[Kevin Sevcik]

Given that the construction rules, fix-it windows, and carry in weight limits all seem to greatly encourage making large amounts of spares well ahead of time, I think the GDC/FIRST must be on the side of spares being a good thing. As many others in the thread have noted, no one in the real world would design a machine for which a spare part could not be purchased or at least machined. Yes, there are a few exception like the mirror for the Hubble and other things in that vein, but they're really rather rare.

I don't really buy the argument that this lack of spares is a good extra design constraint. There are plenty of very serious rather difficult design constraint already placed upon the teams. Adding the extra design constraint of not screwing up ever while making the part, plus it'd better work right every time including the first, or else you'd better have safety features that'd better work right every time including the first.... It seems perverse. Mostly I think it's a bad thing because it's primarily going to dissuade teams from using the FPs or any other easily mangled parts that are highly difficult to replace, which means that money, effort, and good will to get the motors in the KoP are all wasted. I can't really blame teams for not using them, though, it's a pretty smart engineering decision.