As VO is potentially moving toward large-scale organized activities, such as players or guilds building stations and capital ships, engaging in manufacturing enterprises, etc., it would add an element of real-world risk to include r&d costs and risks to activities aimed at producing new in-game products like ships and weapons.
In reality, you don't produce a new device without incurring time delays in developing it, costs in funding the development, and the risk that it might not work.
If indeed manufacturing and crafting are introduced into VO game play (which I would welcome, as a player interested in large-scale cooperation), I suggest that a means be found to make such enterprises costly and risky. I would be interested in discussion to that end. --- tsreknor

I believe that the devs have made it abundantly clear in the past that they want to avoid the "dice-roll" aspect of things, so 'a risk that it might not work' is pretty much out of the question. The other suggested factors, on the other hand, are much more likely to factor into the manufacturing process, at least on some level.