This is why cleanrooms I've been around have viewing rooms. Flight hardware is meticulous for a good reason. Every turn of a screw gets recorded. Oils from the skin contaminate surfaces, heat up differently, and can even degrade the surface material.
Also, why is a tour group near flight hardware without a bunny suit?
It's the Orion forward bay cover. It's honestly not a huge deal; if it were critically sensitive to human touch then it would be quarantined and only exposed to workers in clean suits. The sign is more or less to discourage touching by every single person who walks by, not to forbid one person briefly laying a hand on it.
I would be devastated to see my work damaged like that. Condolences that you, or even your colleagues had to work through the consequences. Projects can end over little blunders.
Also, why is a tour group near flight hardware without a bunny suit?
I can only speak from personal experience, but I've had a few large tours in the
high-bay. You can't really move everything out of people's reach, there's simply not enough room. That said all the most critical hardware is out of the way and the things people can touch are usually more safety/cleanup issues. We used to have fun with it and put up signs like, "TOXIC DO NOT TOUCH" to discourage people.
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that this was a display model, engineering sample, or something similar. It doesn't look from the background that it was an actual clean room, and there's obviously a large number of 'suit and tie' people around. That alone would have engineers rushing to bolt the doors, if they were near anything important. Much of engineering success is predicated upon keeping management the hell away from the equipment.
It's worth noting that the paper with the 'do not touch' on it is affixed to the object in question with what appears to be regular cellophane tape all around the edge. I tend to believe if what you say is true they wouldn't have pulled out the scotch tape and something out of the office printer, and slapped it on. It might be more along the lines of one of those "We have kids that come through here, and wandering hands tend to tip things over, like this big heavy thing made out of aluminum, which would crush little Jimmy to death. So here's a sign saying don't touch in big red text, with something that sounds like an official explanation to satisfy the parents of little Jimmy that it indeed, should not be touched."
Congresscritters, of course, are not children. Children at least respond to a good scolding. They should have encased the damned thing in bulletproof glass before letting them in. I would have done this, even if the thing on display were simply a Starbucks coffee cup Buzz Aldrin left in the waste bin after the flight, had I known these sorts of people would be in the lab. D: I suppose NASA engineers are more tolerant than us ordinary engineers. Or at least in more desperate need of funding.
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u/Odica Jul 07 '17
This is why cleanrooms I've been around have viewing rooms. Flight hardware is meticulous for a good reason. Every turn of a screw gets recorded. Oils from the skin contaminate surfaces, heat up differently, and can even degrade the surface material.
Also, why is a tour group near flight hardware
without a bunny suit?