Comment by unethical_ban

It's odd to see this level of skepticism, honestly. Does one think the engineers at Google aren't thinking about these problems?

This is obviously a test, just like hundreds or thousands of tests in space before it. Can we run Earth-rated components at any scale in space? How will it fail in various ways, at what rate, and are the causes able to be mitigated?

"We" talk about moonbases and Mars colonies. Part of any extended presence in space will involve the presence of computational devices. They're figuring out how to make that work with modern hardware. That's my take, anyway.