Astronomy

You can’t do that because it will physically fall apart.

Don't know where you ever got that idea. It raises and lowers itself all of the time these days to avoid debris.

It could easily be raised to 2-5000 miles by adding energy from a similar small engine (with a decent-sized fuel tank) over a few months/years.

'Wear and tear' from what? Micrometeorites? The orbits of any 'small fragments' (of what?) would decay very slowly and instantly burn-up many centuries later.