  This paper deals with the convergence/divergence issue of the Chapman-Enskog
series expansion of the shear and normal stresses for a granular gas of
inelastic hard spheres. From the exact solution of a simple kinetic model in
the uniform shear and longitudinal flows, it is shown that (except in the
elastic limit) both series converge and their respective radii of convergence
increase with inelasticity. This paradoxical result can be understood in terms
of the time evolution of the Knudsen number and the existence of a
nonequilibrium steady state.
