But those aren’t the main reasons for the costs. The main reasons are that rockets have not benefited from reduced costs through mass production—something that would be very hard to estimate if you didn’t know or guess that.
Right, and attempting to do a Fermi estimate and then checking it would help you see that that was something you didn’t know. (Maybe I’m not getting my point across well here. My point wasn’t that such a Fermi estimate would have been in any way accurate. My point is that identifying what made it inaccurate would have helped you update more.)
Estimate how many people you would have needed to employ and what their salaries might be, estimate the cost of materials…
But those aren’t the main reasons for the costs. The main reasons are that rockets have not benefited from reduced costs through mass production—something that would be very hard to estimate if you didn’t know or guess that.
Right, and attempting to do a Fermi estimate and then checking it would help you see that that was something you didn’t know. (Maybe I’m not getting my point across well here. My point wasn’t that such a Fermi estimate would have been in any way accurate. My point is that identifying what made it inaccurate would have helped you update more.)
Ah, I see. I’ll try and bear that in mind next time I go looking for info like that!