This is a great post. This part stands out to me:

    > I’ve gotten into a habit of identifying parts that, through experience, I know will fail or can fail and replaced them with ones that are all but guaranteed to outlive me.

Depending upon your NDA/security level, can you share a specific example? Maybe you see a steel/aluminum chain between gears that you know will wear out in X years, but could be replaced with something that is tungsten/titanium that will last for 5X years.