Re:SpaceX’s Starlink near-misses with other spacecraft are g...
by techdragon on Saturday August 21, 2021 @12:56PM
(#28258513)
Remember the Kzinti lesson. Anything with sufficient velocity is a weapon. Thousands of Starlink satellites is functionally equivalent to a mothballed Brilliant Pebbles fleet. Now to be fair their response time will not be ideal due to the thrusters not being optimised for rapid orbit changes. But it’s definitely a software update away from being a poor mans Brilliant Pebbles, more than capable enough to threaten anyone staying in LEO (they probably couldn’t respond fast enough to nail down a direct ascent rocket aimed at LEO or something flying right through LEO altitude on its way to say the moon.)
It is very plausible that the US government (Space Force, NRO, NOAA, etc) might sign up to provide some of those additional payloads. Although surveillance technology is much more likely than active weapons systems. I think SpaceX will likely resist turning Starlink into a weapon, it could be bad for their corporate image and might cause political difficulty with Starlink's approval in some countries.
Surveillance technologies can always be covered up as commercial imaging, environmental/scientific imaging, military communication systems, etc.
[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/19/spacex-starlink-satellite-in...