Michael Kent wrote:
[...]
No, that's exactly wrong. Low-cost and improved safety go hand-in-hand,
since they're both derived from improved quality.

I'm sure you're familiar with "Cost, schedule, quality. Pick two."

Those words are the bane of every sane aerospace engineer in the industry,
often used as a crutch by the incompetent to justify their poor perfor-
mance. Increasing quality *decreases* cost and schedule, not the
opposite.

I think your viewpoint here is correct in scenarios where the
unit marginal cost (of whatever, a widget or RLV flight or
satellite) over the program is high compared to initial design
and production line setup costs.

Space economics is not in that corner of the trade space right now,
with very few exceptions.

We know we need to head that direction, but there are engineering
community inertia issues with going there, and user demand type
issues with going there, and neither is easy to make go away.


-george william herbert