Graduate and postdoc labor is cheap, pressure vessels are not.

Which is kinda funny since plumber labor is expensive, and new pipes under the sink are cheap.

The plumbers made better life choices :-)

The grad students and postdocs are sacrificed... for science!

Even a new vessel need new plumbing to connect it to the vacuum pump (or pumps, sometimes you need one to to go from ambient pressure to low pressure and another to go from low pressure to very low pressure) and the pressure measuring device(s) and also sealing the holes where the wires go (I guess they have some sensor inside the vessel connected to things that are outside). So a brand new vessel means restarting all the seals from zero.

i believe the comment you are responding was talking about actual home sink in GP comment, not the LHC =)

I have replaced the p-trap under sink already, but your comment actually got me thinking maybe it's a leak around the caulk seal where the sink joins the counter or faucets!

No plumbing adventure is complete without 6 trips to your local hardware store, thinking each one is surely the last.

My family (avid do-it-yourselfers, who renovated each house we lived in) used to score project size by trips to the hardware store, both proposed/planned/expected, and also actual. :P