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Relatedly, I'd be curious to know what the split has been of the $10B "program cost" in terms of development vs manufacturing. I assume that like with most thi
by mikepurvis 5y ago
Relatedly, I'd be curious to know what the split has been of the $10B "program cost" in terms of development vs manufacturing.
I assume that like with most things, the vast majority of the cost has been in the design and documentation over its 30 years of development. At the same time, there's obviously a ton of extremely high precision bespoke components in there, so "building another one" would definitely not be trivial.
- 0_____0 5y agoIf it's anything like the hardware engineering programs I've been involved in, at qty=1 the cost is almost all R&D. That includes development of processes to build something like 1.3m wide ultraprecise beryllium mirror segments...
- mikepurvis 5y agoOh absolutely, but I still wouldn’t be surprised if the cost for unit 2 was still another half a billion dollars. It would be fascinating to know.
- bumby 5y agoAerospace isn't necessarily like that for a number of reasons. A large driver of cost is quality control. For example, when a custom part is manufactured it needs to go through a number of tests, some of the raw material needs to be kept and tracked for future testing, etc. When they get shipped they have to be be tracked and handled differently, sometimes accelerometers are placed on the cargo to measure any shocks, etc. They need to be stored in a bonded warehouse, often climate controlled throughout its life. All of that control, testing and documentation adds to the cost even after R&D is a sunk cost.