[rklaehn]

SpaceX has put in a lot of effort to reduce the visual pollution aspect of starlink.

See https://twitter.com/ralfvandebergh/status/136999054076322611... for how the visibility of Starlink sats has changed over time.

For professional earth based astronomy, it is possible to remove the streaks digitally. But of course there is a slight impact. But what is the alternative? Just stop development of low earth orbit forever?

The future of professional astronomy is space based. Imagine what a telescope you can launch with a single starship launch...

[toomuchtodo]

We could be constantly lifting new observatories to space, launch is no longer the constraint, but satellite manufacturing and cost.

NASA needs the SpaceX equivalent of an org that churns out satellites. The next bus to orbit leaves shortly.

[shantara]

I agree, and this applies to satellite manufacturing in general. Starlink has demonstrated that the new launch cadence requires a switch from single unit and small scale to serial production.

It's unbelievable that we don't currently have standard designs not just for observatories, but for communication, navigation, cartography and other satellite types. Cubesats took a step into the right direction, the same needs to happen for even larger payloads.

Another side of the problem is that NASA budget is heavily influenced by politics and PR. I'm sure there's plenty of smart people there who have realized that from purely scientific point of view, ten or twenty less capable and more disposable interplanetary probes or observatories could have advantage over unique absurdly expensive projects like JWT and Perseverance. But they are not as exciting and harder to sell to politicians and general public.

[TeMPOraL]

Launch is not a constraint for... about a year now. Satellites have a bit more lag time.

I don't think NASA needs the SpaceX equivalent for satellites - SpaceX itself is causing a boom in satellite manufacturing, so commercial market is accumulating expertise and lowering prices. NASA should find it easier and cheaper to buy or subcontract pieces of satellites too, and focus on bespoke mission-specific hardware.

[hwc]

Maybe SpaceX should make it up to the scientific community by promising to (at no charge) put 100T of satellite telescopes in a high orbit every year once Starship is functional.

[rklaehn]

That would be awesome PR, and not that expensive with starship.

But for low production rate things like telescopes, launch cost is almost negligible even at current launch prices.

A replacement for hubble could be launched with a single falcon 9. Building it would cost more than a billion.

The James Webb Telescope is at 10 billion USD and counting. Launch with very expensive Ariane 5 will cost maybe 200 million USD, so ~2%.

[cbozeman]

I don't know why you're being downvoted... maybe it's the "no charge" aspect of your post, but SpaceX offering to send up research telescopes for at-cost-of-launch, or maybe a little over, would be a great philanthropic endeavor.

[TeMPOraL]

It would be a great philanthropic endeavor indeed, but I personally have a problem with suggesting they have to do this to "pay back" to the community. They've already paid back to everyone who ever considers launching anything to space, by cutting off a zero out of launch costs - and they're about to cut off another zero.

Launch costs tend to be a small part of mission costs for bespoke scientific hardware - but what makes those missions expensive is a feedback loop: rare and expensive launches -> need to make best use of the mass budget -> increased complexity -> need to make more robust -> increased complexity -> more expensive -> rarer launches -> more expensive launches. SpaceX just kicked that loop into reverse. With that much cheaper launches, people can afford less robust and less complex missions, and do more of them, which lowers the costs as scale kicks in.

SpaceX is making space cheap. That's already a great gift to everyone.

[gbrown]

Mirror size is the issue - until we can easily manufacture huge, incredibly precise mirrors in-situ, space based will never replace ground based astronomy.

[Robotbeat]

It’s not manufacture. It’s assembly. And I think astronauts are faster and cheaper than robots for in space assembly. Or they will be once Starship is operational. NASA did a ton of work in EVA orbital assembly with Shuttle (and still chooses to do exterior work on ISS via EVA and not purely robotically) but it was always like 10 or 100 times too expensive. Starship ought to change that. In addition to its 8m diameter payload bay.

[iso1210]

There aren't many telescopes with a >8m diameter mirror, and it looks like the largest single mirror is 8.2m

Starship's payload is 8m.