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Comment by veonik | Hacker News Reader

They don't build 'em like they used to

I have to say, it gets really old seeing this sentiment on HN anytime a post about older technology gets made. We absolutely can and do make technology designed to last this long - it’s just that the vast majority of us don’t work on anything with those kinds of requirements or priorities. There’s no reason you need to be building your CRUD API, data pipeline, or cell phone to last 50+ years and doing so would probably be actively harmful to the actual goals of those projects

For what it's worth, I actually agree. See: Curiosity or Ingenuity, both relatively new and far outperforming their expected life. Not to mention that I'm sure the ground-based transmitters that were used to actually fix Voyager 2 are likely not old, so it really isn't a case of "old is good" which helped in this case.

My comment is unfortunately an example where I let my late night shit-posting bleed over into HN, which is always regretted in the morning. Apologies ;)

Modern space electronics cannot last this long. It would require a significant effort to design similar hardware and have it fabbed today. Modern missions want capabilities that necessitate high transistor counts and that forces feature sizes that will never be robust against radiation effects over long durations.

Cassini lasted 20 years (1997-2017) and was functioning fine all along. It was intentionally ended, but there had been talk of sending it on another 20 year cruise to Uranus.

New Horizons is similar, now at 18 years since launch and still counting.

They're not quite 50 yet, but there's no reason to think either couldn't make it that long.

CNSA is planning to launch a pair of spacecraft next year that will flyby Jupiter on trajectories reminiscent of Voyagers 1 and 2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_Express

We'll see how long New Horizons lasts. The Voyagers have a long head start that'll be hard to beat, though RTGs do run out eventually.

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