They've gone for a large constellation of small satellites with short lives, which is a set of design choices that all feed into each other.

Satellites are traditionally designed to last for a long time because they're so expensive to launch. As such they're also expensive to make, and it's slow to iterate on them.

Being in low-earth helps the launch cost (on top of the existing SpaceX advances). Putting out 60 per launch helps too.

As someone with very little background (but a lot of interest) in space tech, could you share a little about what results that growth in launch rate will have?

Not OP but basic economics dictates that high demand = high supply (i.e. low prices). The entry barrier to launching a satellite is lower today than it ever has been before. Civilian entities from private companies to high school clubs have successfully launched cubesats from SpaceX rockets.

We will basically see what happened to computing happen to space. Remember the mainframes of the 70s that cost millions and only governments and megacorps could afford? Remember how those gave way to the personal computer, the laptop, and eventually the smartphone and tablet?

Now, it's pretty unlikely that every citizen in the country will get their own cubesat, but what is more likely is that if you are a normal private citizen who has an idea predicated on having a satellite overhead (think: localized aerial surveys, more accurate GPS, real time weather updates), you will be able to put together the capital needed to get that satellite launched.

Personally I'm excited to see the rise of satellite "cloud" services, like AWS, in which one satellite can use its sensors and cameras to serve hundreds of thousands of customers at once. How cool would it be to spend $20/mo to host a global satellite based chat service for you and your friends?