From a gameplay perspective, I could see that - that makes sense.
The thought process I had initially though, was that it was to be another logistics puzzle to solve/automate; that is, as satellites run out of fuel, or their hardware breaks down, new satellites would need to be sent up - hence them having a limited timespan.
I personally enjoyed setting up combinators to automatically launch a satellite every X number of minutes, prioritizing quality ones; on the other hand though, I get that that may not be what everyone is looking for/wants.
