Bitcoin transactions and blocks can be easily delivered using existing satellites.
There is no need to deliver special satellites for this purpose.
That is not the point, and no, existing satellites may not have the capabilities to serve as a full node and their operators are not people who would want to.There is no need to deliver special satellites for this purpose.
The specs are not that high though. According to this[1] post they use an ARM with 4 GB RAM and a 100GB SSD. Not sure about the predictions, but 100 GB does not sound like that satellite will still be up in 10 years.
[1] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/bitsat-project/2WFNsrcGhLs
Very likely yes. I also read that you need specific space hardened CPUs to avoid massiv bit flips due to the radiation. Very interesting topic. I guess I had expected a larger disk considering the price of SSDs isnt that high anymore. If you currently assume 56.000 MB and consistant 0.75 MB blocks the satellite is good for ~407 days. Which is nowhere near the life spam of a satellite[1]. I wonder why, as the SSD seems the least expensive part of the operation.
[1] http://space.stackexchange.com/questions/1212/why-is-the-life-span-of-a-leo-satellite-less-than-that-of-a-geo-satellite
