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

At 11:10 AM 6/28/01 -0700, David Griffin wrote:
>Let's say we lived in a land with a LOT of bays
>and some company had built 5 copies of the golden
>gate bridge so far. Well, it's still a big bridge,
>but they know how to build them and it's not like
>they haven't done it before.

But everyone seems to want *different* bridges, so they're always built 
differently anyway... look at Pittsburgh, for example.	(Okay, so maybe 
it's just the wrong example, I do see your point.)

>Maybe the first time anyone in the FT universe built
>an SDN, there were a lot of "hmmm... they don't make
>a whoosit that big, we'll have to have it made
>special." After a certain number had been built,
>they would no longer be exploring new territory, so
>the cost would drop.

...or the contractor would pocket more profits, most likely.  Capital 
equipment (no pun intended...) doesn't tend to have that much of a price

drop, as companies that build stuff like that tend to amortize the cost 
over the first several units -- so they're taking a loss on a couple,
then 
making decent money on a couple, then making more on the next couple as
the 
required engineering workload goes down.  Now, that may not be the case
for 
Government work, but that could very well be the case if the Gov't knows
it 
wants, say, 6 of these ships -- give a price for the *program* and then 
audit.	(Yippie, audits....)