4 ms·

If you think about it, the satellites disintegrate in the atmosphere, reseeding the planet with whatever elements they're made of. Same as how many elements on

• joakleaf 5y ago
  I understand you, but I suspect that scattering atoms of e.g. rare earth metals across the planet makes them difficult to reuse. Would probably be much easier, if the materials stay together.
  • kiba 5y ago
    It's better to burn up and not kill somebody upon impact.
  • ericmay 5y ago
    Keep in mind that rare earth materials aren’t necessarily rare in quantity, just in distribution.
• adwn 5y ago
  Trace amounts of any element, whether in soil, water, or air, are basically useless, because they can't be mined economically. Even rare and valuable elements like platinum are only mined where they've been concentrated by geological processes over millions or billions of years. Sometimes you'll see bold claims about the abundance of certain elements backed by the fact that they exist in ppm or even ppb [1] concentrations in Earth's crust, conveniently ignoring the infeasibility of processing teratonnes of material (and completely destroying huge parts of Earth's surface area). [1] ppm/ppb = parts per million/billion