Space Force official: Commercial satellites can do a lot more than we thought

[jemhouston]

Link only

https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/05/s ... e-thought/

[kdahm]

The biggest difference is in the launch costs. If it takes $400 million to get a satellite to orbit, it better work the first time, every time, and it's worth building it for half a billion to make sure. If it costs $50 million to get to orbit, save some money, skip some of the redundancy, and spend maybe $100 million on the satellite. When Starship is operational and it costs $10 million or $20 million for the launch, built a bunch of $50 million satellites and if one fails, there's always another one in the queue.

[jemhouston]

On a slightly related note, I'm wondering how many Starlink satellites have a national security addon.

[Kunkmiester]

On a slightly related note, I'm wondering how many Starlink satellites have a national security addon.

As I recall there's a separate version that's being used to make a different constellation.

[Rocket J Squrriel]

On a slightly related note, I'm wondering how many Starlink satellites have a national security addon.

There was a report that SpaceX was developing a recon satellite that looked like a normal Starlink one. You could insert them with a regular deployment and it would communicate via the standard protocols. In short, you wouldn't be able to tell which of the Starlinks are normal and which are recons.

[jemhouston]

On a slightly related note, I'm wondering how many Starlink satellites have a national security addon.

There was a report that SpaceX was developing a recon satellite that looked like a normal Starlink one. You could insert them with a regular deployment and it would communicate via the standard protocols. In short, you wouldn't be able to tell which of the Starlinks are normal and which are recons.

That's one thing I was thinking about.

[Poohbah]

On a slightly related note, I'm wondering how many Starlink satellites have a national security addon.

There was a report that SpaceX was developing a recon satellite that looked like a normal Starlink one. You could insert them with a regular deployment and it would communicate via the standard protocols. In short, you wouldn't be able to tell which of the Starlinks are normal and which are recons.

That's one thing I was thinking about.

Puts the entire constellation at risk, though.

[Nightwatch2]

There was a report that SpaceX was developing a recon satellite that looked like a normal Starlink one. You could insert them with a regular deployment and it would communicate via the standard protocols. In short, you wouldn't be able to tell which of the Starlinks are normal and which are recons.

That's one thing I was thinking about.

Puts the entire constellation at risk, though.

it does, but that's a thousand targets and every commercial satellite is ALREADY at risk.

[jemhouston]

I don't think they'd go after the satellites themselves, but more likely a cyber attack or a kinetic attack on the ground stations

[Nightwatch2]

I don't think they'd go after the satellites themselves, but more likely a cyber attack or a kinetic attack on the ground stations

Yep. That’s our strategy too