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I'm afraid though astronomy is just going to have to deal with that for a decade...this is frankly more important At least you are honest in your dismissal. A

I'm afraid though astronomy is just going to have to deal with that for a decade...this is frankly more important At least you are honest in your dismissal. A counter point of view is that an unelected private individual/organisation visibly polluting the night sky of the whole world represents extraordinary arrogance.

xoa 5y ago
>A counter point of view is that an unelected private individual/organisation visibly polluting the night sky of the whole world represents extraordinary arrogance. Who elected astronomers? Who decides what's "pollution" vs "beautiful"? It's just as arguably "extraordinary arrogance" to argue that a handful of rarified specialists should get a permanent veto on Earth's orbitals, particularly when it's about valuable planetary infrastructure for potentially hundreds of millions and we can see a clear path towards giving astronomers vastly superior capabilities to anything that will ever be possible on Earth. Note that I 100% support mitigation efforts like are being undertaken. Magnitude reduction efforts, even if they add some cost, are entirely reasonable and appear to help solve much of the problem. But I do think it's important to acknowledge that no, mitigation isn't going to solve the entire problem for Earth-based astronomy, it is a compromise, and that the incredible capabilities of vastly better space telescope options will not be realized, even in the best case, within the remaining careers of some astronomers. That stinks. But Starlink will still be life changing for orders of magnitudes more and they deserve a say too. And you say "unelected" but all these companies are regulated by a variety of organizations that are elected which is close enough. If a majority didn't want this, it could be banned. And if it did come down to a direct democratic referendum vote on Starlink vs a subsection of Earth-based astronomy, frankly I don't think the result is particularly hard to guess so I'm not sure that's a particularly productive angle to pursue.
relativ575 5y ago
> A counter point of view is that an unelected private individual/organisation visibly polluting the night sky of the whole world represents extraordinary arrogance. That's an emotionally charged argument. I could say that denying affordable Internet access to a vast population just for the sake of astronomy is equally arrogant. But that'd be wrong, and so is your statement. Everything is a trade off and we need to live with both. SpaceX just didn't launch Starlink satellites. They got approval from the US regulation agencies, which in turn operate in accordance with the Outer Space Treaty that most countries are signatories.

xoa 5y ago

>A counter point of view is that an unelected private individual/organisation visibly polluting the night sky of the whole world represents extraordinary arrogance. Who elected astronomers? Who decides what's "pollution" vs "beautiful"? It's just as arguably "extraordinary arrogance" to argue that a handful of rarified specialists should get a permanent veto on Earth's orbitals, particularly when it's about valuable planetary infrastructure for potentially hundreds of millions and we can see a clear path towards giving astronomers vastly superior capabilities to anything that will ever be possible on Earth. Note that I 100% support mitigation efforts like are being undertaken. Magnitude reduction efforts, even if they add some cost, are entirely reasonable and appear to help solve much of the problem. But I do think it's important to acknowledge that no, mitigation isn't going to solve the entire problem for Earth-based astronomy, it is a compromise, and that the incredible capabilities of vastly better space telescope options will not be realized, even in the best case, within the remaining careers of some astronomers. That stinks. But Starlink will still be life changing for orders of magnitudes more and they deserve a say too. And you say "unelected" but all these companies are regulated by a variety of organizations that are elected which is close enough. If a majority didn't want this, it could be banned. And if it did come down to a direct democratic referendum vote on Starlink vs a subsection of Earth-based astronomy, frankly I don't think the result is particularly hard to guess so I'm not sure that's a particularly productive angle to pursue.

relativ575 5y ago

> A counter point of view is that an unelected private individual/organisation visibly polluting the night sky of the whole world represents extraordinary arrogance. That's an emotionally charged argument. I could say that denying affordable Internet access to a vast population just for the sake of astronomy is equally arrogant. But that'd be wrong, and so is your statement. Everything is a trade off and we need to live with both. SpaceX just didn't launch Starlink satellites. They got approval from the US regulation agencies, which in turn operate in accordance with the Outer Space Treaty that most countries are signatories.