Comment by kube-system
14 days ago
They’re not looking for a science fair project, it’s a production piece of IT equipment.
Adding a bunch of bespoke equipment is an unnecessary risk when a well understood off the shelf product fits the bill. It’s just office equipment for doing basic computer tasks. A laptop is appropriate.
Much production IT equipment in industrial and many other settings is what I described. It's a mature, commonplace form factor. It's in cars (without keyboards), control rooms, server racks ...
That said, I don't know why they use laptops, and it doesn't look like you do either.
I’m not making things up. Much has been written about the use of PC on spacecraft. As it turns out, PCs make good PCs:
https://gizmodo.com/how-astronauts-use-laptops-on-the-intern...
https://web.archive.org/web/20160526014418/https://www.techr...