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We’re talking about the risks of satellites burning up in the upper atmosphere. The satellites deposit lots of material when they burn up. People are worried that this might be bad.

Lots of people incorrectly think that the upper atmosphere is pristine and you would never normally get metal up there. In fact thousands of tons of micrometeorites hit the earth each year, depositing lots of rock and metal up there.

This means that the burning satellites cause an increase in metals deposited in the upper atmosphere. We’re not going from nothing to many tones. We’re going from many tones to slightly more tones.

There is an open question if the increase is a problem, but it’s less likely to be a problem than if we were going from nothing to something.