3 ms·
"when the contractors allocated their engineering expenses among the individual spare parts on the list... they simply treated every item the same" Sounds like
by unreal37 3y ago
"when the contractors allocated their engineering expenses among the individual spare parts on the list... they simply treated every item the same"
Sounds like an extra hammer would have cost an $15+$420=$435. Anyways, we'll never know.
I will say, the one thing I believe, is that the government had a bucket of money to spend on the project. Let's say it was $1 million. And the contractor was going to get all of it, all $1 million. Not a penny more and not a penny less.
And so you can't really trust the invoice is accurate except for the total being the budget available to spend.
- woooooo 3y agoThey would have amortized the 420/item across one more item. No additional research cost.
- Retric 3y agoYou’re ignoring the underlying math. If they needed 2 hammers then both hammers would have cost less. Thus rather than 2 * 435$ hammers + other junk you get 2 * 430$ hammers + other junk which is also 5$ cheaper (or whatever the actual number works out to.) Net result a total that’s 15$ higher and a different set of otherwise meaningless numbers.
- pests 3y agoHey! Buying that second hammer reduced the per-item R&D costs across the entire order!