Go NASA Contractors!!

Woops, We put the gear in backwards. Now, I realize mistakes happen, and things might be designed poorly(to fit in more than one orientation)...but give me a break.

There are 2 things that stand out to me about this story. First, there was more than one of these put together wrong. At least one of old ones had been put together wrong, and the new set also one in backwards. They also apparently found one of them in another shuttle as well, bringing the total to at least 3 assembled incorrectly. I can understand one of 16 getting through inspection. Not 3. That's almost 25%. I'm not going to a doctor that only gets 75% of his surgery right.

Secondly, this is America, arguably the most industrialized nation (okay, maybe Japan) in the world. The company that makes these, can't produce them fast enough in my opinion. They have "enough spare parts in house to build up two of the four actuators" for a spring 2005 launch. If you look at the picture of the actuator, its fairly good size. Are the tight (probably) tollerances needed for such a device the thing that's keeping them from being able to produce them a a decent rate? I would think with today's machining technology, something like that should be able to be produced rather quickly.

Good think I pay taxes that let people who obviously never played with LEGO's enough put together Space Shuttles.