A stockpile of 1 billion cubic feet of helium only is for sale as a separate lot: https://disposal.gsa.gov/s/property/a0Xt0000005z684EAA/feder...
> 3. INSPECTION No one will be allowed access to the Property without the presence of a BLM employee or designee. Bidders are invited, urged, and cautioned to inspect the Property prior to submitting a bid. Photos provided by the Government may not represent the condition or existence of any improvements of the Property and are NOT to be relied upon in place of the Bidder's own inspection. Any maps, illustrations or other graphical images of the Property are provided for visual context and are NOT to be relied upon in place of the Bidder's own inspection. The failure of any bidder to inspect, or to be fully informed as to the condition of all or any portion of the Property, will not constitute grounds for any claim or demand for adjustment or withdrawal of a bid after the auction.
A potential buyer is expected to do their own due diligence before submitting a bid. This collection of assets and contracts is likely worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, any potential buyer will have a team doing due diligence.
If they were trying to get the highest bid possible, wouldn't it make sense to provide more info to potential buyers?! The way they present it, you shouldn't even bother if you aren't already in the know.
This facility was paid with public dollars, we all paid for it. There is no national secrets to protects or dangerous weapons, leaking photos and technical documentation has no downsides if we assume they aren't trying to scam buyers.
This is typical of government auctions, large and small. I suspect part of it is to not mislead the buyer with rosy pictures/descriptions, and part of it is their basic MO: "you take everything whether you want it or not".
If you've ever bid on pallets of surplus gear it is not unusual to have a few interesting items like computers or test equipment mixed in with absolutely useless crap like giant bolts. This is not an accident, nobody would bid on a bunch of giant bolts if they weren't mixed with stuff people want. You are required to take everything on the pallete with you when you win.
I was looking at ground based inflatable satcom rigs - these things run 250k+. All the descriptions are a model number and _maybe_ what bands it targets.
I don't understand why you'd measure the amount of a gas in volume units (e.g. cubic feet) given that any gas is "elastic" in volume, i.e. can take pretty much any volume depending on the pressure.
> Standard cubic foot (SCF) means the volume of gaseous helium occupying one cubic foot at a pressure of 14.7 psia and a temperature of 70 degrees Fahrenheit. One liter of liquid helium is equivalent to 26.63 scf of gaseous helium. One U.S. gallon of liquid helium is equivalent to 100.8 scf of gaseous helium. One pound of liquid helium is equivalent to 96.72 scf of gaseous helium. If BLM approves, you may use appropriate gaseous equivalents of volumes of helium mixtures different from these figures.