Can You Find the Comet?

However, it has serious disadvantages. It will exclude the poorer from astronomical research, except within the limits enabled by whatever cooperation the richer will be willing to do with them.

For the richer, that will make astronomical research much more expensive. When even USA, who claims to be the richest country, cuts a lot of the scientific funding, this makes likely a great reduction in the research targets that could be accomplished, even if a Lunar array of telescopes and radiotelescopes and communication relays for them were approved.

While professionals might still be able to do some work, the amateurs will be able less and less to enjoy the sight of the distant Universe.

There are already many years since I have become unable to see the sky that I enjoyed looking at when young, because it cannot be seen from the city where I live, due to light pollution (and high buildings). To see it again, I would have to go somewhere up in the mountains, far from a city or village, but I have not succeeded to do this recently. Even there now you can hardly look at the sky without seeing satellites, and it will only become much worse.

Nowadays there are many children who have never seen even once the sky that our ancestors were seeing every night, so many passages from old texts that mention the sky are unintelligible for them.

There are some classes of observatories, which you cannot build in space but which are still affected by satellites to some degree.

Do you really think a starlink style installation won't be put in orbit of the moon before such a telescope could be funded?