Re: Size Class Escalation -- How high in Mass?

----- Original Message -----
From: "David Griffin" <carbon_dragon@yahoo.com>
>
> This idea that big ships are uneconomical to build
> is a popular one, but how realistic is it? It seems
> to me that there is no particular reason to believe
> that pound for pound it's more expensive to construct
> larger ships.

  Number one, you get fewer examples to work on.
  Number two, the same part usually costs more if applied to a more
expensive system.  This works for cars (eg if you buy a gadget for a
Mercedes, you'll often pay more than you would for the exact same gadget
looked up under a cheaper line of cars) and for the US military.
  Number three, the individual parts may be customized (there are
probably a
LOT more Beam-1's than Beam-4's available for purchase).  This not only
affects volume discounts, but also project time lines and therefore
payroll
and overhead.  As an example from real life--if someone screwed up a
nylon
part, I had 7-8 vendors to choose from and my maximum lead time was 18
days.
For one high grade material which cost about 100 times the nylon, there
was
one manufacturer and we once got a lead time of 48 weeks (and I had to
tell
the customer "no, not four TO eight weeks...your part will be shipped in
eleven months.")  Fortunately that client didn't have a "factory
shutdown"