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Boeing gives multiple daily tours in their Everett Washington based airplane manufacturing facility. They have a public museum next to the facility which is whe

Boeing gives multiple daily tours in their Everett Washington based airplane manufacturing facility. They have a public museum next to the facility which is where you buy tickets to the tour and wait for the tour shuttle. I’ve taken the tour and it’s cool! That said I’ve not heard of any tours for their space manufacturing facility, though they might offer them.

wildzzz 2y ago
Space manufacturing centers generally offer tours but not for the general public. It's more like a friends and family sort of deal. Even my uncle got to go inside Endeavor in the early 2000s as he was friends with a QA manager of the shuttle program.
colechristensen 2y ago
Satellites and spaceships are classified as weapons, tours that actually showed anything to the general public without some solid verification would be a serious crime. You'd have to be a "US Person" which means generally at least green card or a citizen of a friendly country. Like if you gave a tour to a Chinese citizen you could well be guilty of exporting protected technology.
- TaylorAlexander 2y ago
  When I was a kid my dad took me to “take your kid to work day” at Lockheed. I think they hid the secret stuff somewhere where visitors wouldn’t find them.
  - Ylpertnodi 2y ago
    Mar-el-Lago?
  - InitialLastName 2y ago
    Unlike politicians, the military + contractors take their responsibilities re. controlled information relatively seriously. The normal practice is to not have anything that is clearance-controlled sitting out anyway (it's usually stored behind extra levels of security scaled to the secrecy), and to control access to that information on a fairly granular level. Visitors to those facilities (of a variety of clearance backgrounds) are regular, so anything beyond ITAR (which you, as the child of an ITAR-accessible employee, and thus likely a US citizen/green card holder would have had access to) is going to be locked up by default.
  - HumblyTossed 2y ago
    Having grown up in North FL, I've been on a few military ships for friends and family day. This is pretty much exactly what they do. You're only allowed where they tell you to be and they have people watching to make sure you follow the rules. If anyone gets the chance to go out on a carrier, do so. Pretty neat stuff.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - colechristensen 2y ago
    I interned at a Lockheed facility (which is now a nice strip mall). The classified things are behind closed doors or in your computers. The labs where you'd work on classified equipment were behind coded doors, so they just wouldn't take anybody there. They really checked too. One time I was waiting for my friend to finish something in a non-classified lab that still had the code on the door. I was literally falling asleep for a couple of hours doing nothing so I decided not to charge those hours. A few weeks later my manager invited me into his office to reprimand me for not charging the hours because they audited the doors and knew where I was for how long. I got overtime because they tracked what was going on so well.
- skissane 2y ago
  > You'd have to be a "US Person" which means generally at least green card or a citizen of a friendly country. Under ITAR, “US Person” means US citizen or green card holder. (And a few other obscure categories, such as individuals granted refugee status by the US government.) Export to citizens of friendly countries (who don’t have green cards or dual US citizenship) requires an export license. I heard some talk they might exclude Australian citizens from this rule as part of AUKUS (although even there I don’t know if it would apply to space stuff, since space ain’t got nothing to do with nuclear submarines), but right now no ally is excluded. > Like if you gave a tour to a Chinese citizen you could well be guilty of exporting protected technology. From what I understand, theoretically speaking you are okay if they have a green card, or dual US-Chinese citizenship. How well the theory holds up in practice, I don’t know. (Technically China bans dual citizenship-however, if a Chinese citizen naturalises into the citizenship of another country, what happens if they don’t tell the PRC government they did it? And even if they do tell the PRC government, although PRC law says the government has to cancel their Chinese passport, the PRC government is free to ignore its own laws whenever it wants to.)
  - jvanderbot 2y ago
    There are generally exceptions to US Person status for dual citizens, especially those from "Designated countries" which include China, Iran, etc currently. These exceptions apply on a per-center, per-project basis IIRC, but include blanket bans on NASA collaboration / exchange, which would include private tours of the kind being discussed. https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/designated-country-list-4.21.2023.pdf https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/designated-c...
    - skissane 2y ago
      That NASA document doesn’t actually say it applies to dual citizens, it only says it applies to “Foreign Nationals”. It all depends on how one defines that term, of course, but usually in US law, a US dual citizen is not a “Foreign National”. The document never mentions the issue of dual citizenship. Now, I’m not saying you are wrong here - maybe NASA actually does have a policy saying dual US citizens are subject to certain additional restrictions, depending on the country of dual citizenship - but the document you are citing in support of your position never actually says that. If we are talking about security clearances, as opposed to export control, that is a completely different story. Absolutely dual citizenship can get one denied a security clearance, and dual citizenship with an unfriendly country increases those odds-but even there, there is no absolute rule about it, whether dual citizenship is disqualifying is decided on a case-by-case basis, and it depends not just on the country of dual citizenship, but also how one got the citizenship, how much one chooses to make use of its benefits (there is a big difference between getting dual citizenship at time of birth but never applying for a passport, versus naturalising as a citizen of another country as an adult and then travelling around the world with its passport), etc
a-dub 2y ago
too bad they've been kneecapped by the business casual crowd...
- nvy 2y ago
  >the business casual crowd... The what now?
  - dullcrisp 2y ago
    The Khaki Pants Mafia, The No. 2 Pencil Pushers, Auntie Plaid, you know…
    - HPsquared 2y ago
      I don't think fashion has much to do with it.
    - nvy 2y ago
      I have no idea to which group you're referring.
jvanderbot 2y ago
Airplane manufacture has a different export rating than spacecraft manufacture, thus (probably) the different posture re: tours. For example, at JPL (where I used to work / give tours), there's a multi-day lead time for background checks on visitors if they intend to enter any location not pre-cleared for tours. E.g., looking at equipment or actual manufacturing.

wildzzz 2y ago

Space manufacturing centers generally offer tours but not for the general public. It's more like a friends and family sort of deal. Even my uncle got to go inside Endeavor in the early 2000s as he was friends with a QA manager of the shuttle program.

colechristensen 2y ago

Satellites and spaceships are classified as weapons, tours that actually showed anything to the general public without some solid verification would be a serious crime. You'd have to be a "US Person" which means generally at least green card or a citizen of a friendly country. Like if you gave a tour to a Chinese citizen you could well be guilty of exporting protected technology.

