[M.D. Holloway]

nostatic - spending many years in the past developing stuff for DARPA as well as Mil Spec and AMS materials, the costs are pretty ridiculus but accurate. Granted, there are plenty of items that NASA and the Armed Forces could use for Home Depot or Lowes but that produces it's share of problems. The cost to bring any item to market has huge direct and indirect costs that most all companies just absorb but due to certain costing and accounting regulations make it difficult to do when you supply to the gov - not to mention that if you get your stuff speced in you can charge a king's ramsom for it. Do that for a period of time and your operating margins start depending on the 1000% mark up.