3 ms·
I'm assuming it's the connectors and/or soldering. Given the pressure difference I imagine you could see a connector blow off or solder joints explode. I still
by bArray 5y ago
I'm assuming it's the connectors and/or soldering. Given the pressure difference I imagine you could see a connector blow off or solder joints explode.
I still imagine it's insanely overkill, but when you're paying millions of dollars to send something into orbit, you probably want to make sure it works well first time.
With regards to malfunctions, I imagine this risk would actually be better mitigated with (fail-safe) circuit redundancy. After all, radiation is going to be causing bit flips and all sorts of weirdness.
- edrxty 5y agoSpace is only ~14 psi of pressure differential from sea level, far less than in your car tires. Nothing is exploding. The issue is mostly off gassing contamination of critical surfaces like optics and sensitive circuit boards.
- giantrobot 5y agoAdded circuitry is not free. Every gram or redundancy is one less gram of mission payload. Added circuitry is also increasing the number of failure modes. That's not to say redundancy is bad or should never be considered but it needs to be weighed (literally and figuratively) against every other part of the mission. Optimizing for mass and mission capability means manufacturing will get more expensive.