Satellites Are Littering Our Solar System at a Rapid Speed
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Earth's orbit is absolutely nothing compared to the entire solar system. We couldn't "litter" the Solar System in any way that mattered at all, even if we tried our best to do so right now.
[1] https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/10/starlink-already-thr...
[2] https://www.newscientist.com/article/2229643-spacex-starlink...
But that is not the only threat they pose. If you see the links I posted, the satellites are so low, so reflective, and so numerous that they impact ground based astronomy of all kinds. From the reflection of the sun off their metal components to the radio interference they emit; these satellite's are a menace to the scientific community.
I'm sure the logistical challenges they provide to operators trying to launch new spacecraft is significant as well. And there are other organizations from other countries building similar constellations in low-earth orbit. These are all disjointed teams with little to no knowledge of each others existence, let alone communication with each other. We need a regulatory body with the authority to gather all vested parties and hash out some rules that work for everyone. We needed this done BEFORE SpaceX shipped a portion of the world's precious metals into low earth orbit. But that didn't happen. And universities are paying the price while SpaceX turns profit in space.
Admirable passion, but I suspect you've been informed unevenly: do please read further on what exactly "low earth orbit" actually means. This stuff will be back, fairly soon.
May I suggest that the development of this technology, cheap satellites, for commercial purposes will reduce the costs for scientific purposes. More labs will eventually be able to launch observing satellites for themselves. Not a perfect outcome, better if we had our cake and got to eat it, but in this case we get cheap global internet and cheap(er) satellite launches for all purposes.
(Also starlink is a solution for a relative few: it does not represent serious competition for traditional ISPs because there are still significant limits on the density of connections it can support. It's great if you're in the middle of nowhere and there's relatively few people around you. It sucks in cities. It's not going to supply internet to even a significant fraction of any country, bar some micronations)
I’m not convinced the squeeze is worth the juice. Starlink wasn’t necessary, there are/were alternatives. Hopefully it forces the terrestrial providers to step their game up, we all get FTTH, and then starlink can all crash in to the atmosphere before collisions pollute all of earths orbits and render them all unusable for the few valuable services that can only be done from space.