This overstates the problem I think. It will be an issue for wide-field astronomy. On the other hand, even with tens of thousands of satellites, they will only be covering a tiny fraction of the sky. For narrow-field you should be unobstructed most of the time, and able to turn the sensor off momentarily when the odd satellite is going to obstruct you.

> This overstates the problem I think. It will be an issue for wide-field astronomy.

I think you are downplaying the problem. They are already reporting issues with Starlinks and there are "only" a few hundred of them right now, Amazon wants to deploy 3k low orbiting satellites.

Look at this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_astronomical_observato...

The very large majority of the world's observatories are doing wide-field astronomy.

This is not scientific progress, this is just two billionaires trying to one up each other and muscling their way around the world to rub their egos.

Very bright, enough to contaminate all frames, and rapidly moving: have fun doing long exposures to spot faint objects most visible in twilight with those options. Maybe starlink is actually a sneaky way to up the Mars mission priority by mucking up the near earth object searches? /s

> This is not scientific progress, this is just two billionaires trying to one up each other and muscling their way around the world to rub their egos.

Starlink claims to have other objectives. Why do you think their stated objectives are dishonest?

Internet service is a solved problem, you have transoceanic cables and distribution networks which garantee reliable, high bandwith, internet service.

This is a gimmick to sell the imaginary joy that you can go anywhere remotely and enjoy the pleasures of the modern connected world. There are already niche providers for Satellite services that users can use, if they are truly isolated and are able to afford internet.

There is no sense in having all of this infrastructure duplicated and done via RF transmission over a low-orbiting constellation (with all the losses and realibility issues around it), if it can easily be achieved through expanding the existing infrastructure.

The only use-cases that this serves are high-income people that want to go off-grid but are unwilling to sacrifice high-bandwith, and military deployments (Which SpaceX does not hide as an objective).

Starlink satellites are only visible on the horizon during dawn/dusk, because they are in the earths shadow the rest of the night.