Russia To Save Its ISS Modules

jamax writes "According to the BBC, 'Russia is making plans to detach and fly away its parts of the International Space Station when the time comes to de-orbit the rest of the outpost. ... To facilitate the plan, RKK Energia, the country's main ISS contractor, has already started developing a special node module for the Russian segment, which will double as the cornerstone of the future station. ... Unlike many Nasa and European space officials, Russian engineers are confident that even after two decades in orbit, their modules would be in good enough shape to form the basis of a new space station. "We flew on Mir for 15 years and accumulated colossal experience in extending the service life (of such a vehicle)," said a senior Russian official at RKK Energia...' Is Russia the last country where engineers are not (yet) forced by corporations to intentionally produce designs that fail two days after warranty expires? There used to be a lot of equipment manufactured by various countries (Germany is the first one that comes to mind) that lasted virtually forever — old cars or weapons systems, but one rarely sees anything of the sort these days."

Comments

Re:Survivorship bias

[Schemat1c]

I'm sitting at a desk made during WW2 as I type this. It's made of thicker steel than most still running cars.

And homes 100 years old were made from redwood beams a few inches apart and still hold up. But where are all the redwoods? Sure we could use massive amounts of resources to make 'unbreakable' things but we would use up our finite supply much sooner. Already if the entire planet consumed as much resources as America it would require 12 Earth's to fulfill the demand.