An alternative to.space junk clogging up the sky would indeed be nice.

Hypothetically, we could terraform Venus. At the very least, it shares a lot of the issues that we're trying to fix on Earth, just dialled up to 11 - its main problems are that it's way too hot, the atmosphere has way too much carbon in it (96.5% vs Earth's 0.04%), and the atmosphere has way too much sulfur (0.015% vs Earth's 0.00000002%, making the atmosphere highly acidic). So if for example scientists had an idea for causing a chain reaction in a planetary atmosphere that rapidly sequestered all atmospheric carbon but were worried about unknown strength or side effects, instead of testing it on Earth where it could kill us all, they could test it on Venus where any failures would have no serious consequences. And if it worked, not only would it mean that we fix climate change on Earth but we partially terraform Venus into the bargain.

Venus has roughly similar gravity to Earth and has a ferrous core which could hypothetically be turned molten (and therefore ferromagnetic) to provide the same kind of magnetosphere that Earth's core does. Mars has neither of these things and would therefore never be able to sustain human life naturally - Venus potentially could. On Mars, the atmosphere is just one of many obstacles. On Venus it's THE obstacle. Solve the atmosphere, you solve Venus.

That is not why starship fails. Starship fails because like everything that Elon does lately it emphasizes style over practicality. Starship is a very badly designed rocket that looks cool to Elon. Not unlike the Cyber truck which has been an abject failure in every way possible.

It's actually interesting how similar rockets and jet engines are. You could think of a rocket as a jet (or sometimes two jet engines) where the afterburner is always on and the air intake is replaced by an O2 tank..

Imo it's a good thing tho. Spreading our civilization across multiple planets is the only way to guarantee long long term success. Obviously we should also fix the climate change issue (and many others). But still, being spread across the solar system would give our species redundancy. An extinction event on earth like a large meteor strike would no longer be the end.

The issue is not going up, it's going over. If we only cared about the private sector getting people into space, that happened on a fully reusable vehicle twenty years ago.

The problem is getting things to stay in space. Not trying to Elon-stan here, but getting a rocket into orbit is many fold more difficult than just getting into space.

How does Helium fit through places that Hydrogen can't even though its bigger? Is it because Hydrogen would react with things along the way while Helium won't?

Well they have been making crotch rockets for a long time.

What the F is every corporation's boner with rockets?

You are missing the point that size makes a difference. Obviously SpaceX has the technology to do what Honda did, but SpaceX can do ti with a real rocket.
But they can't do it with the bigger Starship rocket. Scale matters.

Unfortunately, the next competitor will be Amazon...

And then we'll see what happens next, getting a whole constellation up is no small feat, I can't see a third company getting a system working before 2050.

Size is only a proof of logistics. Not tech. Physics don't change fundamentally between 6 meters and 120 meters. You learn a lot from scale modeling without the added costs. Starship's real challenge is actually the logistics necessary to fulfill the desired specifications and experimenting with engineering to reach the scale. The most innovative aspect of Starship would be orbital refueling, and they aren't there since the thing hasn't reached orbit yet. SpaceX problem right now is insisting on high turnover engineering, which doesn't work at scale without heavy costs, because it is a logistic problem, not a engineering problem.

It's proof of tech. It'd be stupid and wasteful to do all the tests on a full size rocket.

That is not why starship fails. Starship fails because like everything that Elon does lately it emphasizes style over practicality. Starship is a very badly designed rocket that looks cool to Elon. Not unlike the Cyber truck which has been an abject failure in every way possible.

Also with starlink even one company's constellation is causing issues with astronomers and launches.

How bad will it be if there are 5-6 different companies with their own network floating around up there. And then other countries with their own network.

Yeah, it's a bad situation. I'm against monopolies, but I also see how filling the sky with redundant satellites is a terrible plan, so I don't like the idea of lots of competition either.

I think low orbit satellite communications is a pretty awesome concept. It has the potential to become like a second Internet backbone, but a backbone that can bring data directly to users without the additional router hops that local ISPs introduce. On paper, it's amazingly efficient and can distribute service to all of the world... But in practice the business and management side is deeply problematic. One company should absolutely not be in charge of global Internet service. And one country would not be any better.

The only solution I can see is to make it safe and feasible to have way more satellites operating in low earth orbit. I'm really not sure what that solution might look like...

Here's an off-the-cuff idea though: One solution could be an extremely robust low earth orbit maintenance and "pruning" system. All satellites would need to be monitored by third parties. And those third parties would need the authority and ability to quickly deorbit (prune) any satellite that deviates from its exact expected orbit. If satellites can ensure no deviation from their path and can safely maneuver to avoid collisions, it could be possible for many more satellites to safely share an orbital altitude.