TaylorAlexander 2y ago
When I was a kid my dad took me to “take your kid to work day” at Lockheed. I think they hid the secret stuff somewhere where visitors wouldn’t find them.
- Ylpertnodi 2y ago
  Mar-el-Lago?
- InitialLastName 2y ago
  Unlike politicians, the military + contractors take their responsibilities re. controlled information relatively seriously. The normal practice is to not have anything that is clearance-controlled sitting out anyway (it's usually stored behind extra levels of security scaled to the secrecy), and to control access to that information on a fairly granular level. Visitors to those facilities (of a variety of clearance backgrounds) are regular, so anything beyond ITAR (which you, as the child of an ITAR-accessible employee, and thus likely a US citizen/green card holder would have had access to) is going to be locked up by default.
- HumblyTossed 2y ago
  Having grown up in North FL, I've been on a few military ships for friends and family day. This is pretty much exactly what they do. You're only allowed where they tell you to be and they have people watching to make sure you follow the rules. If anyone gets the chance to go out on a carrier, do so. Pretty neat stuff.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- colechristensen 2y ago
  I interned at a Lockheed facility (which is now a nice strip mall). The classified things are behind closed doors or in your computers. The labs where you'd work on classified equipment were behind coded doors, so they just wouldn't take anybody there. They really checked too. One time I was waiting for my friend to finish something in a non-classified lab that still had the code on the door. I was literally falling asleep for a couple of hours doing nothing so I decided not to charge those hours. A few weeks later my manager invited me into his office to reprimand me for not charging the hours because they audited the doors and knew where I was for how long. I got overtime because they tracked what was going on so well.
skissane 2y ago
> You'd have to be a "US Person" which means generally at least green card or a citizen of a friendly country. Under ITAR, “US Person” means US citizen or green card holder. (And a few other obscure categories, such as individuals granted refugee status by the US government.) Export to citizens of friendly countries (who don’t have green cards or dual US citizenship) requires an export license. I heard some talk they might exclude Australian citizens from this rule as part of AUKUS (although even there I don’t know if it would apply to space stuff, since space ain’t got nothing to do with nuclear submarines), but right now no ally is excluded. > Like if you gave a tour to a Chinese citizen you could well be guilty of exporting protected technology. From what I understand, theoretically speaking you are okay if they have a green card, or dual US-Chinese citizenship. How well the theory holds up in practice, I don’t know. (Technically China bans dual citizenship-however, if a Chinese citizen naturalises into the citizenship of another country, what happens if they don’t tell the PRC government they did it? And even if they do tell the PRC government, although PRC law says the government has to cancel their Chinese passport, the PRC government is free to ignore its own laws whenever it wants to.)
- jvanderbot 2y ago
  There are generally exceptions to US Person status for dual citizens, especially those from "Designated countries" which include China, Iran, etc currently. These exceptions apply on a per-center, per-project basis IIRC, but include blanket bans on NASA collaboration / exchange, which would include private tours of the kind being discussed. https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/designated-country-list-4.21.2023.pdf https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/designated-c...
  - skissane 2y ago
    That NASA document doesn’t actually say it applies to dual citizens, it only says it applies to “Foreign Nationals”. It all depends on how one defines that term, of course, but usually in US law, a US dual citizen is not a “Foreign National”. The document never mentions the issue of dual citizenship. Now, I’m not saying you are wrong here - maybe NASA actually does have a policy saying dual US citizens are subject to certain additional restrictions, depending on the country of dual citizenship - but the document you are citing in support of your position never actually says that. If we are talking about security clearances, as opposed to export control, that is a completely different story. Absolutely dual citizenship can get one denied a security clearance, and dual citizenship with an unfriendly country increases those odds-but even there, there is no absolute rule about it, whether dual citizenship is disqualifying is decided on a case-by-case basis, and it depends not just on the country of dual citizenship, but also how one got the citizenship, how much one chooses to make use of its benefits (there is a big difference between getting dual citizenship at time of birth but never applying for a passport, versus naturalising as a citizen of another country as an adult and then travelling around the world with its passport), etc

a-dub 2y ago

too bad they've been kneecapped by the business casual crowd...

nvy 2y ago
>the business casual crowd... The what now?
- dullcrisp 2y ago
  The Khaki Pants Mafia, The No. 2 Pencil Pushers, Auntie Plaid, you know…
  - HPsquared 2y ago
    I don't think fashion has much to do with it.
  - nvy 2y ago
    I have no idea to which group you're referring.

jvanderbot 2y ago

Airplane manufacture has a different export rating than spacecraft manufacture, thus (probably) the different posture re: tours. For example, at JPL (where I used to work / give tours), there's a multi-day lead time for background checks on visitors if they intend to enter any location not pre-cleared for tours. E.g., looking at equipment or actual manufacturing.