Boeing overcharged the U.S. Air Force 8,000% above market for soap dispensers

> "Whoops I made $600 from something that cost me $10"

I've written about this here some time ago - you don't pay for the soap dispenser or trash bin itself, you pay for the paperwork showing that it is safe to install this trash bin, soap dispenser or whatnot into this specific model of aircraft or spacecraft, and you pay for the paperwork that details the entire life of every tiny little piece used to manufacture that component. For flight-critical parts, IIRC that goes as far as to documenting the specific lot of the iron ore that was used to make the metal sheets, so in the event of something cropping up where something got fucked up in the mine or the smelter, you can recall every single part that could be affected. And there's lots of testing (and associated waste) at each part of the step.

Anything that goes into an airplane or spacecraft has ridiculous rules attached to it... rules that were literally written in blood. Aerospace is amongst the safest ways of transportation because of decades of crashes and learning from each and every single one.

Your average Home Depot soap dispenser has none of that, if it breaks it breaks.

This is a soap dispenser though. That's not a safety critical component, the soap dispenser breaking isn't going to cause a plane to fall out of the sky, or the weapons system to accidentally go off, it's just a thing for dispensing soap.

Yeah nah, paperwork doesn't cost 8000%. Not to mention Boeing is the one (via massive bribes paid to FAA bosses who are usually "ex"-employees) who gets those regulations written to ensure no other party can bid for $600 soap dispensers.

Shouldn't risk factor into the equation? If your soap dispenser breaks, yeah that sucks and it's maybe a little gross, but you can just replace it with you land. I struggle to imagine what rule about soap dispensers was written in blood.

Surely there's a more cost-effective happy medium somewhere between "just buy the Home Depot 2-for-1 special" and "we ran a background check on the guy who mined the metal"

If you say “cost overrun” 3 times in a row, Elon Musk will appear to install the soap dispenser from Home Depo himself, insult some people and then only charge half what Boeing did. The first time it is used in flight it will explode because as it wasn’t rated for pressure, blinding the pilot and leading to the loss of the aircraft. Musk insults trans people before losing interest in the whole thing, and trump assigns RFK Jr to dismantle “big hygiene”.

How to tell a "real honest paperwork" apart from a money laundering scheme pretending to be justified by some opaque rules in a monopolized domain?

> literally written in blood

Where can we see this literal blood writings?

> That's not a safety critical component, the soap dispenser breaking isn't going to cause a plane to fall out of the sky

Depends on the failure mode. Assume the screws with which the soap dispenser is installed are spec'd to wrong torque and the installation causes stress fractures as a result that end up propagating through the aircraft...

Yes it sounds far-fetched, but aircrafts have crashed due to microfractures caused by improper torques on other components...

> If your soap dispenser breaks, yeah that sucks and it's maybe a little gross, but you can just replace it with you land. I struggle to imagine what rule about soap dispensers was written in blood.

The very second you start making an exception because "a soap dispenser is trivial", other stuff will get labeled as exempt (or treated as such), eventually there will be no one knowing what is exempt and what is not, and someone will treat something as exempt that clearly shouldn't have been exempt, causing an incident.

In aircraft and spacecraft design and manufacture, the rule is "safety by design". Treating everything as "needs to be certified by default" is fail-safe, it eliminates entire classes of incident causes.

Mmmm, this ignores the cause of Boeing's recent failings.

If a piece of military hardware or software fails, one or two or a dozen people die... if they can't eject.

If a piece of civilian hardware or software fails, hundreds of people die. Witness the 737 Max.

The breakdown of the barrier between the military and commercial sides of Boeing has resulted in a catastrophic reduction in quality on the civilian side. So overcharging for soap dispensers on the military side is far more egregious than overcharging for them on the civilian side, because the stakes are actually lower.

If there is to be any continuity to the process of aircraft saftey,that adheres to the pricipals learner from aircraft accident investigation, then there must be a lesson learned from the debaucle of $600 soap dispensers,and a way to do better.I think it quite likely that said dispenser and many other components can be 3D printed in metalurgicaly perfect titainium and then subject to NDT ,while saving weight and money. One of ? the most important lesson learned in aviation to date, is that weight is the enemy, the other is simplicity, : if its not there, it costs nothing, and cant break. To sum up, simplicate and add lightness. Any resistance to that is indicative of other problems.

