And the outcome of the debate will be a function of your values versus someone else’s, which could then spiral into whether or not one persons desire for a nice view of the night time sky is more important than someone else’s access to affordable high quality internet (which is increasingly being viewed as a “right” these days).
Who knows how this all plays out but my gut says that we are observing oligopolies in the making. The first 2-5 will get licenses and then no one else, ever again.
We already globalized highly accurate time and location, why not data streams?
Part of me also sees a potential National Security security angle to an oligopoly of US-based companies providing satellite internet everywhere. Countries are increasingly putting kill switches on their internet. In a period of conflict, where information flow is likely to be highly managed, its convenient to bypass all that infrastructure with satellite internet. I’m sure these satellites can pick and choose their frequency. No doubt we could point these things at North Korea.
The International Telecommunications Union comes closest.
Orbital debris mitigation is an essential part of an application sent to the FCC
Things they care about:
* Will your satellites survive an uncontrolled re-entry? What parts of the satellite won't burn up in the atmosphere? Will any surviving debris have more than 15 joules of kinetic energy when it reaches the ground? If so, what are the odds of injuring a human?
* How will your satellites deorbit? If the satellite fails before you can deorbit it, how long will it take to deorbit naturally?
* How will you avoid collisions with other satellites?
etc. It's true that the process doesn't take into account light pollution, but that's just one of the many forms of pollution to worry about
We should be trying to control our light pollution and space litter instead of increasing it, however. Seeing the galaxy with naked eyes shouldn't be alien to everyday people.
The reality is even quite poor countries are able to secure high quality internet for reasonable cost with appropriate policy. This isn't an otherwise unsolvable problem.
But I agree that this is an interesting dilemma. Perhaps the low earth orbit satellites should be limited to certain bands around the globe (certain coverage regions in the case of Starlink), so that there remain pristine skies in more remote areas: internationally agreed upon "Natural Sky Preserves" or something of that nature.
These pristine skies do not exist. There are already many satellites in polar orbits that intentionally pass over all points on Earth (e.g. for observation, or for the Iridium satellite phones). If you spend an hour stargazing in a recliner during reasonable viewing conditions, you will likely see a few passing overhead in the north-south direction.
The impact of Starlink on astronomical observation is in dispute and by no means is a settled matter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Criticism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgMZa6G-q34 - a basic example using it to remove ISO noise
Edit: Actually, you can even see some satellites in the shot when he sets the layers to 'lighten' that are totally gone when he finishes the stacking.