Mark McCaughrean

It is an interesting art project. I don't see real negative sides and would love to see (and track) it in orbit. Disclosure: I know Trevor personally, and am tangentially involved with the project (I ran some orbital lifetime simulations).

Am just about to take-off, so no long answer now. But there are plenty of objections from the astronomy community for good reasons.

I know these and they are far fatched imho. The "light pollution" argument is nonsense given the limited visibility, the vast amount of objects already on orbit & the brightness of other objects like e.g. ISS. The space debris argument as well as the orbital lifetime is limited.

No, the argument is not about light pollution or space debris, although of course adding more (purposeless) satellites doesn't help in those regards. It's all about the semiotics. 1/

As you say, there are plenty of natural & artificial things in the sky already which can be used to engage, entertain, & educate the public. Adding another shiny object is totally superfluous in this regard. 2/

Unless of course you're an artist who wants to be able to stand there & say "that's _my_ shiny thing; I made that." Egotistical, to say the least. And even the ephemerality is a negative: "what, you spent all that money just for a 3-6 month show?" 3/

It's purposeless; it's a thing for itself only. Any claims about holding star parties to show people "my thing" are daft: you could have those anyway & say something even more interesting: "See that bright thing? Six people live there & do science". 4/