Extreme cold and vacuum are both hard on materials. The extreme cold will cause differential contraction (or sometimes expansion) of different materials, warping and buckling things. Even if you've tried to thoroughly vent and dry the interior, you'll have some residual gas and water, and those (especially water, which expands on freezing) can cause big problems when they turn to ice. The vacuum will volatilize components of many plastics and other similar materials, making them change properties in unwelcome ways (e.g., becoming more brittle. And metallic parts in contact with one another are in danger of vacuum welding. It's almost certainly better to keep the ship pressurized and at a moderate temperature during storage.

On Thu, Nov 2, 2017 at 4:23 PM, Rupert Boleyn <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:
On 02Nov2017 0255, Grimmund wrote:

For ships being intentionally stored, no point in venting it to vacuum.
Hard on the internals, and then requires air or vac suits to get the
ship  back into operation.  Although, if you are doing it intentionally,
part of the storage procedure may be storing some large compressed
atmosphere tanks in the hold, enough to get the ship back up to
shirtsleeve operating pressure.  Or maybe not, and that's one of the
things the yard tender carries around...

 I'd vent it to vacuum to so as to not have to worry about moisture damage and mould. Unless there are systems that simply won't survive being exposed to vacuum and great cold, I'd mothball ships way out in the system as well - things happen more slowly at low temperatures, and far from the sun there'll be less heating and cooling.

Pluto seems like a suitable place, though it's inconveniently far away from the inner system when it comes to accessing the graveyard - far enough that low-G transports would be better of jump there (I'd take constant 4G acceleration to make the trip from Earth in less than a week). Jupiter's trojan's are another, albeit warmer, option - a week out at 1G, and far from both the Sun and Jupiter and thus fairly cool and calm.

--
Rupert Boleyn <xxxxxx@gmail.com>
Chief Assistant to the Assistant Chief

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