I'd much rather only have the stars. I find having to travel increasingly further just to get a clear sky as the years go on.
A couple of points.
1. There are million of Farmers and Ranchers and their families living in very rural parts of America that don't access to broadband internet. Now days that's like living without indoor plumbing. Yes you can do it, but it would be nice to provide the service to those that want it.
2. Broadband internet is about more than great porn. Many rural families have home-schooled kids and broadband gives them access to so many more learning resources like tele-classes with large school classrooms allowing realtime interaction with remote instructors. Also tele-medicine is becoming more and more accepted and allows specialists to consult with patients living in remote areas. Broadband access opens up more employment opportunities for people living in rural areas for remote work and to not be left behind by the digital economy.
3. There might come a day when physical mail in no longer delivered or greatly reduced. Physical wired phone lines may eventually be abandoned.
4. Satellites don't emit light. They reflect it. They are reflecting the light of the sun that is just over the horizon. That means they only reflect that light for a little while after local sundown depending on the altitude. Later in the evening you stop seeing satellites because they are eventually in the Earths shadow. The lower the satellite, the shorter the period that will be visible because of the angles. The Starlink and going to be very, very low altitude. Most serious observing isn't done until 4-6 hours after sunset to let the air temps and turbulence stabilize. It is almost impossible that Starlink will have any material effect on serious observing.
5. I am an amateur astronomer. When you are observing though an instrument, you are observing a very tiny portion of the sky. Remember that famous deep sky Hubble image of all those thousands of galaxies in the same view? That was looking at a portion of sky that was about the size of the head of a pencil eraser held out at arms length. The odds of something flying through that view at just a critical moment is actually fairly small. You are just as likely to have an airplane fly though your view (and yes, that has happened to me about twice in my lifetime.) But I'm not going to yell and scream and demand they cease all air travel at night.
6. They are sensitive to the fear and are experimenting with glare shields.
