What I want to know is why astronomers are bitching about Starlink instead of capitalizing on the vastly reduced launch costs it brought about. Falcon 9 has been launching satellites for anyone who asks for a decade now. Where is Harvard’s space telescope? Last I heard they have a 50 billion dollar endowment. They could easily splash out on a space telescope for a fraction of that. James Webb and GAIA are amazing, but we could have a whole networked constellation of space telescopes by now if the universities had been on the ball.

An endowment isn't free money and launching a telescope into space is still a costlier venture than plopping one down on a mountain like Mauna Kea or the Chilean Andes. Radio telescopes aren't exactly cheap either as the Smithsonian is directly funding the construction, operation, and maintenance of most of telescopes under Harvard's name rather than the university.

Ground constellations (eg: SKA in radio astronomy) are still vastly cheaper than orbiting arrays, also easier wrt incremental upgrade via physical visits, etc.