Would you feel the same way if observatories were lifted beyond Earth orbit where their view was never obstructed? There is so. much. space out there, and it seems silly to argue over the artificial scarcity of clear sky when we can solve this with technology. We’re even putting a global comms network in place that could support high speed science data store and forward from space observatories to science consumers on ground.
What if we could churn out orbital science platforms as fast as SpaceX churns out Starship SNs and StarLink satellites?
If you look at the article I linked, you can clearly see that the satellites are visible from the ground (the photo from Germany). If you search for "starlink" on Flickr you can see more examples.
This is light pollution.
No, you've misunderstood (in numerous ways, but this is a specific one you've cited). That photo you linked is of a satellite "train", which is a temporary state of satellites after deployment as they take themselves the rest of the way to final deployment orbits. At that point they'll be both spread out and the albedo will be vastly lowered because SpaceX has already made design alterations to the sats so that in their operational alignment towards Earth they are far less reflective. They're not going to interfere with the sky from the naked eye, nor even for general photography, even from low light pollution rural areas vs typical urban ones.
It doesn't help that you're almost a parody of "entitled, dismissive urbanite". Even in the developed world, tens to hundreds of millions of people have crappy DSL at best. Outside of the developed world that rises to billions. Marine and aircraft stand to make enormous gains as well. The demand for Starlink is clear and well founded, and you do your argument zero favors by trying to hand wave it away (unless you just mean to rant to no constructive end).
I have provided a Criticism section of a Wikipedia article that points out light pollution criticism from many authoritative sources, including photographic evidence. You dismiss this photographic evidence, but why should I listen to you when I can listen to the IAU, for example? Or Nature? Or the astronomical community?
Quote International Astronomical Union: "The scientific concerns are twofold. Firstly, the surfaces of these satellites are often made of highly reflective metal, and reflections from the Sun in the hours after sunset and before sunrise make them appear as slow-moving dots in the night sky."
Here's an entire article in Nature Astronomy about the issue https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-020-01238-3
Here's a quote from a Senior Advisor to the European Space Agency https://twitter.com/markmccaughrean/status/11323943469454213...
Here's an entire discussion at the American Astronomical Society about the issue https://aas.org/posts/advocacy/2020/12/impacts-large-satelli...
Here's an article about how the problem will get workse https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/spacexs-dark-sate...
But sure, you call me an "entitled and dismissive urbanite".