When an individual transmits on a band they shouldn't the FCC issues a fine. When a company transmits on a band they shouldn't the FCC gives them the band.
> "When a company transmits on a band they shouldn't"
The source article is quite clear there's no regulatory violations here.
> "Although this IEMR abides by ITU-R guidelines, these intensities are large compared to the strongest astronomical radio sources in the sky and will therefore have the potential to disrupt astronomical observations at SKA-Low frequencies;"
> "The detected IEMR and UEMR are outside of the frequency bands protected for radio astronomy, but are at frequencies of great interest for key experiments for the SKA-Low facility, and at frequencies where RQZ protections at the SKA-Low site are in place;"
The source states that the UEMR SpaceX causes in this spectrum is currently not regulated but interferes with astronomical observations.
The claim stands whether a regulation will be put in place which will require SpaceX to fix or switch off their (thousands) of satellites polluting the spectrum or the band will simply be handed to SpaceX.
"This UEMR is not currently regulated by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the organization responsible for managing and allocating the radio spectrum for various uses"
The FCC doesn't enforce very strongly, mudduck and others like him have been killing CB channel 6 (and sometimes 19) for like 2 decades and nothing has been done nor will be done.
Which is exactly why I shared it. There is a clear pattern of corporate interference on public bands and a pattern of FCC enforcement being applied to individual interferers.
If they want to serve the U.S. market, which they do, they still have to deal with the FCC and comply with U.S. regulations, regardless of the launching country.
Mitigation is going to be the name of the game. Whether they like it or not, low earth orbit (LEO) is becoming a very busy place and it's not just SpaceX launching lots of little satellites there. The Chinese are very busy launching their own satellites into LEO. And there are other companies and countries doing or considering the same. Spacex and Star link get most of the attention; but the Chinese are doing a decent job to keep up with them in number of launches. And there are a growing number of companies with LEO launch capability.
Mitigation might have to involve some sacrifices. I don't see how policy is going to be able to mitigate much here. And of course the Chinese are under no obligation to listen to US policy makers. They might have their own debates domestically around this topic and they might be reasonable about the topic internationally even. But building international consensus; or even enforcing what little there is on that front could be challenging.
A more practical approach might be accepting that earth based observations are inevitably going to suffer a bit as the number of satellites grows from thousands to tens of thousands and eventually well beyond that. Luckily we now are able to launch stuff into orbit a lot cheaper. Including astronomy related hardware. That's already happening of course. And otherwise, astronomy is very interesting and cool but mostly it concerns observations about things that are really really far away and not directly relevant to a lot of things on earth. Unless of course the thing under observation is on a collision course with us.
A bit, it's 5 orders of magnitude over the required SNR?! From the article: "The authors estimate a lower limit of 93 Jy per beam in the frequency averaged images containing Starlink emission. Considering just 1 mJy of radio frequency interference could mess up an EoR power spectrum integration, this could severely affect SKA-Low EoR science."
My point here was not to contest that but make the point that the cat is out of the bag and that it is indeed impacting SKA-Low EoR science and the people involved with that have to deal with that.
Getting the cat a little bit back in the bag via policy and other means is maybe worth trying (good luck) but I don't give it a very high chance of success.
With privatization, the public is paid something. Whereas StarLink's use of LEO is a taking. They're denying others open access usage. Without any possibility or threat of consequences.
"Use" is such an inadequate term, but I couldn't think of another. Commandeering?
> “We” as in the select few countries that have the launch capability and the space tech.
There has never been more access to space-based imagery and other sensing. With multiple companies selling this stuff ever cheaper. Every news outlet can now afford to buy images. And that's because of cheap launches.
This seems circular… since the lack of a worldwide authority, that can decide the value of X public good is worth more than zero, is the issue in the first place.
> "The Chinese are very busy launching their own satellites into LEO."
The Chinese (correctly) view these satellite constellations as a key military capability, and have gone all-in on creating their own version. (I mean, I don't see how that's even debatable at this point—having seen the influence of Starlink in Ukraine. Future conflicts will only amplify the gap between the haves and have-nots).
