I have not heard a single one claim that it will 'destroying billions of dollars of equipment'. And most don't want to stop further space craft.
What they do call for is regulation about these things in general. SpaceX is basically doing them a favor by modifying their sats, there is no legal obligation.
https://www.lsst.org/content/lsst-statement-regarding-increa...
And I’m not arguing for stopping further spacecraft either.
“Hey they don’t even legally need to mitigate their externalities!” is usually a good sign of “things that need regulation.”
The very broad survey orient visible telescopes are most effected of course.
Regulation both for visibility and for debris is warranted. But getting their by streaming 'earth astronomy is over and Kessler syndrome' is pretty counter-productive. If we can get away from that kind of language maybe we can actually make reasonable progress on these questions.
Unfortunately I can not find the series of lectures from astronomers and SpaceX. That had really go information. But there is an active working group somewhere that is meeting regularly that can probably be found somewhere.
They’ve said: this incurs a huge negative externality on the astronomy community.
The response was: it doesn’t matter because Starship will send up space telescopes at some point hopefully (TBD how long it’ll take, if ever, for them to reach the same availability as extant terrestrial telescopes)
That is the counterproductive response.
I am not an expert at all but that at first blush that seems like bullshit. I’m 100% open to sources of info I should check out on this though.
Edit: FWIW another more believable argument than hypothetical future capacity satisfying the same demand would be “global internet is more important than terrestrial astronomy.” Not quite ready to say I agree with it but it seems very compelling!