Re: V22 Osprey
Nick, I'm beginning to see your approach. When planning the machine, if you seperate the procurement costs from the operating costs, it doesn't matter if you spread procurement costs over one mission or over the life of the machine.
However, I doubt an operator would ever work that way. I was comparing a North American built sporty family sedan to a similiar performing German one. Operating costs (mostly mileage) were approximately the same, but the German one cost twice as much. However, the safety and reliability of the German car and the quality of the engineering convinced me that it was worth more than twice the North American one. The first trip home would have been safer but (using your statistic) that would have cost me $4,000 per mile for that safety. Had I considered your statistic rather than the decrease in the long term operating costs due to the reliability I wouldn't have ever thought that the German was the better choice.
Not a very good story because in the end I bought the North American one because my wife liked the color choices better.
If by some miracle the V22 proves to need $1 of maintenance for every 900 flight hours, then that fact would never appear in your stats, but would be very influential in choosing a machine.
The point is that the decision of which machine to procure should ultimately compare overall performance and suitability with average hourly cost of operation over the vehicle's lifetime. That average hourly cost would not have a $120 million increment (60 minutes x $2 million/minute) due to the purchase price of $100 million.