The Maintenance Race
worksinprogress.co
worksinprogress.co
In a recent Mars flight series (on Netflix if i remember correctly) the water filtration machine broke midflight and the crew started to take it apart and stopped doing it - recognizing impossibility of such a repair endeavor - after taking out 4000 something pieces, and that failure put them into a mortal danger. (Sidenote: I had though to suspend disbelief as it looked completely unreal to me that one of the crewmembers - a USSR/Russian cosmonaut - wouldn't immediately rig a simple distillation device to make drinking water - everybody in USSR was doing it everywhere to make moonshine, especially in the "dry" places like ocean ships, remote military bases, etc., and i can do it myself in a few minutes with as little as 4 pieces of generic kitchen wares :)
It also made me think about how to approach long-lasting systems. Whether technological or societal, preparation, complexity reduction, and constant maintenance are key.
Sailing and extended time (more than a day trip) on small vessels is a life changing experience. I highly recommend it to anyone who has the opportunity. If you can do it on someone else's boat, even better. I spent the last few years living aboard (mostly at dock), learning to sail, and training/crewing with a marine rescue org --- it completely reframed my views on simplicity, maintenance and planning, for all areas of life.
If you’re willing to share, I’d be interested in knowing more about how you view these areas now.
Things that constantly occupied my attention:
Basic 12 volt electrics, not setting things on fire, fuses, understanding wind generators (we didn't have affordable solar in the 80s). Planning and saving power. Looking after lead-acid batteries.
Ventilation and elementary fluid dynamics, not getting gassed or blown-up with diesel fumes, propane or CO.
Food storage and hygiene. Keeping stuff cool. Looking after water supplies. Cleaning surfaces and managing waste.
Maintaining the RIB/dinghy so I could go ashore for shopping.
Listening to the weather forecast and maintaining the radio as an essential piece of kit.
The year after I read Pirsig's disappointing second book "Lila", that tries to expand the themes he already established in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". Anyway, those books and the boat experience changed my relation to technology at an early age.
It's obvious all 3 suffered from isolation, boredom and depression besides all the other hardships and it's fascinating how each had a very different response to the conditions. Moitessier seems to have had the best chance, but ultimately lost the will to win. In hindsight, Crowhurst was obviously under too much pressure to win. Maybe if he had never allowed himself to be dishonest, he could have walked away, despite the frightening prospect of financial/personal ruin waiting for him back home.
That seems to have crossed the point of no return..
It plays well into the narrative though, Moitesser was much older and better funded which gave him the ability to presolve a lot of the problems.
Knox-Johnston had to make do with whatever he could from the onset.
I read it as you can spend time/money to store "maintenance capital" such that whenever you need it you have payed for it in advance or you can pay as you go... With the risks and uncertainty that comes with it.
What you cannot do is borrow technical maintenance indefinitely, sooner or later you must pay up.
> Native American gene flow into Polynesia predating Easter Island settlement
> Here we analyse genome-wide variation in individuals from islands across Polynesia for signs of Native American admixture, analysing 807 individuals from 17 island populations and 15 Pacific coast Native American groups. We find conclusive evidence for prehistoric contact of Polynesian individuals with Native American individuals (around AD 1200) contemporaneous with the settlement of remote Oceania13-15.
My fave quote.