Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

Kichigai t1_ixrzyhi wrote

Reply to comment by dpdxguy in Orion snaps 'selfie' with the Moon as it prepares for distant retrograde orbit | Insertion burn scheduled to take place today then engineers have six days to see how spacecraft fares in deep space by chrisdh79

Among everything else folks have said for reasons, doesn't hurt to do some endurance testing. If we're gonna put a few people inside this tin can for 2+ weeks we may as well know for sure how well the craft will hold up for that long.

Maybe we'll discover that some heat sink is inadequately dispersing heat, and it's only through long term operation that we can see this happening. Maybe whatever newfangled material we're making the windows out of start to delaminate, but only after prolonged bombardment by cosmic rays.

12

dpdxguy t1_ixs9dwg wrote

>doesn't hurt to do some endurance testing.

Sure. But op said the next six days would be telling. The question I had was, "Why will the next six days tell us stuff that the previous and however remain following the six won't tell?" I suspect the answer is, "They won't. It's the entire mission outside of LEO and Van Allen Belt transit that will tell us how it handles 'deep space.'"

5