000 degrees and writing text on the foam cup stops anyone from being burnt by boiled water.

Or don't. Really, just don't. Just because something sounds insane doesn't mean to say it actually isn't.

Re: The myth of the $600 hammer (1998)

#90

Post by treeman79 »

My dad was in purchasing for various aircraft manufacturers, including McDonnell Douglas and Boeing.

It was literally his job to try and keep this nonsense under control.

It was extremely frequent that the engineers would request some screw with hyper specific requirements and would end up costing dozens of dollars or so per screw. Even more for the specialized tooling that would go with it.

From his perspective, the engineers loved designing new things rather than looking up, if anything previously existed.

So he would try and take the requirements and see if there was some off-the-shelf substitution that would meet the requirements. Saved companies a fortune again and again.

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