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> Because they bought it.

Fair enough, but I was referencing people taking a Boeing exec’s claim that somehow regulations cause military soap dispensers to cost that much at face value.

> I assume you talk about the government here?

No. Read the whole sentence. I’m referencing Boeing and the tens of billions Boeing has lost on fixed price contracts.

True. That’s really a bridge too far for people who believe a Boeing executive who says tactical soap dispensers really do cost $700.

> "Whoops I made $600 from something that cost me $10"

I've written about this here some time ago - you don't pay for the soap dispenser or trash bin itself, you pay for the paperwork showing that it is safe to install this trash bin, soap dispenser or whatnot into this specific model of aircraft or spacecraft, and you pay for the paperwork that details the entire life of every tiny little piece used to manufacture that component. For flight-critical parts, IIRC that goes as far as to documenting the specific lot of the iron ore that was used to make the metal sheets, so in the event of something cropping up where something got fucked up in the mine or the smelter, you can recall every single part that could be affected. And there's lots of testing (and associated waste) at each part of the step.

Anything that goes into an airplane or spacecraft has ridiculous rules attached to it... rules that were literally written in blood. Aerospace is amongst the safest ways of transportation because of decades of crashes and learning from each and every single one.

Your average Home Depot soap dispenser has none of that, if it breaks it breaks.

Sounds interesting!

The first year you learn how hard it is, you spend 80% of your time on compliance documentation and 80% of your budget on tooling. You still don't have a satisfactory product or a mastery of filling out the forms. It drags on into the second year, you're living on ramen but eventually deliver it (if there's one thing the government procurement process is tolerant of, it's delays) and get paid.

The third year you take on a additional contract, for 200 toilet flushes or whatever. New manufacturing challenges, but at least you're getting the paperwork down.

After a few more jobs, you've cracked it. You start bidding for all the military's bathroom-related contracts. At five or six contracts a year, you have a million or two rolling in (and low manufacturing costs - remember, the spec is such that you can produce it for 80x lower) and you've hired five employees.

By year five, the only thing you care about improving is sales. You still have 5 machine shop staff, paid well but not enough to make them wealthy. You focus on hiring ex-military brass and making them sales reps and lobbyists. You're into tens of millions of revenue, that is, profit.

Year 8, you sell the thing to Northrop or to a private equity firm and go retire on an island.

You also need to provide exact replacement parts for 50 years so you should probably make 666 of them just to be safe.

I wonder what's special enough for this to be different from certified aviation grade equipment? It'd be nice it they could either make a bunch of a design (usefully) for the military to fulfill mil-spec, or if they could take an existing design and just make it in a mil-spec compliant way.

Yeah. People who haven't done manufacturing may laugh, but depending on how many custom parts there are you could easily spend most or all of that $150K just on the molds/tooling.

Now, like you said... the root cause here is probably some absurd spec that prevents them from using some existing commercial soap dispenser whose costs have already been amortized.

Then again, maybe the spec isn't absurd. The C-17 may need to fly in contested airspace. Maybe damage control is a concern. Maybe they can't use commercial soap dispensers because they're plastic and they don't want the plane to fill up with toxic fumes from burning plastic. That is a random guess. I have no idea.

I couldn't find pictures of the soap dispenser, but here's apparently a urinal from some version of the Globemaster. I get the feeling these parts are kinda custom... https://www.flickr.com/photos/morganone/122375474/in/photost...

the article believes they should cost $10 though

I think that isolating their relationship to a single transaction like this is disingenuous. Our government pays this company many billions per year. They likely or should have had extra of these laying around for replacements. It’s not unreasonable to expect them to charge a reasonable amount for everything.

But for some reason Boeing continually gets away with being Boeing for some reason.

I mean it doesn't cost $157K it costs $671. They ordered a couple hundred of them.

This one from CB2 is $40 and it doesn't conform to FAA rules and it's not MIL-SPEC. [1]

I suspect if I wanted a limited run of soap dispensers, I was only willing to buy 300 made-to-order, tested and conformant to niche military specifications and aviation specifications, I'd probably end up paying a decent chunk more than CB2.

How much does the entertainment system in your car cost vs an iPad? Is that a rip-off, or is it a niche, custom part that has to be made from automotive grade components?

How much does the soap dispenser cost in a 777 bathroom? That's the real point of comparison, not CB2.

[1] https://www.cb2.com/ramsey-calacatta-gold-marble-soap-pump/s...

Also I assume they are still using regular soap refills for these things or are they?

It’s $150k for 222 dispensers, not just one. At $671 it’s overpriced but depending on what custom spec they had, maybe not by a whole lot. I’m imagining the metal soap dispensers in airline bathrooms maybe with some additional military specs.

> What about designing the plane to use a common soap dispenser that doesnt cost $150k?

Which one? Whichever you pick you need to stock that exact same one for the next 50 to 100 years. By the time you finish exactly defining it, you are back where you started.

(Also it's not 150k each - that's the price for the entire fleet.)

You’ve got that backwards, at least in some instances. The military pretty regularly tells Congress it doesn’t want something and Congress keeps buying it to keep constituents happy: https://www.military.com/daily-news/2014/12/18/congress-agai...

You also wrong about where the money goes. It mostly goes to coastal states (and DC). The Midwest gets less money from those contracts than most states: https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/...

The only free curriculum in a right wing world. Army or prison.

No the black budget is a line item in the overall budget. Very few things go into it: even advanced weapons will be separated line items outside it.

Considering the things the US funds in the open, even when doing so directly violates US human rights law, I shudder to think what would be covered up.

I have to point out here, I think the word you're looking for is "graft".

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/air-force-overpaid-8000-percent... has a picture and it's a pretty standard run of the mill pump dispenser.