[Dig1t]

Connectivity for the entire globe does more for progress. Millions of people have access to the wealth of human knowledge that wouldn’t otherwise have it (Africa, rural people around the world).

Additionally, what we lose in visibility from earth we will more than gain in visibility from space telescopes, which will be funded by profits provided by LEO satellites.

Any way you slice it, it’s a massive net increase in scientific progress and quality of life for many millions of people.

[isthatafact]

It does not need to be a choice between having internet or seeing stars at night.

Also, telescopes on the ground can be made much bigger and more powerful than in space, so even if some satellite profits were somehow (magically?) directed toward space telescopes, losing the night sky would be bad for science.

[Dig1t]

>It does not need to be a choice between having internet or seeing stars at night.

It’s not, we’ll be able to see the stars no matter what. There are many millions of people who are getting real broadband access to the internet for the first time right now because of these satellites. It really does enable an entirely new way of living for people in rural areas, I see this myself firsthand every day. Many areas are just economically not feasible to run fiber cables to.

Cheap access to space means you can put space telescopes into orbits that provide views entirely unobtainable from earth. And with cheap access to space we can eventually put space telescopes which exceed the size of the largest ground telescopes which won’t have to deal with atmospheric interference or light pollution at all.

Starship will lower the cost to orbit by 15x. Making entirely new types of scientific missions economically viable including extremely large space telescopes.

[isthatafact]

Telescopes in space are extremely expensive even if the launch itself were completely costless.

A decision of whether or not to destroy the dark night sky globally should be made at a societal level beforehand. Instead the path of maximum expected profit for a few people was taken instead of carefully considering the implications, alternatives, and mitigations.