The timing is interesting. Musk sending up 1000s of starlink sats almost unhindered. Normally, approvals for "fouling the environment" would take years (maybe decades) to push through. We're not speaking of a few large sats, but many small ones. There were complaints about shiny objects interfering with astronomy, but that was largely ignored.

Also, tests have shown the starlink network is better than predicted. I kind of wonder if maybe SpaceX had help.