How Is The International Space Station Like A Classic Car?

"Two Russian cosmonauts began to get crucial computers up and running Friday, four days after they crashed at the international space station and curbed the outpost's ability to orient itself and produce oxygen.

The progress came after days of frustrating effort and, for the time being, removed a set of troubling options lying ahead for NASA and the Russian space agency if the computers continued to fail."

The Avanti now slumbers in our garage, broken again, while my wife and I ponder its future. Despite the new radiator we put in two years ago, it's leaking coolant and overheating. Friends we meet ask us how our car is doing, but we're not sure we're up for another multithousand-dollar round of maintenance for a car we can't trust for a 30-mile trip.

The Avanti and the ISS are esoteric, expensive and require more time and money spent keeping them running than they return in productive use.