The Material So Classified We Forgot How to Make It

Video written by Amy Muller

[durak]

FOGBANK seems a very good name for something everyone has forgotten.

[Hiro_Trevelyan]

Fun fact : this isn't the first time that imperfection is actually better.
I don't know if it's true, but there's a story about the Japanese Shinkansen and how it couldn't reach French TGV speed without tearing its catenary (the cable that sits above electric train lines). They sent some engineers to France to study how we did it, there weren't many differences until one engineer pointed out that our catenaries weren't built with perfect spacing, whereas Japanese precision made them space each pole at the exact same distance, increasing the resonance effect when a high-speed train goes through until it tore down the catenary.

So, French clumsiness actually is not a defect but a necessary part of the design. "It's a feature".

[thedownwardmachine]

If they had found someone who actually wrote it down, they probably would have thanked them profusely and then sent them to prison.

[RayTheMickey]

This happened to a customer I had.. They had a very specific production process that allowed them to make parts better than their competators. They were bought out and as they were winding down production and transfering everything to the new owners, they realized they had run out of a key component that they used for making these parts. They also realized that they had nothing written down about how to make it. There was one machinist still there and they found out he knew how it was made. They asked him to make some and he said"sure". They then asked him to write down the process and he said"no". The company that bought them was also a customer of mine. Last time I visited he was still coming in on a contract basis and making that material for them.

[ailivac]

"What is FOGBANK?" "That's classified"
"What does it do?" "Classified"
"Does it contain—" "That's also classified"
"Wait, do you even know what it is anymore?" "That's... classified"

[knightsljx]

As a chemist, I immediately spotted the problem when a purer version was made. You don't randomly change the chemical composition of something when you reverse engineer it when you don't know what it does. You try to replicate it 100% first, then start experimenting with changes in variables

[patrickmeyer]

Okay, so funny story, this is the same reason we can't make any F-1 rocket engines (the big ones on the first stage of the Saturn V) anymore. We have all the technical plans for them, but the state of NASA and engineering in general in the 1960's was such that certain unrecorded adjustments had to be made to the engines to get them to work, and all the people who did it are either dead or have forgotten. F-1s were essentially craftsman-assembled.

[d.b.cooper]

Surprised this doesn't happen more often. Oddly enough in many industries like engineering you often find many senior people close to retirement who never pass on key knowledge or processes, thus in retirement are always called in to fix things as consultants on huge wages. Lucractive industry, dare I say human nature.

[kpzdme]

Rookie Mistake. They just could have ask War Thunder to put it in the game and some player would have complained about how inaccurate it is and post the blue print.

[UN.Owen]

Making something so classified that we essentially forget how to make it is the most Warhammer 40k thing ever

[theily]

You’re actually allowed to talk about this material but a friendly fellow in a suit will come to your door and hold out his pinky for you to swear not to reveal this information.

[Jay-lnco]

Reminds me of the WW2 tank gun stabilizer that was considered so great they kept all info about it a secret and barely trained the crews, resulting in crews not knowing how to use it properly and just disabling it instead. Sometimes it's good for the left hand to know what right one is doing.

[Pining_for_the_fjords]

The first rule of fogbank is you do not talk about fogbank.
The second rule of fogbank is you do not write down fogbank.
The third rule of fogbank is you forget about fogbank.

[MrTmack]

I totally understand how this happened. Documentation is that last thing done on a project, if it's ever done at all.

[iliketrainspwned]

"The short answer is a series of nuclear oopsie-doopsies..."
Ah, just like my time in engineering school

[moonshade]

It reminds me of my peculiar habit of secretly storing something so secret to me that i forgot where i had stored it

[felixjochems]

With how much of the ulam-teller design is known it's remarkable that it's not public knowledge at this point.

Also the NNSA should have just asked the warthunder forums, they would have found it in no time.

[Radioman.]

Reminds me of a story about an inventor probably hundreds of years ago created malleable glass. He showed the King how you could dent it and then pound it back into shape. The King asked if the inventor had told anyone about his creation. He told the King no. The inventor was executed because the glass frightened the King.

[deleted-something]

Imagine if they found a better version of fogbank by trying to reverse engineer fogbank

[aidanatkinson]

As someone who’s a mechanical engineer and In charge of documenting manufacturing process and following certain specifications its amazing how much shit isn’t documented. Looking for work instructions, travelers, interchangeable parts lists, rev changes, or even design history has always been a nightmare. This is partly because no one does their fucking job, people do their job wrong, or someone who isn’t trained/qualified to do their job is in charge and doesn’t do their fucking job. This results in things being recorded wrong, saved in the wrong area, accidentally deleted, or just assumed that the next person will figure it out. Combine this with bad management, no money to do the job right which means it’s rushed, and other manufacturers your working also having the same problem. Suddenly you have 20 people all looking for now somethin was made 8 years ago and no one remembers. Then you spend so much time trying to figure it out you get chewed out at your superiors for not figuring it because they already did it how hard could it be. All the while no one else was able to figure it out either so their just placing blame on the workers lower down for not doing their job when they didn’t have the right people doing it in the first place 8 years ago.