Economies of Scale

Something that we generally see on earth is economies of scale. Large companies can be more efficient as they are producing massive amounts of the same thing. This can easily be seen if you look at the cost of something like a new mobile phone and then consider how much it would cost you to have someone design and build something equivalent as a once-off.

What are the limits on this though? We already ship things all around the world but once we develop interplanetary and interstellar travel will that still be the case? Could we conceivably see planets which run cheap production lines mass producing components that are then shipped to all other planets, or does the increased cost and time of shipping mean that each planetary economy would mostly run independently from the others?

I realize the answer will change considerably depending on just how hard and expensive space flight is. Lets say that we do have FTL travel and while it still takes a few days to reach other planets in our solar system it only takes a few months to reach another solar system entirely.

posted almost 9 years ago

Tim B‭

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