For serious astronomy this isn't viable, and for amateurs this really puts a dent in the magic and sanctity the night sky as we've known it throughout the entire history of our species. If only we could add "the night sky" to UNESCO's world heritage lists.

Yes, there are a lots of ways to solve this problem. A lot of the complaining and hand wringing around this feels kind of like "oh man, finally my niche hobby can get a bite of the outrage economy!".

That's great for you. What about those who aren't willing to accept that tradeoff? It seems there's literally no action we can take besides voicing our concerns on fora like this.

I'm deeply concerned about the ramifications of Starlink and the precedents it sets for further sky pollution. For all of mankind's history we've been able to look to the skies for guidance, inspiration, knowledge and truth. Space objects have guided our understanding of the universe and our place within it. It's absolutely criminal that in a span of a few years this might be obstructed by the goals of one or several corporations, under the veil of improving global internet connectivity. It's doubtful whether accomplishing that goal will bring world prosperity or simply make SpaceX and Musk the biggest beneficiaries.

Whether this benefit will fuel further space exploration and the commercialization of space travel is also irrelevant at this point in time. There's no practical reason for humanity to reach Mars in the immediate future as Musk has proposed. We have far bigger problems on Earth today that won't get solved by simply throwing technology at it, yet solving them would bring more benefits to humanity than having internet access in remote parts of the world. Practical problems like famine, clean water supplies, diseases, pollution, climate change, political corruption and wars seem much more important than being able to access Facebook from a mountain in Siberia.

While there's no reason we couldn't work on all of those concurrently, and global internet access would certainly help in that process, there's been no global discussion on whether a system of satellites this disruptive is what the entire world actually wants. Governments will certainly benefit from improved surveillance capabilities and we'll have more trillion dollar corporations and billionaires, but these aren't global goals.

Apologies for the rantiness of this, I'm not sure I can put my feeling of dread properly into words. And don't get me started on Neuralink, another rushed Musk venture we need to address as a species and civilization...

According to this at least one satellite with the new coating went up in December... anyone know how that's working out?

Also, why are they so bright, given that they're pretty small?