> How much sympathy can I really spare for a purely leisurely hobby like backyard astronomy vs. satellites, Starlink, and our space tech?
Your sympathy or lack thereof is your business, but astronomy is one of the rare sciences where amateurs still do a great deal of work and make important discoveries.
> I'm sure there are good examples of trade-offs that matter here like the impact on terrestrial research telescopes, but a guy snapping a pic of a comet and ranting about it on Twitter frankly has the opposite effect on me.
It's a shame you would allow your opinion on an important subject to be swayed by a single tweet on an issue you apparently know little or nothing about.
Your sympathy or lack thereof is your business, but astronomy is one of the rare sciences where amateurs still do a great deal of work and make important discoveries.
> I'm sure there are good examples of trade-offs that matter here like the impact on terrestrial research telescopes, but a guy snapping a pic of a comet and ranting about it on Twitter frankly has the opposite effect on me.
It's a shame you would allow your opinion on an important subject to be swayed by a single tweet on an issue you apparently know little or nothing about.