[Daus]

Reading the full story behind GOES-N it strikes me as odd they are going to leave this new (and apparently improved) model offline for a couple years until one of the other satelites retires or dies.

If this one is better, why wouldn't use this one now, and take one of the old ones offline to be the hot spare?

[Quick Shot]

Stop it, you're asking government questions... Do you expect answers that make sense...... Stop it. Do not question the wisdom of the all powerfull

[Rockitz]

I'm a rocket guy, but I can speculate that this could easily have been a budget balancing move. They haven't flown the Shuttle for a while and had all of this money for space launch, therefore move up the satellite launch schedule. Also we don't want to be without a weather satellite so now we have a spare. There is extra capacity for many constellations including GPS. I think there are multiple spares up there now waiting for older ones to die.