Astronomers are not happy with Starlink because the satellites and the reflected light off them hinders their efforts from Earth based telescopes. If the full 12,000 satellites are deployed the light pollution and clutter may render many telescopes useless. This is something to watch because the argument that "the night sky belongs to everyone" not just to Elon Musk (or Jeff Bezos) will resonate with many.
And if astronomers are upset with just the 60 satellites that have already been launched - how do you think they'll feel about the other 51,763 that are planned by Elon Musk and others:
SpaceNews recently reported that Elon Musk and his low-orbit space venture Starlink have filed with the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) to launch an additional 30,000 broadband satellites in addition to the 11,927 now in the planning stages. This looks like a land grab and Musk is hoping to grab valuable orbital satellite paths to keep them away from competitors.
The new requests consist of 20 filings requesting to deploy 1,500 satellites each in 20 different orbital bands around the earth. These filings are laying down the gauntlet for other planned satellite providers like OneWeb that has plans for 1,910 satellites, Kuiper (Jeff Bezos) with plans for 3,326 satellites and Samsung with plans for 4,600 satellites.I agree that this is a "land grab." Most of these satellites will be visible to the naked eye.
This is worrisome. And this doesn't even take into consideration that many of these satellites will end up as space junk. I'm a big fan of Elon Musk but I've long been skeptical of Starlink. And now the unintended consequences (that some would argue were known problems) seem to be adding up.
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