In article ,
Rick Jones wrote:

In sci.space.history Pat Flannery wrote:
No, this is not an article from The Onion; this is for real:
http://images.spaceref.com/news/2011...-2011-0045.pdf
NASA does a in-depth failure analysis of why a 17-year-old office chair
broke, including lots of photos of the failed areas and a
photomicrograph of the interior crystalline structure of the tack welds,
showing how substandard they were.
Conclusion: Bad welding style choices combined with metal fatigue from
the repeated stresses of people sitting in it finally broke the chair.
Luckily, this was caught before any astronauts died, but these failure
modes should be addressed in any post-Shuttle-program office chairs
purchased by NASA. :-D

Well, if you aren't going to be flying anything for a while, it is at
least a way to keep one's analysis skills from dulling completely. Or
perhaps it was a task given to a new guy as part of training.

rick jones

I think you are all missing the point here! The whole exercise appears
to have been a simple demonstration of materials science and failure
analysis techniques. It doesn't matter if it was an office chair or a
piece of test material, but it serves an a good demonstration to young
engineers of what failure analysis can achieve.