Um 50 years ay? I don't think so! Maybe 50 years at 1 hour a week! And at Dor123 i have ballasts in the schools shops and fire stations that are approaching 50 years easily and some older! I'm pretty sure that the ballasts diesel nut has in his shop are coming up to 50 years. There is no way electronic would do that. I would love to stick one of these in a shop where it does 13-14 Hrs a day in hot conditions and just wait for the in evertable!

@kevxsi16v, many of the ballasts in my good old lights are more like 60 years old!  I would love to see the POS advertised by these scam artists do that!  Aint no way!!

Let me take this a little different direction. What would it take to engineer a HF ballast that could last 50 years? Is it possible? I have radio equipment that is 50 years old and has never been repaired.

I think it truly could be done, but it would require:
Quality components (capacitors/transistors/etc).
Not driving those components to their absolute max ratings.
Good heatsink/cooling design.
Some form of protection in the case of bad wiring/lamps/overheating.

Pretty much it couldn't be some cheap thing built at the lowest possible cost LOL

I think a lot of the problem is the fact they churn so many out so quickly! The simply can not make them that good so quickly!

The difference to the old radio is, then at first the radio does not have to handle so large power and as second, then the radio does not operate so many hours as the lighting equipment does (do not tell me, then e.g. the volume pot or loudspeaker survived 60 years of daily use...).
So when making ballasts like radios, majority would be dead after a year of service, when they encounter the number of hours typical radio does for decade of useful life...