Reply to post: I wish I were that optimistic

Astroboffins may have raged at Elon's emissions staining the sky, but all those satellites will be more boon than bother

JohnFen

I wish I were that optimistic

This looks very bad to me. Sure, there are benefits, but it's far from clear to me that they outweigh the drawbacks. (And nobody has even started talking about the amount of pollution all those launches are going to cause).

Extremely well-funded astronomers will be fine, because they can afford to use telescopes lobbed into orbit. All the other astronomers (who are collectively even more important) will be sucking sand. And, as the article notes, radio astronomy will be hurt the worst.

And for what? So that a small group of largely misbehaving corporations get to increase their ability to control access to the internet?

> We are sharing in one of the greatest revolutions in scientific knowledge in history.

I hope that's right. But it doesn't look like it to me. At best, we aren't sharing in this, we are making sacrifices so that large corporations will get to benefit.

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