The B-52 is some of the best money we've ever spent. The fact we've been able to continually upgrade it from the dawn of the jet age to the present to the point that it could by flying in 2055 is nothing short of amazing. On the other side of the world, the Russians are doing the same thing with their Tu-95.
"Good catch on the Tu-95 — and it's an interesting parallel to another jumbo margin story: the 747. Boeing's slide-rule-era airframe carries structural excess (floor strength, nose loading) that's dead weight against fuel burn on passenger routes, which is exactly why the passenger 747 is nearly extinct. But UPS and the freighter operators are living proof that same 'over-engineered' margin becomes the entire value proposition once the mission shifts to cargo. Same margin, but here it's earning its keep every flight instead of just sitting idle waiting for the one day it's needed."
There's an old saying that floats around the Japanese internet: if you're hesitating because of the price, buy it; if the reason you're buying is the price, don't. It's the same thing you're pointing at, I think — the price tag is the wrong number to be steering by.
We all know the expensive-looking thing is often cheaper spread over the months. But the sticker price is right there in front of you, and the lifetime cost isn't, so the eye goes to the wrong one anyway. If I do that with everyday purchases that aren't even expensive, I can only imagine how the judgment bends at hundreds of billions.
And unlike my own shopping, this is tax money — so the criticism comes at you from every direction, which probably pushes people even harder toward the choice that looks safe today.
Arimitsu — that's the cleaner version of what I was circling. The price tag is the number that's visible, the lifetime cost is the number that's true, and we steer by the one we can see. With tax money the effect compounds, because the visibility cuts both ways — everyone's watching the sticker price, nobody's watching the flex margin you gave up to hit it.
That's actually the exact mechanism under the next two pieces this week — one's about a factory that skipped the cheap check on hundreds of engines, the other's about a plane that failed in a way everyone could've predicted if they'd been looking at the right number. Same pattern, different decades.
The B-52 is some of the best money we've ever spent. The fact we've been able to continually upgrade it from the dawn of the jet age to the present to the point that it could by flying in 2055 is nothing short of amazing. On the other side of the world, the Russians are doing the same thing with their Tu-95.
Dennis:
"Good catch on the Tu-95 — and it's an interesting parallel to another jumbo margin story: the 747. Boeing's slide-rule-era airframe carries structural excess (floor strength, nose loading) that's dead weight against fuel burn on passenger routes, which is exactly why the passenger 747 is nearly extinct. But UPS and the freighter operators are living proof that same 'over-engineered' margin becomes the entire value proposition once the mission shifts to cargo. Same margin, but here it's earning its keep every flight instead of just sitting idle waiting for the one day it's needed."
There's an old saying that floats around the Japanese internet: if you're hesitating because of the price, buy it; if the reason you're buying is the price, don't. It's the same thing you're pointing at, I think — the price tag is the wrong number to be steering by.
We all know the expensive-looking thing is often cheaper spread over the months. But the sticker price is right there in front of you, and the lifetime cost isn't, so the eye goes to the wrong one anyway. If I do that with everyday purchases that aren't even expensive, I can only imagine how the judgment bends at hundreds of billions.
And unlike my own shopping, this is tax money — so the criticism comes at you from every direction, which probably pushes people even harder toward the choice that looks safe today.
Arimitsu — that's the cleaner version of what I was circling. The price tag is the number that's visible, the lifetime cost is the number that's true, and we steer by the one we can see. With tax money the effect compounds, because the visibility cuts both ways — everyone's watching the sticker price, nobody's watching the flex margin you gave up to hit it.
That's actually the exact mechanism under the next two pieces this week — one's about a factory that skipped the cheap check on hundreds of engines, the other's about a plane that failed in a way everyone could've predicted if they'd been looking at the right number. Same pattern, different decades.