From: vince@offshore.ai (Vincent Cate)
Newsgroups: sci.space.tech
Subject: Re: Prices on Ion Drives or Hall Thrusters?
References: <9186edb5.0307071106.12b9975d@posting.google.com> <behvvo$e3l$1@spock.usc.edu>
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Message-ID: <9186edb5.0307100848.54c77ebc@posting.google.com>

schillin@spock.usc.edu (John Schilling) wrote in message news:<behvvo$e3l$1@spock.usc.edu>...
> You won't get one for less than a hundred thousand, and you get
> a scarlet 'S' for "Sucker!" if you pay more than ten million,
> but anything in between is possible.
> 
> 
> >Better yet, if I wanted 200 of them, what do you think they would 
> >cost?  
> 
> An order of that size gets you a factor of two to four in cost
> reductions, which you ought to be able to negoitate as price
> reductions.

Thanks for the info.

From talking to one sales/engineer it seemed that most of their cost
was in testing and "space rating".  The level of quality control 
required to get the reliability most customers want costs a lot.  If 
I was willing to accept a higher failure rate it seemed like they would 
take a factor of 2 or 3 off the price.  

  -- Vince