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Any idea how often the final design and the prototype don't match in terms of volume and aerodynamics? I would have assumed that those parts are the easiest to

• elil17 7y ago
  You don't need to build it to test volume and aerodynamics (math and wind-tunnels can figure that out for you). This is probably more about finding unknown flaws in the design/running down risk. Spending however much on a prototype (10s or 100s of millions of dollars) just to marginally reduce the risk that there's a fundamental flaw in your approach makes a lot of sense when you plan to spend 6 billion total to develop the plane.
• loeg 7y ago
  Aerodynamics modeling is incredibly difficult. You could probably test a smaller scale model, though (probably they have).