Totally agree Starlink was always a bad idea. Pretty soon we will see exactly how bad, imho, They have no way of knowing what damage that shrapnel will do when it progressively drops out of control, but keeps on flying. There are too many to track now by the kind of software I used to create and use for the task, when that was part of my brief - we put upper limits of 10K satellites, understanding that was way more than could ever be safely supported in orbit.
And the benefit of Starlink has to be marginal at best - the technical requirement of high power on domestic ground equipment that has to transmit to starlink completely negates the economic advantage it was claimed it would have over 5G, which Starlink was developed in response to, after more than ten years working collaboratively as a knee jerk reaction, after the low-brows fell out with Huawei, even jailing the female CEO of that company at the time.
The analysis of the cost of communications via Starlink makes no sense at all, it can't be making a profit, there has to be buckets of money being poured into it, to keep it afloat financially.
There must have been loads of technical people got kicked off, after voicing their concerns.
Somehow, we've ended up with low-brows in control of all of this very techhnical stuff, this is not progress like they keep claiming it is, this is us going backwards to the dark ages, imho.
I believe everything we are seeing is a symptom of the global energy problem.
The fix to that, is what might reverse things, inlcuding at least some of the problems experienced by astronomers.
Massive non profit funds are needed, and are actually there, if they were just issued, to start putting things right. There are plenty of good folk who would take it on themselves to go around checking out streetlights, fixing them where necessary, if there were funds to reward them with.
Also we should be finding money to massively boost space cleaning programs, aimed at getting rid of the actually dangerous debris up there now.
But it takes a lot to get our heads around how those funds will appear. We should be monetising product created from solar, it is a different world without profit. Profit is actually the physically traceable barb that keeps us tied to extracted energy.
I think mainstream science might be catching on to it, now ChatGPT is helping clarify things.
I hope so :)