They haven't yet launched a large number (~120); they don't now have the launch volume for large-scale satellite constellations. Their race is to first catch up in launch capability. They have dozen private startups—heavily subsidized and favored by the state—in the race to build a viable, reusable launcher comparable to Falcon 9, that they would then use to launch Starlink-like constellations at the same cadence.
I'm not clear why not. The scale of the completed SKA-low (512*256 = 131,072 antennas, 1.8 meter lengths) is the same as that of Starlink itself. It's even less mass; the antenna parts alone, they are wire dipoles, they say they only weigh 1.6 kg each.
Geosynchronous satellites could give us even longer baselines couldn't they? Or even at l4 and l5. They don't get shielded by the earth like l2, but the station keeping would be easier. That would be a massive baseline
> Luckily we now are able to launch stuff into orbit a lot cheaper. Including astronomy related hardware. That's already happening of course.
Seems more effective for astronomers to embrace it. Perhaps by getting SpaceX to add a few dozen hundred satellites kitted out for radio astronomy. Link them together and it could be amazing for radio astronomy!
> Luckily we now are able to launch stuff into orbit a lot cheaper. Including astronomy related hardware.
Honestly once Starship is operational SpaceX should subsidize launches of non-commercial astronomy hardware. Could build some goodwill to offset the negatives.
No , regulation. That’s what is necessary for cars, planes etc , otherwise the competition would lead to low emission cars . Plus the space debris creation , which is also unregulated , but threatening humanity - for profit
Ah, the techbro defence. "We already started doing it, so I guess you're just going to have to let us".
> Whether they like it or not,
A swarm of LEO satellites because in the current political climate it's easier to massively pollute orbits and prevent astronomy than do municipal internet is not, in fact, a law of nature; nor is it inevitable.
> But building international consensus; or even enforcing what little there is on that front could be challenging.
Ah, a challenge! Let's all give up immediately; this could make some rich people a lot of money, after all!
> Luckily we now are able to launch stuff into orbit a lot cheaper. Including astronomy related hardware.
Would you like to pay for launching Vera C. Rubin (8.4m, nearly 20,000kg for just the camera and mirrors) into space? How about the TMT (30m, expected ~2.6 million kg)? Truly spoken like someone who knows nothing about astronomy.
> And otherwise, astronomy is very interesting and cool but mostly it concerns observations about things that are really really far away and not directly relevant to a lot of things on earth.
Apparently fundamental physics is not very relevant to us here on Earth! This is one of the most small-minded statements I've ever read.
How do the various LEO constellations mitigate band interference issues? Does the US/China have some agreement as to which bands their respective countries' companies will use?
There is no royal "we" that "has to" do anything. There's just groups of people and countries making use of a shared resource, LEO.
Your underlying question as to why some of those are launching satellites is much easier. They are apparently quite useful for things like communication, providing internet, etc. And people are willing to pay for that kind of stuff. It's not more complicated than that.
Why do we need radio telescopes. Satellite communications are infinitely more useful for people on earth than some research papers about things light-years away
"We" don't have to launch anything at all. SpaceX needs to launch enough satellites to satisfy customer demand for their constellation. In general the trend actually is that SpaceX is launching fewer but larger satellites (initially they were doing 60 satellites per launch, but they made them larger and now launch 24-28 satellites depending on the orbit inclination.
You should also ask why do we have to do this particular research? Both parties are impacting this particular band of the spectrum. One by excluding others and the other by radiating in those frequencies.
If you think the internet is a big deal, you haven't run into how happy the military is to have high bandwidth low-latency communications anywhere on the planet.
Starlink is nothing compared to the value Starshield provides, and the civilian product drives costs down.
With drone warfare being the next thing, the US probably can't afford to not have a company running a major LEO ISP.
As others have said, because it's a key military capability.
Humanity is what humanity is, not what we wish it'd be, so key military capabilities need to be developed or you get razed by the guy who did develop them. Doubly so now that we've rediscovered that culture is much more resilient than we'd thought, and that different people want Earth to look in different ways.
Do we all wish we'd stop ecological collapse instead? Yeah. But it's not going to happen so it's irrelevant.
Because the speed of light is slow and orbital mechanics can’t be changed.
To have internet everywhere you need to either accept bad latency (300-500ms round trip) or have closer satellites, which means they’re moving faster, which means you need more of them.
