What's somewhat related and very interesting is that the space shuttle often flies in the 200-300 km range of altitudes. We consider that "space", but it's right in the heart of the ionosphere in most places.

It's all a matter of perspective.

A thinner or closer ionosphere does not relate to scouring of the atmosphere by the solar wind. It is the Earth's natural magnetic field that protects the atmosphere from being stripped away by the supersonic solar wind.

A pending reversal of the Earth's magnetic dipole may somewhat increase atmospheric scouring, but you must remember that only the dipole moment is going to reverse direction. The higher order (e.g. quadrupole) moments won't go anywhere and will still deflect the solar wind. You'll just get aurora in unusual places for a while.

Right, and later on something will fail and it will explode unexpectedly.

The idea has been tried before (big surprise). The Russians used to deliberately blow up their satellites or rocket bodies, and in doing so produced an enormous amount of debris. They eventually saw that this wasn't the best idea.