Comment Re:45 million? Tha's all? (Score 2) 154
It wasn't just a freaking seat, it was the entire bathroom, and they had to make large injection molding dies to create the new bathroom. The seat was just one of the parts that went into the new bathroom and the project cost was spread over x number of pieces of deliverable parts. Any time you deal with injection molding or just about any significant manufacturing process there are large upfront costs that lead to VERY expensive parts if you don't produce a lot of something (heck, even business cards get stupid expensive if you order less than a few boxes at once, which is why I have a few thousand business cards I'll never use as it's WAY cheaper to order me 10x more than I need then it is to even occasionally need an additional batch run). The alternative to the new bathrooms was scrapping the airframe and designing a new one, and if you haven't been paying attention lately to the way Air Force procurement is done that would have resulted in a LOT more cost than some $640 toilet seats. Btw thanks to those new bathrooms the P-3C Orion is one of a handful of aircraft to serve over 50 years bringing the cost per flight hour down quite a bit over building new replacements =)