>>13071885>Occluding stars, making astronomical observations harder. Including, but not limited to, the discovery and tracking of potentially dangerous near-Earth objects.In return, it unlocks humanity from the shackles of planet Earth, and paves the way of being able to launch the equivalent of the Very Large Telescope down in Chile, out at a lagrange point in the next 20-30 years; and being able to do it by the dozens.
That's worth sacrificing ground based astronomy for.
>tracking of potentially dangerous near-Earth objectsEven if we could track them, it would mean jackshit as we lack the force projection capability to be able to do anything about it; except with Starship and future transport platforms that are unlocked by the 42k satellites and the revenue they generate.
So again, a price worth paying in the short term to then redress mid to long term. Most of your issues with astronomy are basically solved at scale and in droves once we have the ability to leverage resources at scale beyond Earth's orbit.
Starlink unlocks $50-100Bn/yr in revenue at full 42k deployment. At 5 year shelf life of satellite intervals, that's $250-500Bn in capital to throw as much upmass to Moon and Mars; in the 1MT/1GT volumes. Which incidentally, also will lead to unlocking astronomy at scale for just about anyone.
