Looking at the beatiful show, I cannot avoid thinking: “each of them a potential weapon”.
So in fair weather, when communication is smooth and all navigation systems are working, it’s entirely feasible to coordinate a swarm of 10 000. Wow. :)
Soon enough, they will be coordinating each other in the presence of electronic warfare, and swarms of 100+ fly already, so 1000 is the next step. Anyone doing air defense is probably designing energy weapons (lasers, masers, etc) at a pace approaching madness, besides making ever-cheaper drones.
As for the environmental footprint - if each drone withstands 10 performances, they will probably save resources. :)
I have a solar panel that died. A piece or plywood flung by a storm went right through it, leaving a 30 cm “wound”.
Well, to be honest, it’s alive, just weaker - the panel remains suitable for pumping water on the field during muddy season. I wouldn’t take a good panel to such a bad place, but this panel, I have no worries about.
As for what happens when they really, really die - they get disassembled. The aluminum frame gets taken off and goes into metal recycling. Junction boxes go to where plastic goes - not a nice place. The glass and doped silicon go into a crushing mill, after which they get separated. The glass is easy to recycle, but the doped silicon is difficult to refine again to such a purity, so it likely won’t become a solar panel. But it’s a very small fraction of the panel’s mass.