Nobody said they never did. I personally am thrilled by:
* It works reliably enough to be useful in the most extreme inhabitated environments. (And this habitation is artificial and very expensive)
* The logistics behind the experimental setup must have been pretty complex and all worked out. It makes me wonder whether people who manage artic stations get loaned to ESA/NASA and vv.[1]
I would say that proving a technology under those circumstances is the ultimate proof of usability, something an artificial test setup can never provide.
[1] Deploying something to space or the arctics both means that you can only fix a very limited set of problems on-the-fly. Everybody ask themselves whether they would bet someone's survival on their code or logistics.....
* It works reliably enough to be useful in the most extreme inhabitated environments. (And this habitation is artificial and very expensive)
* The logistics behind the experimental setup must have been pretty complex and all worked out. It makes me wonder whether people who manage artic stations get loaned to ESA/NASA and vv.[1]
I would say that proving a technology under those circumstances is the ultimate proof of usability, something an artificial test setup can never provide.
[1] Deploying something to space or the arctics both means that you can only fix a very limited set of problems on-the-fly. Everybody ask themselves whether they would bet someone's survival on their code or logistics.....