It is much more important to know exactly how long and how well your
satellite is going to work than to hope to get longer by using a
technology that might last longer, but will more probably die
unexpectedly when struck by a cosmic ray burst.

Sometimes you can not predict how long a satellite will be used. A friend of
mine worked on a civilian satellite for a defense contractor and just before
the division was sold off, cleaned out any old documents and files they had
on it.

Since the satellite he had worked on was way past its expected life (but still
in use), the contracts had long expired, the work was not classified and a
new improved one was due to be launched in a few days, he was told
to dump it all.

A few days later, the booster exploded on the pad, and the replacement
was destroyed.

The sattelite was kept running for many years, although there were no
documents on what to do or how it was built.

Geoff.
--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, N3OWJ/4X1GM
My high blood pressure medicine reduces my midichlorian count. :-(