This got me thinking. How about a scenario where the Machine Spirit was *obviously* supersticious nonsense to the *players.* Let it go on as a running gag for a while. Then, when the hinge spirits won't let them in the airlock, the machine spirit rebels against them...

Personally i believe it's a bit of both. Mostly it's superstition, maintanence protocols and simple breathing exercises that have become ritualistic.

I know from my time in the army (officially I organized the communication-network, in reality I was babysitting the guys out on the field) that people really do screw up in the most basic fashions and when things all seem properly aligned and it still doesn't work, you pray to whatever god might listen.

In most cases the calls that came in were from tired and worn-down soldiers who had no real experience with the equipment they were using an their techies were sleeping and were not to be disturbed it could be anything from "We can't reach anyone!" to "There's a big red light flashing and strange symbols on the screen." Usually all it took was to simply reboot the system or if that didn't work, remove the cabling and put it in correctly again. Now not all soldiers are intelligent... Especially Guardsmen that haven't slept for two days so you had to go from everything from scratch. Kind of like explaining it to a five year old, any explanations as to how or why something worked was far beyond them, they just need it to work. I'd like to believe that it's the same with the Imperium.

And as to the common rifle. We were learned chanting rhymes as to how the parts fit together so we could assemble and disassemble them in darkness, this together with words like S.A.R.A. (in swedish something alone the lines of take aim, breath in, fire, breath out), well it all kind of makes sense if you've forgetten why you do all of this, you just know that you are saying SARA in your head (or some prayer to the Emperor) because well, it's what they trained you to do and it works.