Well the issue is that not everything is black and white.

On one hand, these satellites can potentially absolutely wreak havok on astronomy, and our own view of the night sky. Nobody wants that.

On the other hand, in a few years, these satellites are able to provide cheap internet all over the planet, which would allow poor remote communities in South America, Africa, and Asia access to the internet, which is practically impossible through any other means. IMO, its worth the tradeoff. I think helping people is more important than astronomy, but I recognize that that's just my opinion

all these comments discussing ukraine wartime internet, or poorer communities in south america. meanwhile, i have zero interest in musk, but starlink has been a fantastic Internet option for me in rural US.

my other options are borderline unusable DSL, or a couple of line-of-sight wireless providers which would require cutting down who knows how many trees to even have a hope of connectivity.

there are a significant number of people living in this area, but no decent wired or cellular internet options and despite my state getting a large federal grant to improve internet speeds, I have zero expectation it will be improved for me.

Funny, “Space Karen” is a really common name for Elon.

Fanboys for anyone are the worst.

We as fucking adults should be able to criticize anything and anyone we believe in. Especially if you believe in them.

That’s called security in your beliefs, go figure that our chronically insecure populace would refuse to question their beliefs

I strongly dislike Elon Musk but Starlink is a net win, and science can and must evolve to overcome these sorts of challenges. Nearby space is only going to get more crowded

LEO shouldn't be some billionaire playground to make even more money. The Kessler syndrome is a very real threat to our future

The actual sane take. I swear musk is constantly living rent free in way too many peoples minds.

Honestly, what I took from this is we should have more telescopes that operate outside of the orbits of commercial satellites.

I agree, if it wasn't Musk there wouldn't be so much hate most probably, starlink is objectively good for all the people living in rural zones (in some cases just outside of big cities) where internet doesn't arrive because other companies don't want to spend the money for it.

I hear you, but let me propose: prison on the moon, and we send Elon there.

LEO isn’t a marketing ploy, it reduces the latency inherent to traditional satellite technology which is in a much higher orbit. Starlink has taken off because it provides a much better user experience compared to the old school satellite options.

It sucks for astronomers but given governments and other companies are following their example, nobody is putting this genie back in the bottle.

drifting out of their allocated band

That sounds like a violation of regulatory authorization. Tell his ass to fix it or shut it down. If he can’t, revoke StarLink’s status as a US corporation.

They're metal things sitting up there where the sunlight hits them. What you're seeing is the sun reflecting off them. Its like how you can look up and see a plane all bright and in the sun even at dusk when its starting to get dark on the ground.

They don't have lights, but they reflect light from the sun at certain times of day. Another way to think about it: these satellite can be experiencing broad daylight hours after the sun has set at the surface. Similarly, when you're seeing the Moon at night what you're actually seeing is daytime on the Moon and it's often enough to light up the landscape around you because you're looking at an object that is experiencing daytime while you aren't.

The question then becomes: can't the satellite be made darker? And the answer is they are already pretty dark. The moon, for example, has an Albedo (measure of reflectiveness) of 0.15, which is similar to asphalt and it can still dominate a night sky. SpaceX satellites have an Albedo of about 0.11, so astronomers are essentially having to deal with thousands of tiny and unpredictable Moons drifting across the sky. I can't find the article now, but I recall reading that the albedo would need to get down to 0.002 to become negligible; I just don't see that happening.