You're mixing up matters of logic and fact (how old the universe is) with matters of personal preference (like what I want to eat, should flying cars fill the skyline of my city).
People can be trusted a lot more in the second category, which is generally also their right. If they have valid concerns that are getting dismissed, they're not gonna like talking to you.
Citation needed. You can probably ask a few followup questions for many stated preferences and watch the preference fall into dust.
I know personally that when I chose from menus at restaurants I am hilariously bad at picking what I like, while my wife is consistently better at choosing what I like.
Particularly given that the satellites are absolutely minuscule compared to the distances between them. People are bad at conceptualising tiny fractions.
You can see them with a naked eye so it's not that minuscule. Either just before sunrise or just after sunset, when the sky is black, and so your eye adapts and you start to see things otherwise too dark to be visible on the sky (stars), the Starlink satellites reflect the light from the Sun (because they are higher than you and so their daylight is longer, earlier sunrise, later sunset).
They reflect enough light. This is different from them occupying significant space. Stars on the night sky for example can be visible with the naked eye but were you to travel 9/10th the way towards them they would STILL appear the exact same size to your eye.
I think the 2nd statement of yours is a false dilemma: Starlink is increasing risks in space travel - a space rocket now needs (even more - otherwise it would be a false dilemma as well) maneuverability to stick to the planned path or avoid a satellite if the path changed, I don't think it's easy considering how rockets are propelled by continuous explosions, where an engine becoming disabled is somewhat normal…
And of course once all goes to hell and you have a chain reaction of destroyed satellites destroying other satellites - each next satellite moves the scenario towards a positive feedback loop.
> once all goes to hell and you have a chain reaction of destroyed satellites destroying other satellites - each next satellite moves the scenario towards a positive feedback loop
There is no orbital solution in which this happens to any meaningful extent. Even worst-case scenarios of massive anti-satellite activity create localised messes that clear in a few months.
One implication is that the distribution of debris in orbit could render space activities and the use of satellites in specific orbital ranges difficult for many generations.
> the distribution of debris in orbit could render space activities and the use of satellites in specific orbital ranges difficult for many generations
Sure, if you overload a high orbit you could render it unusable for a long time. In its worst case, it’s still highly localised. Congestion in LEO has tradeoffs, but Kessler syndrome (much less a scenario) isn’t one of them.
> However, even a catastrophic Kessler scenario at LEO would pose minimal risk for launches continuing past LEO, or satellites travelling at medium Earth orbit (MEO) or geosynchronous orbit (GEO). The catastrophic scenarios predict an increase in the number of collisions per year, as opposed to a physically impassable barrier to space exploration that occurs in higher orbits.
There's also a statement by SpaceX about why Starlink won't cause this but that's not worth the paper it's printed on given that SpaceX would of course say that.
It does sound like the Kessler syndrome risk is higher for heavier, higher orbit satellites so a more likely issue would be a higher orbit satellite starting a debris cascade that could take out Starlink (and cause Kessler syndrome) rather than Starlink satellites going haywire and causing the cascade themselves.
People can be trusted a lot more in the second category, which is generally also their right. If they have valid concerns that are getting dismissed, they're not gonna like talking to you.