[archgoon]

My lab has a SEM. It costs $50/hour to operate. I have been led to understand that most of that cost is to cover if something goes wrong (which means we can't lower the per hour cost by having more people use it).

Think how much more expensive coding would be if it cost $50/ per compile (or hell $10/per compile).

[dougabug]

$50/hr seems quite reasonable. I doubt I'd need more than 100 hours a year of use, and even if I required several hundred hours, that's still readily affordable.