Wow. That was really weird, and embarrassing. I must have hit the wrong button a few times. Or did the forum mishandle my attempts to edit my original post? I have never seen it do that before, so it must have been me.

Yes, and I have done it before and probably will again. One of the signs of old age, I guess.

Sorry, I meant to include the links to the shots in my dropbox, but when my attempt to open a ticket failed I got distracted. Also, I dropped an "er" in one of the screen names when I originally posted this issue. Here are the links to the screen shots:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/aholiqew89m1ds7/Designer%20screen%20Ion%20drive%20mass%202017-03-04%2014.18.56.png?dl=0

This screen shot is of the "Designer" screen, the one that lists all of the ships not obsoleted and that have techs researched. Note that the selected ship -- "Heavy Cruiser M3" lists its Ion Drives as using up 9.6 of the ship's mass capacity.

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https://www.dropbox.com/s/2c5yvmwt07bvhha/Ship%20Designer%20screen%20Ion%20drive%20mass-1%202017-03-04%2014.20.23.png?dl=0

This screen shot is of the "Ship Designer" screen which was brought up after I clicked "Use Design" in the "Design" screen with "Heavy Cruiser M3" selected. The mouse is hovered over one of the Ion drives in the list of equipment for the ship at the bottom of the screen, The drive mass listed in the tool tip is 12.6.

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https://www.dropbox.com/s/a4fq2e873khe8xy/Ship%20Designer%20screen%20Ion%20drive%20mass-2%202017-03-04%2014.20.37.png?dl=0

Again this is of the "Ship Designer" screen - the same as the one above, with the mouse hovering over the components -> Equip list entry "Ion Drive", which also shows a drive mass of 12.6.

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The same is true of any component  that takes up mass on a ship as far as I can find. The effect is as if the "Designer" screen is taking into account tech research that increase mass capacity of ships or mass requirement reduction of ship components, but the "Ship Designer" screen in not.

My problem is that when I look for the ship designs in the "Designer" screen I can upgrade after completing research on a tech of any component that takes up ship mass or a tech that increases the mass available in a ship I am mislead into thinking I can upgrade a ship design that the Ship Designer screen will not allow me to upgrade due to lack of mass available.

Thanks for your attention on this.

 I wonder if the discrepancy is with "base mass" vs "ship-size adjusted mass"?

That would make sense, if weapons show the same on both screens, but support modules show different.