MORE PROBLEMS FOR SHUTTLE: "Transporter woes derailing shuttle plans"

Now it's the bearings in the lift cylinders in the crawler-transporters. Sure, they say it isn't due to the age of the equipment, but one has to wonder, considering the fact that the things are nearing forty years old...how long were these things intended to last, anyway?

The article points out a troubling yet common problem regarding NASA's space program, that of a dwindling or obsolete supplier base. They claim they can manufacture additional "one-of-a-kind, special order" bearings to replace the cracked ones, are they so sure? Certainly the things can be made, but how long will it take the vendor to go through the certification process and get their parts approved?

The process could be accelerated by simply building duplicates of the originals. But, this being NASA, there is no way that the new parts will be built-to-print from the original designs and materials -- for one thing, there was apparently some kind of "flaw" in the design (though calling a part that has likely lasted three times longer than its original lifetime "flawed" is a bit strange). Rather than building duplicate replacement bearings with the same "flawed" service lifetimes that will still exceed that of the rest of the Shuttle infrastructure, the flaws will be investigated, documented, re-engineered, and tested out of existence.

But how long is this going to take? How much will it cost? And of how much benefit will it be to NASA's space program to chase this problem to an absolute and final resolution?