>A counter point of view is that an unelected private individual/organisation visibly polluting the night sky of the whole world represents extraordinary arroga

>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.