Probably the biggest reason this older technology is background radiation. Space shuttles don't have the luxury of two miles of atmospheric radiation shielding (one mile above Antartica and New York City), and with that much more radiation on a chip, modern processors are much more likely to have "schrodenbugs" appear. Not something you want on the chip you absolutely must have working when you land your ship.
(If I felt like writing some alt-hist, I'd write the story of how cheap space travel made Linux dominant due to Windows and OSX not being able to back-port back to the 486s and lower that spaceships run on. I doubt I'm the right person to write the great open-source space opera, however.)Edited 2010-09-27 17:21 UTC
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