Designing for Maintenance

Colonization of space will have one side effect I don't see talked about much. There will be a paradigm shift away from disposable technology and towards more flexible, repairable, repurposable technology. If your microwave oven dies now, or your inkjet printer, or your smoothie blender, getting it repaired would be inconcievable. These devices are too cheap to repair, and are designed to be thrown away. The labor costs of repair would be a significant fraction of their cost new, and it isn't worth the bother. They aren't designed to be repaired. Components are integrated, the innards are inaccessible, and the places they are made are not the places they are sold.

This is a recipe for disaster in space! Technology will have to be designed to be easily accessible by techs, rather than designed for efficiency of manufacture. Components will need to be genericized, not only so that fewer spares need to be carried, but so that less essential devices can be cannibalized in favor of repairing essential devices, if necessary. Upgrades should be on the component level rather than the unit level. Then the old component can be kept as a spare. Devices would need to be larger, though not necessarily much more massive. Most of the size difference will be in access space or accessible mounting.

Displays and input should be transparently shared and redirectable. Data needs easy rerouting, so that one computing device can double as another in a pinch. Damage control and repair need to be top priorities when a ship is millions of kilometers from the nearest source of parts!