Classified NASA Shuttle Space Flight Hardware Containers? And Robot Arms

Up for auction are two (first lot, second lot) NASA shipping containers used for real life space hardware. The images are extremely low quality, but I think I was able to make out the contract number as “42914” — which corresponds to a “Not Available” award from the SBIR site, and the dates match up with some of the other labels that can be seen on GovDeals. I’ve requested some higher res photos, but haven’t heard back.

This is a strange one, as we very rarely see NASA items from C2 Remarketing — Department of Defense equipment is much more common. I’m also not positive that an untitled SBIR award means that it was classified, and the sale of even just a container seems even more unlikely (though the classified markings could have been removed).

Lincom, the company listed as the awardee for this contract, also has some other SBIR grant awards for the Army on systems to detect “Chemical and Biological Warfare agents and precursors” — along with some high frequency RF research, and another undisclosed topic with the Air Force.

Back to the containers themselves — it looks like Zero makes some high quality stuff. They’d have to in order to hold objects intended for spaceflight. These things are huge by the way, so be sure to have some way to transport a 450lb, 52.5 x 55 x 50 inch box. Jury is still out on if I’m going to pick one of these up. If I do, I’ll probably make a video for it.

Up next, you guessed it! More robot arms. I’m not going to write much about these as I’ve covered Kawasaki robot arms from this generation in the past on twitter / X, mostly because I was a big enough of an idiot to buy one of these exact same models from a previous NASA auction. It was cool, and had some interesting history, but that’s the problem. These things are old, their control language is old, the hydraulics are probably at the end of their usable lifespan, and they are extremely hard to move around. I hope you’re a fan of rigging.

That being said — the price is hard to beat at the moment. And since they are from a university (Kennesaw State), you can be relatively sure that they weren’t driven as hard as industrial units. This is the one time that items being used by students is probably a plus. The one linked in the photo above even has the control box and pendant. Here are two other listings for parts (though they also come with their accesories): one, two

Bonus listing: Terminator Salvation shooting gallery arcade cabinet