> because the stakes are actually lower.

I'd actually disagree there. The stakes for military aircraft are higher - assume Russia or China sends a nuclear bomb equipped squad on their merry way to Alaska.

If even one of the US planes has an issue taking it out of the fight, the Russian bomber squad may succeed, dropping a nuke and killing tens of thousands of people.

> I think it quite likely that said dispenser and many other components can be 3D printed in metalurgicaly perfect titainium and then subject to NDT ,while saving weight and money.

You'd still need to pay for the certification and audit trail paperwork, and in addition you'd take a part that has already been certified and replace it by a new one that would need to undergo the same certification requirement.

> weight is the enemy, the other is simplicity, : if its not there, it costs nothing, and cant break

Indeed but then you get crews taking their own soaps because they (think they) need to have soap aboard, store them wherever it is convenient for them, and the soap bar then gets loose and flies during the cockpit during a mission because no one thought about securing the soap as it isn't on any checklist.

That is also the reason why even brand new airplanes rolling off the factory line still have ashtrays in lavatories despite smoking being banned for decades now. They account for some dumbass thinking they do need to smoke and better they drop the cigarette in the ashtray (because that's what people do naturally) when the fire alarm goes off, than they dump it in the trash bin, causing the cigarette to set the trash alight and causing a bigger issue.

That is "fail-safe by design". Even if it adds 100 grams per plane to have that ashtray and a bit of work for the attendants to check if it needs to be cleaned out and for the pilots and maintenance crew a bit of work in the MEL check, it is still worth it over losing an aircraft due to a trash bin fire (and yes, that still happens, see the source for this quote!):

> As with just about everything on a plane, it's about safety. "They're there so if someone were to break the rules, they would dispose of the cigarette in the ashtray as opposed to, say, a trash bin full of flammables," says Robert Antolin, chief operating officer at App in the Air. [1]

[1] https://www.travelandleisure.com/why-airplanes-have-ashtrays...

If what you're saying were the real reason, that soap dispensers from Boeing cost more because of paperwork, then Boeing should be able to calculate what it will cost to do all the paperwork and offer a fixed price up-front that allows them to make a reasonable profit after all that paperwork is paid for. In fact, they cannot. Or they refuse to. Either one, Boeing is rotten.

These dispensers are specifically called out along with "26% of spare parts" in a DoD audit. I assume the auditors know what they are doing, are well aware of the fact that qualification and traceability costs money, and factor this into their findings that these in particular are overpriced. And anyway, the audit doesn't call out Boeing, it calls out the Air Force for not checking invoices or getting justification for price increases.

Your argument makes sense if we ignore the topic of the thread. I don't think nuclear war readiness capabilities boil down to having good soap.

>rules that were literally written in blood.

Literally?

>I've written about this here some time ago - you don't pay for the soap dispenser or trash bin itself, you pay for the paperwork showing that it is safe to install this trash bin

What really makes me livid is that the same people who are in here now screeching about Boeing's misdeeds with no thought given to mitigating facts would instantly grasp the concept of paying for a paper trail and happily use it as justification to crucify some puddle jumping airline operator in Alaska who sourced unapproved stuff.

Feeling entitled to engage in cognitive dissonance like that when it benefits you plays a key role of so many problems in society these days, including shoddy work and overpriced soap dispensers at Boeing

That said, I still think $600 is absurd. The .mil probably already has a soap dispenser thats sufficient that Boeing could have made a mount for.

For a soap dispenser I don't think there are any rules written in blood.

The idea that Boeing of all organizations is too consistent about adhering to rules written in blood given the 737 MAX debacle and the "whistleblowers falling out of windows" issue is also darkly comical.

The idea that Boeing of all organizations is consistent about adhering to rules written in blood is also darkly comical.

"Whoops sometimes our windows fall off mid flight but trust me bro, this soap dispenser is a fucking disaster waiting to happen"

Occam's razor says this is corruption.

>The very second you start making an exception because "a soap dispenser is trivial", other stuff will get labeled as exempt

As we've seen from the slight "windows falling off planes mid flight" problem which they furiously tried to cover up, Boeing has a bit of a problem with making exceptions where it actually matters.

A far more likely explanation here isn't that Boeing is being too strict and disciplined over all things up to and including a soap dispenser, but that a bunch of people have their noses in the trough and have figured out a hack to drain money out of the federal government budget.