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Comment by mrtimo | Hacker News Reader

"The Triple-E’s were built for $190 million a ship"

The list price for the 777-300ER is $320.2 million [1].

Incredible! 1: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/03/30/why-...

9,000 40' containers, enough to carry parts for a whole bunch of 777's :-). I was browsing http://www.buzzfeed.com/kristinchirico/surprisingly-gorgeous... and thought, "Wow, one of those Maersk ships could be like a whole village."

The logistics though are still a problem. When one of them docks it dumps a lot of containers into the network which causes congestion exactly like packets in a network as this article http://www.citylab.com/work/2014/10/a-complete-guide-to-the-... points out.

True. IN my life the local big port has gone from not having a rail head, to having a rail head, to having a "port rail facility", and through several upgrades to that facility.

Would that mean the primary costs for a 777 aren't materials?

i'm not sure you could make that arguement since they don't use the same materials. container ships are mostly steel while airplanes are a mix of aluminum, cabron fiber and titanium

The majority of the 787 Dreamliner is carbon fiber for weight reduction.

The Dreamliner is the 787.

Thank you! I corrected my typo.

pretty much. every single thing used to make a plane has to pass a shitload of tests, that is what adds the cost. I think it costs about a million dollars to test the wing of a plane like a 747, one wing.

One of the wing tests:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ai2HmvAXcU0

"This Boeing 777 wing was tested to destruction, finally breaking at one fifty four percent (154%) of the designed limit load."

I doubt materials are the primary cost for most manufactured goods.

That said, some materials (carbon fiber composite) are expensive per gram than others (steel).

Triple-Es don't have to fly. Key difference.

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