Re: Why superships cost more per mass

Nobody builds 10000 of any ship. But as much of
an assembly line as you have in shipbuilding you
can have with much smaller numbers. Plus I think
we can count on robots being more sophisticated
in the future such that they can be quickly 
reprogramed to do new tasks (something which is
probably hard today).

And even today, you wouldn't actually have an
SDN assembly line, you'd have an assembly line
building beam components, and hull plates, and
furniture for crew quarters and electronic
consoles. Then you'd have the final assembly
take place in as modular a fashion as possible
at the shipyard.

--- Samuel Reynolds <sam@spinwardstars.com> wrote:
> >Plus what makes you think FT ships are constructed
> >with a big workforce? Even now robots almost
> >completely
> >construct some cars and computers, maybe the
> shipyards
> >are highly automated. So managing a big workforce
> may
> >not be a problem. 
> 
> That's fine, if you're building 10,000+ of the same
> model. You can work out the bugs (logical,
> mechanical,
> and process) in your assembly program on the first
> 100 to 500 units, just like the auto companies do.
> But if you only build 30 vessels in the same class,
> with 60 customizations (giving 17 configurations),
> you'll still be debugging the process when you
> finish the last unit.
> 
> - Sam
>
____________________________________________________________
> Samuel Reynolds
> Armageddon Outfitter: http://spinwardstars.com/ao/
> Full Thrust at Spinward Stars:
> http://spinwardstars.com/ft/
> Gamer's Gallery at Spinward Stars:
> http://spinwardstars.com/ggallery/
> sam@spinwardstars.com,
samuel_reynolds@csgsystems.com

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