The only thing that sounds wild in the article is that the manufacturer supposedly didn’t test the antennae’s unfolding mechanism on the ground. Did they think they could just send a technician if something won’t work lmao
Systems like that can easily be difficult or impossible to test on the ground, because they aren’t strong enough to work under gravity. They might need to be in free-fall to survive being deployed
TBF the cost justification of added machinery weight to operate under many conditions is still better than needing to restart completely when it failed.
The only thing that sounds wild in the article is that the manufacturer supposedly didn’t test the antennae’s unfolding mechanism on the ground. Did they think they could just send a technician if something won’t work lmao
Systems like that can easily be difficult or impossible to test on the ground, because they aren’t strong enough to work under gravity. They might need to be in free-fall to survive being deployed
TBF the cost justification of added machinery weight to operate under many conditions is still better than needing to restart completely when it failed.