Re: The end of space
The concern is that while you're waiting a twentieth of a long lifetime for the satellites to come down, they might hit something, possibly another dead satellite. All those pieces generated by the collision will have decaying orbits too. Just five years to clean up all that rubbish, except that each of those pieces now gets its chance to hit something, and that would generate more pieces. Waiting five years before more space systems can be set up is a problem.
This problem gets harder to handle as we throw more stuff up there. The U.S. has already authorized two companies to put up tens of thousands of things each, each company hoping to make billions in profits. The UK has a company of their own that is planning to set up a constellation, though they kept changing their minds on how big and what for. What stops other countries from deciding to do the same? Russia has plenty of space that's poorly cabled. They could benefit from a satellite network, but it obviously can't be a U.S.-based one. Why don't they find a couple of their companies to put up thousands. India's got ambitions to expand their space program, mobile-only internet coverage for some parts of their country, and poor environmental regulations on the surface let alone kilometers away. See if they can make a partnership to set up their own. If India did it, China will want to do it, and in any case it could be handy for the military bases they're building in far away places without great communication links. The EU, not to be left out of the sovereign internet game, might want their own program. All these people launching things will reduce prices, so more countries or companies would have the ability to start launching now and worry about whether there's a management problem later. Perhaps it's worth worrying about how we're going to deal with the problem before all that happens, which does not include giving some head starts to someone now so they get the first mover advantage while we've frozen everyone else.