Now that everyone was getting settled into their new homes, and Uncle Lu had a wonderful new Mecha Design project that the entire Rae 5 system would benefit from, there really was no choice except to make themselves comfortable for an extended period on the planet.
It was much safer to examine Terminus' engines while they were powered down and the ship was on the ground and not in space, so Uncle Lu was making the best of his time here to get the essential study done.
He hadn't been slacking on his original designs, but he needed a much smaller power plant that would be capable of the energy output that he required for his weapons and travel designs, which the Terminus promised to provide him, assuming that he could understand enough about its design to engineering a miniaturized version of it for the Mecha.