2.4. Other skywatchers and broad implications
This type of stakeholder may not have any specific scientific, cultural, hobby-related or religious connection to the night sky. They may not engage in astrotourism or participate in amateur astronomy, but they think of access to the night sky as something that adds value to their lives and may contribute positively to their overall sense of wellbeing.[1] They don't necessarily have any equipment to view the night sky, and typically do so with their unaided eyes. And they may have a sense that what makes the night sky special is that it is (literally) above Earthly concerns and that the value they perceive is independent of whether they understand any of it. In that way, its value is largely aesthetic, like visual art. But it isn’t seen as a luxury or a frivolity; research suggests that people are willing to exchange things of value for access to nighttime darkness.[2]
What we all stand to lose as the night sky brightens around the world is the initial attachment to these ideas; in other words, if people never experience something first hand, it is less likely that they will assign it value, much less take any action to protect it when threatened.[3] In the case of both terrestrial light pollution and enhanced night-sky brightness attributable to space objects, viewers may see an unwelcome reminder of the extent to which humans have modified and transformed Earth, often for the worse. Although spotting individual satellites or the International Space Station can be entertaining or inspiring to some viewers, a steady stream of swarming artificial lights in the night sky diminishes the experience by making them routine or even perhaps annoying. A future transformation of the night sky in this way threatens to fundamentally rewrite the story of the relationship between humanity and the night sky, yet there has been virtually no outreach to this global community of night sky stakeholders. Often these communities are invisible to policymakers and have no seat at the tables around which policy decisions are made affecting the night sky; some authors have suggested that this amounts to a form of “astrocolonialism,”[4] while others have labeled it “cultural genocide”.[5]
That this concern exists, requiring the attention of stakeholders through events like SATCON2, begs the question of who should bear the burdens associated with this fundamental paradigm shift in our approach to the use of orbital space near Earth. These are not old issues on newly expanded scales; rather, they are entirely new uses of near-Earth space whose scope and consequences we have barely begun to understand. Most launches now take place from US territory and are thus governed by US law and space policy; however, communities impacted by private commercial activities in space are being told to accept the consequences of these activities while the industry carrying them out faces a weak regulatory environment in the same regard. For example, it is arguable that a significant burden has already been placed on astrophotographers, whose work is adversely affected after the launch of only a few percent of the planned total of nearly 100,000 objects in LEO this decade.
- ↑ For one well-studied example, see Blair, A. (2016). Sark in the Dark: Wellbeing and Community on the Dark Sky Island of Sark. Sophia Centre Press. http://sophia-project.net/SophiaProjectNews/issues/2016-vol10-sark-in-dark.php. .
- ↑ Simpson, S. N., & Hanna, B. G. (2010). Willingness to pay for a clear night sky: use of the contingent valuation method. Applied Economics Letters, 17(11), 1095, https://doi.org/10.1080/00036840902817508.
- ↑ Amel, E., et al. (2017). Beyond the roots of human inaction: Fostering collective effort toward ecosystem conservation. Science, 356(6335), 275, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aal1931.
- ↑ SpaceX’s Satellite Megaconstellations Are Astrocolonialism, Indigenous Advocates Say, Vice, 5 October 2021 (https://www.vice.com/ en/article/k78mnz/spacexs-satellite-megaconstellations-are-astrocolonialism-indigenous-advocates-say)
- ↑ Hamacher, D.W., de Napoli, K. & Mott, B. Whitening the Sky: light pollution as a form of cultural genocide, arXiv:2001.11527 (10 January 2020)
