At 08:40 AM 7/22/01, Jeroen wrote:
>At 20:25 19-7-01 -0400, Kevin Camplate wrote:
>
>>Would that be the same government that spends billions of dollars on
>>weapons, while at the same time lets the poor and the homeless starve to death?
>>
>>Jeroen
>>
>>___________________
>>
>>Oh yes let's hold up that placard. Mean old government is just letting
>>people die while spending 3k on a toilet seat.
>
>Exactly how much of that is fact? I've heard people refer to those
>expensive toilet seats (with varying price tags) often when they criticize
>government, but I have not seen any hard evidence (like photocopies of
>invoices). It seems to me that someone once made up that example of
>expensive toilet seats, after which it got a life of its own.
Some things made special for the military do seem to be expensive in
comparison with their civilian equivalents. I don't know the actual cost
of the oft-maligned toilet seats, but off-the-shelf toilet seats are not
necessarily suitable for use in military aircraft, where (1) there may not
be room for a standard toilet and (2) no one wants the lid to fly open and
the contents fly out into the cabin when the aircraft banks to the
side. Specially designed items that have a limited production run (compare
how many toilets are there in military aircraft with the millions in homes)
often end up costing quite a bit more than similar items that have a larger
market because the fixed costs involved in designing the product and
getting it into production must necessarily be spread over a smaller number
of units.
Again, I don't know anything first-hand about the toilet seats, but when I
was in the Air Force, I noticed that the cost of a chip or other electronic
component ordered through the supply system was indeed several times the
cost of a similar component from the Radio Shack� store a couple of blocks
away from the base gate. However, the chip available from supply was
designed, manufactured, and certified to meet MIL-SPEC requirements for
resistance to such things as temperature extremes, vibration, malfunction
due to EMI from external sources, etc., so it would be less likely to fail
when the aircraft or other device in which it was installed was subject to
the abuses of combat.
--Ronn! :)
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I always knew that I would see the first man on the Moon.
I never dreamed that I would see the last.
--Dr. Jerry Pournelle
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