I think they should have started with a more achievable goal to make it to 10 years, and then re-evaluate afterwards. Maybe 100 is achievable to some extent? 1000 seems like pure fantasy to me.
My gut feeling of doing this for one year: 1000 years is just plain impossible. Not with something made out of metal with an actual hole in it. Maybe some glass capped ceramic to avoid water ingress and corrosion... but after one year, my camera was already full of weird goop.
Fairly pleased with the result, would definitely recommend having a go: https://stickyhat.com/a-6-month-pinhole-camera-exposure/
People typically make them out of black film canisters and such. Google "solargraph"
Nobody's talking about the future of the world as a result of this project, they're mostly talking about the future of the project itself, and how it'll end up a wet fart because of poor planning. If the goal is to get people slapping their foreheads then it's a smashing success. Beyond that, I'm not sure what the effect will be. All press may be good press, but not all press amounts to art.
Imagine what the time value of the money spent on this will be for this in 1000 years. A market investment of $1000 that could return 2% over inflation over that time period would be equivalent to $400B in today's dollars.
So, no more impossible than having a random stick take a photograph for 1000 years. Perhaps, they'll sell 0.0000001% of the stock of a corporation that owns the photograph for $4, or it will contain the last unburnt bitcoin.
I believe that the next 150 years are not going to be like that. If for no other reason, demographic collapse will destroy the consumer base for companies.
1000 years? That bug ridden pinhole camera will be around, we won't.