This specification establishes the minimum requirements for the design, fabrication (including the qualification of welders, welding operators, and welding procedures), and inspection of manual, semiautomatic, and automatic welds in aerospace ground support equipment (GSE) and related nonconventional facilities used by or for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) with the exclusion of pressure vessels.

This specification was developed to establish uniform practices for the design, fabrication, and inspection (including nondestructive testing (NDT) techniques and acceptance criteria) of welds in GSE and related nonconventional facilities used by or for NASA and provides a means to incorporate into these uniform practices the "lessons learned" from extensive agency wide GSE welding engineering experiences. This specification accomplishes these goals by combining the requirements of consensus industrial welding codes with supplementary requirements as necessary. Some examples are: provisions for verification of procedure and performance qualifications; imposing requirements for NDT; imposing requirements for inspection personnel qualifications, additional welding technique requirements, and requirements for material certifications.

Applicability. This specification recommends engineering practices for NASA programs and projects. It may be cited in contracts and program documents as a technical requirement or as a reference for guidance. It may be cited on engineering drawings. Determining the suitability of this specification and its provisions is the responsibility of program/project management and the performing organization. Individual provisions of this specification may be tailored (i.e., modified or deleted) by contract or program specifications to meet specific program/project needs and constraints.

This specification applies to the design, fabrication, inspection, and maintenance of aerospace GSE and related nonconventional facilities with the exclusion of pressure vessels used to support the operations of transporting, receiving, handling, assembly, inspection, test, checkout, service, and launch of space vehicles and payloads. The current revision of this specification shall be applicable to the design, fabrication, inspection, and maintenance of all GSE and related nonconventional facilities. The revision of this specification that was current at the time direction was issued to design, construct, manufacture, or procure the GSE or facility shall be applicable for the useful life of the hardware. Modifications and repair of existing hardware may be done so the modified/repaired hardware complies with the revision that is current at the time directions are issued to modify/repair the hardware.