Comment by jacquesm

That principle goes far further than developing for space, but for space the pay-off is the largest. It also applies to maritime, medical, aviation and mining and probably other domains where whatever you make it going to have to function even when you can not reach it at all.

But it is great to point it out and to show how essential this kind of thinking is, and how it can help to focus on what is really important and what can be fixed.

What is interesting is to theorize about the relative impact of losing any of those three and how you managed to fix the second because you still had power and were able to communicate with the device. I think within those the order of relative importance would be communications, power and then attitude but I could well be mistaken.