If I'm not mistaken, the whole amount will be about 12 000. WHERE will you "put" them in the night? As I see, you rather watch your display, than the beauties of the nature... :-(
I know several small-minded, selfish persons, who under the "doing good things done" are doing good for nobody else, than THEMSELVES!
And I'm really crossing my fingers for Russian guys to hack that pollution.
By the way, this could be an interesting reading:
https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/29/...llite-constellation-astronomy-light-pollution
First, you don't "put" the satellites anywhere at night or in the dark. They just keep going along their established orbit while providing their needed communication function. The fact that you cannot see them because they are in the dark is unimportant consideirng they only need to be seen in whatever radio bands are involved.
During most of my satellite watching you see such objects rise up off the horizon (if you know it's coming) or later (if you didn't) it veers across the sky usually seemig to get brighter as it heads into the darker part and then suddenly goes dark and invisible when it enter's the Earth's shadow. At no point along that trek is it in a part of the sky where decent deep space photography can be made because twilight just isn't good for that. Later in the evening satelites are only seen close to horizon where the sun went down (also a bad astro-photography location) and eventually you are enough in the dark that EVERY low-earth-orbit object above you is also in the Earth's shadow along with you. Then, maybe (if it isn't cloudy) you can get some astrophotography done.) The glow of satelites just isn't going to be a problem then.
OK, lets assume that you have rejected the point made in the previous paragraph. Let's also assume it is the 21st century and we are not using classic film photography. You've got a decent CCD camera attached to your scope and you have a point in the sky of interest to photograph. Let's say it is a dim object and you need to do a fairly long time exposure. If you take just one long picture, any streaks from satellites or airplanes might show up clearly and you can do little about it because it is your one single shot. Break up you photo shoot into a multitude of shorter exposures and you will find that the streaks are only in a handfull of the images. You can just throw away those images and stack the rest. Using mulitple shots also greatly reduces blurring from any tracking and even atmospheric issues you might have although it does introduce baseline black-level noise into the data, something that can be compensated for with enough images being stacked. I see no reason why programs couldn't automatically recognize streaks and remove images in the set that have such streaks. Make the interface right and it will be an efficient process with or without controller approval. Also, there is no reason why StarLink cannot provide live data on the exact position of all it's satellites (along with all others as a kind service) Astronomy software, with that fresh data and knowing local time and location could know exaclty when NOT to look and avoid having to do any filtering. (It's also obvious how that data coudl be delivered) You could even have a mechanical iris in place so that the telescope "closes-its-eyes" when a satellite would be in its field of view and reopens when it is gone. In that context you might even be able to contintue a long single exposure. Lots of technical solutions can be found including some very simple ones.
Also, the same business putting all thos satellites up in space can also put other things up there too LIKE TELESCOPES!! Put enough up there, and even the public could aquire observing time with them. Seriously, given the chance, wouldn't you really like to be able to choose and see objects in space without having to deal with the Earth's atmosphere as a filter? I know I would.
And last, and most important. There really are people who's livelyhoods compel them to live out in remote places where internet is poor at best, or such places could simply be those people's native homes. We really need to be inclusive here and help them connect to the rest of humanity. We need their uniqueness and they need channels of communication to help them with thier live's problems. Imagine trying to troubleshoot a malfunctioning [insert any device here] and not being able to do a search engine query or watch a video or even ask someone a quesiton. In this day and age, EVERYONE should have access to that kind of thing. Urbanites are spoiled, expecting that kind of thing to be there all the time and fast, but that just isn't the situation for everyone. It isn't reasonable to bury 10 miles of fiber in the ground just to service a few households in some cases. Even cellular fails in the remote areas. Satellite is the only viable option there....And forget about fast-charging your electric vehicle if you have one.
Resistance if futile. These kinds of satellite based communications nets are going up be it StarLink, Amazon, or anything else. It is what the world needs and it really will be much, much more good than a problem.
Did I mention that these satellites are being placed in low enough orbits that they are guaranteed to come down quickly even if they fail completely so there will be no accumulation of junk up there over time. They are even designed to fully burn up on re-entry so don't worry about them falling on you.
Also, this whole industry is going to make launching payloads into space MUCH cheaper making expansion of our civilization outward into space much more doable so it isn't end-of-line for us if/when the next really big asteroid comes hurdling towards the Earth.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram