Comment Re: But... (Score 1) 50
It depends on how it was designed, and the operating conditions. Steam catapults have their issues too- making freshwater from saltwater occasionally has hiccups and contaminants can enter the steam system, causing corrosion and erosion.
The advantage of steam is that the catapults themselves are mechanically fairly simple, the steam source is external so the hardware embedded in the deck isn't too complex. Electric catapults have lots of electrical hardware at the point of use, including many coils of wire, any of which can suffer an insulation failure and presumably put the whole catapult out of action, or at least degraded in output. The expense is also an issue as linear motors are more expensive and each full-size US carrier has 4 of them.