Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

responsiblestatecraft.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 387 posts

Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

#341

Post by ren_engineer »

cushychicken wrote: post #149
Symmetry wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of it, probably. These sort of contracts operate on a cost plus basis where the profit margin that Boeing takes home is fixed ahead of time. I hear from people doing software for defense contractors that they spend a lot of time being bored not doing anything productive, but by collecting their salaries they increase the cost of the software, which is the only way for the defense contractor to increase its profi…

This commenter understands how contracts work. I'll direct all the righteously indignant folks claiming "corruption" to you from now on. XD

charging the government to have employees do nothing(to the extent they complain about not having any work to do) is corrupt. It's the type of stuff you see in African countries with government funds being handed out for work that never happens

especially considering the comment was referring to Boeing, a company notorious for their lobbying to get contracts they don't deserve

Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

#342

Post by jrflowers »

cushychicken wrote: post #24

This is a reducto ad absurdum example of how the US government is paying out the nose to keep a bunch of manufacturing and development work on-shore in the USA. Yeah, sure, it's a trash can, there's no reason it should cost $50k. We're all agreed that's an absurd amount to pay for a trash container. The government isn't just paying for the trash can. They're paying for people to design, tool, and maintain that design…

The government can also buy the $30 trash cans.

Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

#344

Post by nickstinemates »

cushychicken wrote: post #24

This is a reducto ad absurdum example of how the US government is paying out the nose to keep a bunch of manufacturing and development work on-shore in the USA. Yeah, sure, it's a trash can, there's no reason it should cost $50k. We're all agreed that's an absurd amount to pay for a trash container. The government isn't just paying for the trash can. They're paying for people to design, tool, and maintain that design…

If that's the case the floor should be much higher. I'm all for a $1m trash can.

Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

#345

Post by rurp »

david422 wrote: post #184
TrackerFF wrote: post #124

I had the pleasure of being involved in a software project where the contractor was one of the usual suspects (Raytheon, Lockheed, etc.). Prior to this, I had no idea why defense projects were so expensive and slow. You have to understand, there are so many levels of negotiation, over the smallest changes imaginable. There's no such thing as "open source code" in these projects, everything is either modified off-the-…

So I worked for a company that had loads of process for even the smallest changes. It was frustrating, but what I came to realize was that the company was not interested in fixing bugs or building features - they were primarily interested in not breaking things/keeping the status quo. This was an established business that was concerned with keeping the business running, not chasing the latest and greatest. Perhaps a…

That kind of slow and steady approach actually sounds pretty reasonable for some cases. Sure it won't win the market for a trendy new consumer app, but a lot of software is basically feature complete and should prioritize stability over whatever's currently cool and exciting.

I have an old account with a bank that has hardly changed its website design in well over a decade. It's great! The information is clearly laid out in tables and everything loads super fast. Every other financial web app I'm familiar with has a much more "modern" design and is categorically worse to use. One site literally takes over a dozen clicks to get to basic information and evey single page load is slooooow.

Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

#346

Post by crazygringo »

tptacek wrote: post #308
crazygringo wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Define properly itemized. How do you allocate the e.g. design and testing and molding one-time costs when you have no idea if you'll ultimately manufacture 5 for a prototype or 5,000 if Congress places a big order?

Just a pedantic note here: if my understanding is correct, the dollars on these trash cans might have nothing to do with design and testing of the trash can, or anything whatsoever to do with the trash can; they might instead just be a pro rata category that a larger procurement gets spread into, and the meaningful number is that larger procurement number. Like, the trash can could be an abstract pro rata line item f…

Absolutely. I was sticking to a simpler example of there being no right answer to how to itemize costs for just a single type of item -- and then when you add in fixed costs that are shared among multiple types of items there's even less of a right answer.

If you have $100,000 of design costs for something made of three components, and each component is equally difficult to design but they're all designed together, and the manufacturing cost of each component is $500,000, $10,000, and $100... then how do you itemize the design costs?

Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

#347

Post by giantrobot »

sailfast wrote: post #166
cushychicken wrote: post #24

This is a reducto ad absurdum example of how the US government is paying out the nose to keep a bunch of manufacturing and development work on-shore in the USA. Yeah, sure, it's a trash can, there's no reason it should cost $50k. We're all agreed that's an absurd amount to pay for a trash container. The government isn't just paying for the trash can. They're paying for people to design, tool, and maintain that design…

True! That said, the monopoly plays a role. I bet if you gave these specs to an open bid sheet metal fabricator somewhere in the US they’d replicate it for less than 52K shipped, no?

It's still not going to have a non-trivial cost after testing and certification. Even if it's not 52k it's not going end up a small fraction of that. Certifications can be expensive and can cover the entire process of manufacturing from materials to how it's packaged for shipment.

Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

#348

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

ceejayoz wrote: post #280
mynameisvlad wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s. A. Trash. Can. This isn’t some specialized part that the plane requires to fly. It’s just a trash can. Hell, just go to Target and buy one that’s similarly sized. It would be cheaper to fly across the country to find one at this point.

It is a trash can that must contain a waste fire so it doesn't burn through the wall of the plane or suffocate the crew. It is a trash can that must not fly around the E-3's cabin if they're making evasive maneuvers. It is a trash can that must fit in a specific spot in a plane first made in 1957 and ended production in the 1970s. It must have been confirmed via a vigorous process to fulfill all these requirements an…

> You can not buy one of these at Target

This is a site apparently populated by fairly bright people. I'm struggling to understand why no one seems to get this.

Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

#349

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

hef19898 wrote: post #276
hospitalJail wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>200k to keep four highly specialized military planes in the air is, as stupid as it sounds, almost a no brainer. That implies that the trashcan designed for less would cause failures. Also the cost of the program was 1.3M or something.

That actually depends on how you define failure. Now we come to a peculiarity of aerospace, so excuse the tangent. All aircraft have to be airworthy to be allowed to fly. Those airworthiness criteria are set during initial Type Certification, and more or less set in stone. Changing them requires various amounts of testing, re-certification and abton of paper work nobody in their right minds does voluntarily. One reas…

My background is medical devices (21CFR), not aerospace. The "story" I like to tell about how much procedures matter is the stack of $1,200 single board computers I was offered because when they arrived on the loading dock, the person from Receiving didn't follow the proper procedure, so they couldn't be sent to Manufacturing to be assembled into the $700,000 instrument we sold but were instead heading for the dumpster.

$12,000 in perfectly working hardware that had to be scrapped because someone didn't fill out the proper paperwork. Luckily, we (software dev) intercepted them and found other uses for them.

Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

#350

Post by pradn »

rurp wrote: post #345
david422 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I worked for a company that had loads of process for even the smallest changes. It was frustrating, but what I came to realize was that the company was not interested in fixing bugs or building features - they were primarily interested in not breaking things/keeping the status quo. This was an established business that was concerned with keeping the business running, not chasing the latest and greatest. Perhaps a…

That kind of slow and steady approach actually sounds pretty reasonable for some cases. Sure it won't win the market for a trendy new consumer app, but a lot of software is basically feature complete and should prioritize stability over whatever's currently cool and exciting. I have an old account with a bank that has hardly changed its website design in well over a decade. It's great! The information is clearly laid…

Bank webpages don't need to be more than HTML tables, with perhaps a bit of JS thrown in to ease element collapsing, etc.
Post reply on HN