The Polar Star, the only U.S. ship capable of bludgeoning through heavy ice

On a new ship or machine, bearings are smooth. Fasteners are clean and crisply torqued, you break them free once with equal torque and subsequently can turn them out with your fingers. Hoses and wires are flexible and strong. Everything is at the beginning of its service life, and after a break-in period, likely has many years of trouble-free operation ahead.

The process for, say, installing a new gasket? 1. Turn the bolts loose with a ratchet and socket. 2. Remove old gasket. 3. Install new gasket. 4. Reinstall bolts, torquing to spec. Estimated time: 20 minutes.

Not so on an old girl.

Step 1. Wipe off the congealed grease and oil from leak above. Wire brush the paint and rust underneath so you can get the socket over the bolt head. Attempt to turn bolt loose. Get extension pipe for ratchet. Get impact driver. Apply heat with propane torch. Apply heat with oxyacetylene torch. Repeat escalation for each bolt, except #6 which breaks off in the blind hole, that will need to be drilled out and have a thread insert installed. 2. Maintenance used RTV silicone last time instead of gasket. Brush, scrape, and stone that silicone-covered, corrosion pitted surface to clean, flat metal. The more time you take here, the better the repair will be, but you're on your back in the dark instead of in the machine shop working on new metal. 3. Gasket not available commercially this time this time either, re-apply RTV silicone for the next guy to deal with (probably you). 4. Bolts are stretched from heat and corroded so don't thread in smoothly, heads rounded over, (and one broke), so buy new bolts, which still don't thread in because threaded holes are likewise corroded. Run tap into threaded holes, avoiding contamination of interior with metal chips. Reinstall bolts. Torque to spec, as if that would keep this thing from coming loose and leaking again in a couple months. Elapsed time: 4 hours.

And it needs service like,this all the time, because everything is at the end of its useful life.

It's a lot like working with a buggy and brittle legacy codebase instead of doing green-field development.

They don't so much smash ice with the bow of the vessel but instead use their powerful engines to push the ship onto the ice, which then breaks under the weight of the ship.

This means they require a relatively flat bottomed hull, which doesn't make for a nice ride in blue water with swell.

Newer designs travel through the ice in reverse so that more suitable bows for oceans voyages can be used.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_acting_ship

I’m all for moving money from DoD to peaceful operations such as this.

Specifically, he spoke about the challenges imposed on properly harnessing the post-WWII professional armaments industry, which he noted was functionally necessary in the modern age, to a healthy democracy.

"Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defense; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research -- these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.

But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs -- balance between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage -- balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration."

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."

"Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow."