[joshsabol46]

> Overall, the Ford’s estimated lifetime operations and sustainment costs have grown to $123 billion from $77.3 billion, the most of six programs GAO evaluated.

That's an expensive boat.

[pjleonhardt]

Its a floating city, a floating airport, 2 nuclear reactors, supports 4500 people, and go at > 30 knots. Yeah, that comes at a cost.

[Dylan16807]

27 million dollars of upkeep per person is still pretty ridiculous. How many parts are they burning up on a daily basis?

[manigandham]

Why is the "per-person" cost relevant?

[Dylan16807]

Because, after you remove the cost of having the crew and supplying them with basic maintenance parts, it gives you an idea of how many people on the ground are needed to support each person onboard, just to supply expensive parts that are being constantly burned through.

Ideally this supply of burned-up parts would not be particularly huge.

But I didn't realize that number was for a full fifty years, so I'll take back the 'ridiculous'. It's still a whole lot.

[anovikov]

Over 50 years! Not so ridiculous. It even includes crew costs. Isn't it about as much as a software engineer total costs in a typical Valley company?