that's one of the latest techs -------- I cannot remember how big they are - but, they are very small.
I suspect the idea is good to go mini for a number of reasons ----- including, that they don't hurt so much when they drop on your head. They are very inexpensive comparatively - also, far less risk if you lose one, you don't lose a huge investment and what it provides.
I suspect that environmentally - barring getting the things up there - it's probably better to have things up far away from the surface than on the surface. Surely there's efficiencies by just being up there without cluttering the surface and without obstacles being in the way. Of course there's costs as well - like being hit by more radiation and the like -but, overall - since we went into space - we most certainly have progressed technologically - and, IMO - probably socially - we can far more easily talk to each other anywhere on the planet. Which should mean that in a few hundred years we might even work out that fighting each other, aside from some evolutionary benefits, is probably a bad idea.
