(August 29, 2014 at 1:18 pm)Chuck Wrote:(August 29, 2014 at 1:03 pm)Tonus Wrote: This. Most technologies are expensive at first, as the inventors and investors seek to recover development costs and as supply is low at first. As the technology is improved and becomes easier to mass-produce, prices come down and it becomes more widespread and available to more income classes.
That depends on the nature of the technology, and what it must consume in order to function. Cost of technology only goes down dramatically over time if it is the application of the technology that had been scarce in the beginning, not what the technology must consume to function. An example is chemical rocket technology. In the beginning both the technology and what it consumes had been scarce. But since Sputnik chemical rocket technology is no longer scarce. Everyone and their uncle can now make a workable chemical rocket to put something into space. But what the chemical rocket technology consumes, prodigious quantity of chemical energy, remains scarce. This is why while cost of chemical rockets have come down, they remain frighteningly high, and while they will probably come down some more in the next decades, there is no prospect of their ever coming down dramatically.
The other aspect is demand, because with large demand comes scaling of cost. The example you give here is not liable to see volume efficiencies any time soon, but other new technologies -- computers come to mind immediately -- where while demand is rising and R&D is on the cutting edge, prices still fall, because manufacturers have a predictable market allowing for predictable production curves.
