NASA says metals fraud caused $700mil satelite loss

[thewayne]

A company in Oregon provided fraudulent metal test reports, resulting in the failure of a fairing which didn't fully open. Two satellites were unable to deploy in orbit in two launches in 2009 and 2011, a loss of $700,000,000. The company has settled with NASA for $46mil, which makes no sense to me in relation to the cost of the loss of the satellites, and is barred from future U.S. federal contracts.

The fraud stretched from 1996 to 2015!

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-01/nasa-says-aluminum-fraud-caused-700-million-satellite-failures

Comments

[dewline]

Two decades???

[thewayne]

Two. Decades.  Makes me wonder if some federal inspectors were bought off and lost their jobs.  The Bloomberg article was maddeningly short on details for my taste.

[silveradept]

I would guess there's some grift and kickbacks involved.

[thewayne]

Not an uncommon situation.

[kraig]

One wonders if the $46m was as much as they could afford - much more and they'd go out of business anyway so there's no way NASA was ever gonna recoup the loss? IDK.

[thewayne]

Governments are usually self-insured, so if $46m is all they got from the company, then the rest must have been a complete loss.  I've always been of the opinion that if companies want to be treated as people, then there should be death penalties for them and companies should be driven into insolvency for gross crimes such as this, including board members being banned from serving on corporate boards ever again.