Consider, for example, #Starlink and the general notion of the #satellite "constellation", filling the skies with lots of itty bitty low-orbit (i.e. cheap to launch) space junk. #SpaceX _expects_ these things to burn up quickly. That just means more SpaceX launches, bigger numbers going upwards, more more more.
It's wasteful and ineffectual to do things this way, but it's optimal in terms of generating business transactions, and you can deal in massive quantities by keeping technology crude and old-fashioned.
(cont'd)
That's why (for example) extruded plastics are so cheap and ubiquitous: the petrochemical industry insures that the world is flooded at all times with inexpensive, uncomplicated, easily worked polymer resins such as polyethylene and polystyrene. Hence such simple petroleum-derived plastics have been pushed into just about every product and consumer good. These plastics are literally in everything, including your own human bodies and brains (q.v. #microplastics.)
#ElonMusk and his pals want to apply this same pump-and-dump approach to #space exploitation, and other things. Great guy.
The true cost to human and Earth life that's accrued from many many decades of filling the world with cheap extruded plastics may never be known—and the present-day intellectual climate is hostile to such understanding.
(cont'd)