Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!paperboy!snorkelwacker!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!att!cbnews!military
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Bat Plane Bux
Message-ID: <13083@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 12 Jan 90 04:47:03 GMT
References: <12850@cbnews.ATT.COM>
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From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
>From: animal@isis.rice.edu (Carl Rosene)
>it's quite remarkable that they are able to build a B-2
>for only about twice the cost of a 747...

Uh, don't you mean "twice the *price* of a 747"?  It's common knowledge
that the profit margin on the 747 is... large.  It has no competition
and demand consistently exceeds supply, so Boeing charges all the market
will bear.  Very handy that was, too, when the 757 was deep in the red
and the 767 was only barely holding its own.

>Which brings up another point. The B-2 is, to my knowledge,
>the only military plane for which the prototypes came off
>of the production line...

This is a pervasive myth.  Building prototypes with production tooling
has been normal practice since the 50s.  How a part is built influences
its properties; you *cannot* build a realistic prototype of a modern
aircraft without using production processes and tooling.  The normal
practice is to try hard to get things right, push the first prototype
through as quickly as possible, and hold up further production until
an intensive test program has (you hope) turned up any major flaws.
Sometimes it works.  The USAF is probably cutting corners on the B-2,
however, since "the computers" say the design is right...

                                     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
                                 uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu