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Comment by cstross | Hacker News Reader

How much do you think all the sunk infrastructure costs of existing telescopes cost, and how many years did it take to build them?

The bigger telescopes today have primary reflectors that are vastly bigger than the James Webb Space Telescope: for example the Large Binocular Telescope with its 8.4 metre mirrors, or the Extremely Large Telescope (currently under construction: first light due in 2024) with its 39.2 metre segmented priary. Even the segmented designs weigh hundreds of tons; these instruments are too big and heavy to put in orbit even with SpaceX's Superheavy/Starship.

If the light pollution from Starlink can't be mitigated, it'll be necessary to replace dozens of hundred million dollar to billion dollar instruments which took years or decades to build, at a post potentially greater than the entire consat cluster.

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However, sunk costs are sunk costs. There's a reason we have that term in economics in the first place.

It is hard to estimate the cost of replacing LSST with something off-planet. As it, alone, costs ~billions, putting a similar instrument in space costs far, far more.

Furthermore, dark skies are a resource for all of humanity, not just astronomers.

The Starlink project doesn't actually threaten dark skies. The satellites spend most of their night-side transit in Earth's shadow.

Indeed, a lack of dark shy makes the Starlink constellation harder to see from the ground.

That's like saying arson is no problem, the cost of the building was a sunk cost anyway.

Arson adds no value. The value trade-off of slightly decreased telescope efficiency and ubiquitous internet access is a lot more positive.

What's more important? Global internet access for the rest of the world population or a few dozen telescopes? Imo internet access is going to have immediate positive impact for billions of global disconnected poor.

I'm sure I could make better use of your home by demolishing it and erecting a homeless hostel. Isn't that more important than your prior claim to live there?

(This is a m-e-t-a-p-h-o-r, not a literal proposal, but what Starlink is doing to astronomy on a global scale is pretty much equivalent. The onus should be on Starlink to (a) not do that, or (b) pay for complete relocation or replacement of the telescopes they've just wrecked. Yes, that's a lot of money. Boo hoo ...)

> The onus should be on Starlink to (a) not do that

Why? Astronomers have no more claim to ownership of the sky than Starlink does.

Astronomers are not changing anything IN the sky, Starlink does?

The sky changes all the time. Astronomers are observers, and it seems the onus should be on the observer to change the way they interpret the observation if the observable changes. We didn't kill radio stations (or microwave ovens) to make sure that radio telescopes can do their jobs [https://xkcd.com/2226/].

Isn't there a "security-zone" around the large radio-telescopes where usage of most electronic devices is forbidden?

> Imo internet access is going to have immediate positive impact for billions of global disconnected poor.

do you really think that? is that why companies like facebook are so interested in third-world markets? or is it because they want to elevate their ability to siphon user data and hack human emotions to become addicted for more and more money, and also that facebook wants there to be little distinction between them and and the internet in these markets?

i don't think the internet has had as big of a positive impact on society as people think it has. in no other time in history has there existed such a powerful medium for control and manipulation.

and this is ignoring the fact that most of elon's projects are born out of narcissism and hubris.

Why not have both?

Space telescopes are objectively superior in every single way. It's like a photograph under clear conditions vs a photograph in fog. Look at Hubble vs much larger terrestrial scopes. Starship's booster could launch something much larger than Hubble at a fraction of the cost.

That's not really true anymore. In the last few years adaptive optics has closed the gap.

source: https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a22240382/neptune-gro...

And if Starlink inconveniences astronomy, it probably won't take but so many further years before adaptive signal correction algorithms close the gap again.

1) Atmosphere blocks parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, so not all telescopes on Earth will be on the level field with space-based ones.

2) Earth-based telescopes have to withstand gravity of 1g, while in space you can have some bigger structures.

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