>>12464312If you put sats in geosynch orbit you only need a handful, but they have high round-trip latency from being so far out.
Starlink uses low orbit satellites so the round trip latency is comparable to landline internet, but as a result they have a smaller coverage area and are constantly moving relative to the ground, so you need many of them to ensure there is always one or more accessible from any location. Plus the more you have the more customers you can handle simultaneously without rationing bandwidth.
Even for non-gaming normies latency is important these days due to things like voip and video chat being popular.
Being in low orbit any dead sats will deorbit themselves not long after running out of fuel, so debris is a minimal issue.
As for astronomy, SpaceX is is making space based astronomy more affordable and perhaps even making lunar based astronomy possible.
