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It's not ridiculous at all, it just seems that way. It takes a lot of work and investment to design a 'space grade product'. When you only ever sell 50 of the

It's not ridiculous at all, it just seems that way. It takes a lot of work and investment to design a 'space grade product'. When you only ever sell 50 of them - total, well the price will be high. Imagine if only 500 iPhones were ever sold - how much would they cost in order for Apple to make a profit? It's just the weird economics of small batch products that makes the price seem bonkers, there's no volume to spread the fixed costs over.

ivix 9y ago
I can easily believe that. Next time you're sat in a meeting with 5 other highly paid software developers, discussing a two line bugfix, think about how much that bugfix will have cost.
- coredog64 9y ago
  I would love to see an Outlook plugin that estimates meeting costs using salary band information for attendees. It would help keep rambling to a minimum.
wallace_f 9y ago
IPhone has a lot of R&D required for it to do what it does. How much R&D is reasonable for some "really simple handles?"
- alexasmyths 9y ago
  Requirements analysis, systems analysis and research (when you do things in space absolutely everything needs to be looked at), materials design and test (materials behave differently in space). Fixtures? How are they affixed to satelites? You can't just 'glue' them. The type of 'screws' are pretty important. This might require a lot of back and forth. Each step of the process involves internal review and review by the customer - i.e. Japanese space agency, and can take weeks. Testing requires a massive 'clean room' which is expensive to maintain. And you don't just make these things anywhere - tolerances have to be perfect. Not only is it tough engineering, it's a lot of bureaucracy. And then overhead: IT, support, software, flights, hotels yada yada yada. It adds up.
  - kobeya 9y ago
    You've said why it is expensive. Not why it needs to be expensive.
    - heavenlyblue 9y ago
      That's literally a salary of 2 upper-grade engineers for a year (for a piece). There's literally _no way_ it had been done in the most efficient manner.
      - alexasmyths 9y ago
        Though there is a lot of bureaucracy, you'd be surprised at how much work it is. Consider how much a massive 'clean room' costs to operate. Consider how much gear it takes to simulate the operation of massive robot arm in a 0G environment, when we live in a 1G environment. Consider what happens when a 1 ton arm, attached to a 20 ton structure, applies toque to a 1/2 ton satellite... when the satellite is moving ... Consider how much it costs to send 4 Engineers, a PM and a Bus Dev to Japan for three weeks for talks with Japanese Space Agency? Several times? Consider the lawyers bill - Japanese, Canadian and American ones. Translators. Insurance estimates. Liabilities. FYI - did you know that every single thing that goes into space is tracked? Every single screw had an ID number. It's original manufacturer, shipping, the date it was put on the station, by whom, when it was removed - etc etc. Every goddam screw :). Now think of how much software and admin is needed to track all that. And now consider that if one single manager, at one single subcontractor opens an 'issue report' anywhere in the world - that the 'countdown' for a shuttle launch was postponed? (Happened to my boss, opened a tiny change request on Admin Software in Toronto - went for lunch - Shuttle countdown froze, panic and hilarity ensue). And the overhead costs associated with that. Space is expensive, especially 'manned space'. Vert complex, one-of-a-kind system - where nothing is allowed to go wrong.
        heavenlyblue 9y ago
        And we've managed to end up with shuttle with all of that bureaucracy. I understand the complexity of the issue at hand. I can. Nevertheless simple handles going for 200K a piece is a vast budget. Any proper business would quickly open up an internal department to "do the handles" since it both allows them to grow for free (you get additional specialists and the handles) and allows to use the same engineers for something else. More importantly testing becomes less of an issue since now you may easily do integrated testing of several disjoined components at once. So no - I understand where the expenses come from. But it doesn't mean that structure is in _any_ way motivated. The idea of subcontracting and every little piece of hardware being done by a separate little entity doesn't seem to work both in terms of pricing and in terms of the amount of work it would be doing be it a merged entity.

ivix 9y ago

I can easily believe that. Next time you're sat in a meeting with 5 other highly paid software developers, discussing a two line bugfix, think about how much that bugfix will have cost.

coredog64 9y ago
I would love to see an Outlook plugin that estimates meeting costs using salary band information for attendees. It would help keep rambling to a minimum.

wallace_f 9y ago

IPhone has a lot of R&D required for it to do what it does. How much R&D is reasonable for some "really simple handles?"

alexasmyths 9y ago
Requirements analysis, systems analysis and research (when you do things in space absolutely everything needs to be looked at), materials design and test (materials behave differently in space). Fixtures? How are they affixed to satelites? You can't just 'glue' them. The type of 'screws' are pretty important. This might require a lot of back and forth. Each step of the process involves internal review and review by the customer - i.e. Japanese space agency, and can take weeks. Testing requires a massive 'clean room' which is expensive to maintain. And you don't just make these things anywhere - tolerances have to be perfect. Not only is it tough engineering, it's a lot of bureaucracy. And then overhead: IT, support, software, flights, hotels yada yada yada. It adds up.
- kobeya 9y ago
  You've said why it is expensive. Not why it needs to be expensive.
  - heavenlyblue 9y ago
    That's literally a salary of 2 upper-grade engineers for a year (for a piece). There's literally _no way_ it had been done in the most efficient manner.
    - alexasmyths 9y ago
      Though there is a lot of bureaucracy, you'd be surprised at how much work it is. Consider how much a massive 'clean room' costs to operate. Consider how much gear it takes to simulate the operation of massive robot arm in a 0G environment, when we live in a 1G environment. Consider what happens when a 1 ton arm, attached to a 20 ton structure, applies toque to a 1/2 ton satellite... when the satellite is moving ... Consider how much it costs to send 4 Engineers, a PM and a Bus Dev to Japan for three weeks for talks with Japanese Space Agency? Several times? Consider the lawyers bill - Japanese, Canadian and American ones. Translators. Insurance estimates. Liabilities. FYI - did you know that every single thing that goes into space is tracked? Every single screw had an ID number. It's original manufacturer, shipping, the date it was put on the station, by whom, when it was removed - etc etc. Every goddam screw :). Now think of how much software and admin is needed to track all that. And now consider that if one single manager, at one single subcontractor opens an 'issue report' anywhere in the world - that the 'countdown' for a shuttle launch was postponed? (Happened to my boss, opened a tiny change request on Admin Software in Toronto - went for lunch - Shuttle countdown froze, panic and hilarity ensue). And the overhead costs associated with that. Space is expensive, especially 'manned space'. Vert complex, one-of-a-kind system - where nothing is allowed to go wrong.
      - heavenlyblue 9y ago
        And we've managed to end up with shuttle with all of that bureaucracy. I understand the complexity of the issue at hand. I can. Nevertheless simple handles going for 200K a piece is a vast budget. Any proper business would quickly open up an internal department to "do the handles" since it both allows them to grow for free (you get additional specialists and the handles) and allows to use the same engineers for something else. More importantly testing becomes less of an issue since now you may easily do integrated testing of several disjoined components at once. So no - I understand where the expenses come from. But it doesn't mean that structure is in _any_ way motivated. The idea of subcontracting and every little piece of hardware being done by a separate little entity doesn't seem to work both in terms of pricing and in terms of the amount of work it would be doing be it a merged entity.