It happens every now and again on here: someone comes up with like a 2% improvement in aerodynamics, and people are unimpressed. Meanwhile airlines are basically scrambling to get it rolled into their next-gen purchases because it's the biggest improvement in costs in a decade.

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MichaelZuo 4 days ago | parent [-]

A 2% improvement that only costs 2% more to manufacture, sure.

A 2% improvement that costs 200% more to manufacture would be nonsensical to seriously propose.

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XorNot 4 days ago | parent [-]

You cannot possibly know that without knowing the operational lifetime of a plane and it's expected return. An airline doesn't buy a plane planning to break even on the purchase cost, for example.

Which basically proves my original point.

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MichaelZuo 4 days ago | parent [-]

Do you not understand what the word manufacture means?

It literally doesn’t matter what the “operational lifetime” or “expected return” is if it costs 200% more to manufacture for only 2% improvements.

It won’t ever get far enough in the design process for it to even be an issue.

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XorNot 4 days ago | parent [-]

Setting aside that you pulled that number out of your ass to argue against it, if something produces 400X it's purchase cost over it's operational life time, a 2% improvement takes that to 408X it's purchase cost for only a 2X increase in initial outlay, meaning it pays for itself 4 fold.

But very few innovations have that sort of effect on manufacturing cost to start with.

	▲	MichaelZuo 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		This doesn’t make sense as a reply. How is your own opinion, on another user’s example number, even relevant enough to be “setting aside” in the first place?