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Comment by Tepix | Hacker News Reader

Unlike an airplane, the baloon flies much higher. I don't think you can see it with your bare eyes from the ground. Perhaps if you look really hard.

Regarding the satellites, i hope the Starlink satellites will also be not visible to the naked eye once they reach their final orbit now that they have the sunshade.

On the other hand, these technologies provide a huge benefit to the people on the ground.

If you want to complain about Loon you should also complain about regular airplanes, helicopters, zeppelins, weather balloons and balloons in general.

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> Regarding the satellites, i hope the Starlink satellites will also be not visible to the naked eye

This is not guaranteed at all. I read articles in the past mentioning that you will see "trains" of dozens of white dots one behind another in the sky.

Do we currently see satellites in a dark summer night? Yes. So for Starlink it will be the same, except with 10 of them one behind another.

I'd be happy to read more sources confirming or infirming this.

> I read articles in the past mentioning that you will see "trains" of dozens of white dots one behind another in the sky.

"Will" there means "right after launch, when they're in a very different orbit from final". They spread out by a very large distance, so that in the final version you'd only have line of sight to a few scattered across the sky.

Always being able to see fast moving dots when looking at a dark sky is a significant change compared to the experience of all our ancestors. StarLink might be the first time someone has done something that affects every single society - even tribes in the Amazon and India.

If you looked at the night sky in the last 10 years you already saw satellites and second stage rockets in orbit many times during the night, even in a light polluted area.

Here's a study https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.00374 that looks at Starlink satellites with the visor. Looks like Starlink will be visible only in rather dark areas with good viewing conditions. It's not like you're just looking up and they will bother you.

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