If we had a trusted powerful peacekeeper with a track record then we wouldn't need to. But now that masks are off everybody is busy launching dual purpose sats and whoever launches the least can literally get nuked from orbit if they don't do whatever the guy with more sats wants.
Then whoever has the most sats will say "that's it guys, LEO is full and you need our approval to launch more" and if someone raises a stink you guessed it, they can get nuked from orbit
I don't see big potential for the current US government to value scientific interests higher than the interests of SpaceX.
Wouldn't be surprised if SpaceX just continues to launch such satellites causing unintentional interference, to then claim in case of escalation how uneconomic it will be for them to correct this issue now and how the financial impact to SpaceX needs to be valued higher than scientific needs.
This LEO Direct-to-cellular strategy seems to play out similarly, with SpaceX launching massive amounts of satellites which are technically not capable to prevent interference on private spectrum while crossing country-borders, so ITU/FCC/CEPT now need to find a solution to deal with this situation.
Spite about what? Elon hasn't done a single thing to harm the administration. The bill he claimed to dislike passed easily, he stopped talking about Epstein as soon as it seemed like it might cause actual problems for the president, and in the past couple days he's expressed very vocal support for the Texas gerrymandering effort and domestic deployment of the military in DC. He continues to be the administration's most powerful and influential supporter in the world.
> Wouldn't be surprised if SpaceX just continues to launch such satellites causing unintentional interference, to then claim in case of escalation how uneconomic it will be for them to correct this issue now and how the financial impact to SpaceX needs to be valued higher than scientific needs.
At least Starlink satellites need to be replaced every few years anyway due to their low orbit. That is a natural ceiling for economical questions - ITU et al take years anyway until anything is actually enforceable, so SpaceX has ample time to prepare should there be a relevant movement in ITU.
The company I'm working for has its own EMC chamber (maintaining that huge room fully calibrated and standardized is ultra expensive... just looking at these EMC test receivers that go up to 40GHz my me cry in $$$$) and we invested giant engineering effort into our products
to be far below every radiation limit norm in the world.
Shouldn't satellite companies have even better stuff and more strict regulations or are these unintended effects maybe caused by the harsh environment?
Most communications satellites (which is all Starlink really is) are heavily focused on their operating bands and any specific bands they are told not to interfere with so they can get launch approval. There's no benefit to doing anything extra. And not only do they have to be told which specific bands they can't interfere with, the government actually has to require delivery of test results or else that is the same as giving permission to interfere.
Most companies won't spend a penny, take a second of time, or add a gram to a satellite if it doesn't affect their mission or chance of approval. Especially not one as cost-optimized as SpaceX. They won't change a thing unless the US government forces them to do so, or if they think that a government order is imminent so they come to some voluntary agreement ahead of time to avoid what would probably be a more constraining official regulation in the future.
The actual issue is probably caused by switch-mode power supplies or some digital signal on the satellite that isn't fully shielded, possibly one that does digital control of a motor or thruster. It probably isn't the communication radios since they operate at a much higher frequency. You can fix the issue by adding filtering and/or shielding, but that takes extra components (meaning extra cost and weight) and requires testing (meaning time). Plus you have to identify the offending system, which means you have to start with testing and detective work. This interference was only detected on some Starlink satellites, so you have to do detective work to find out if it is a particular operating mode or generation of satellite that is offending, do testing to confirm it, and then work on a fix.
This is actually not correct for Starlink. They did a lot of work to lower their albedo based on astronomer complaints, even though there wasn't any government regulation in this area.
It might apply to some of the emerging Starlink competitors however, especially the Chinese ones and AST.
I'm not sure why they're complaining when the SKA isn't even active yet. Once it's active Starlink will do just like they have for other radio telescopes, avoid transmitting while they're in the boresight and in general don't transmit toward the antenna. This is a well practiced interaction at this point with scientific agencies in multiple countries.
The only thing that they can't stop would be things like reflected unrelated ground communications off of the satellite, but that would be very weak.
> avoid transmitting while they're in the boresight and in general don't transmit toward the antenna
Not sure this will help against the mentioned unintentional electromagnetic radiation (UEMR) likely caused by the electronics of the satellites themselves.
"This radio emission at lower frequencies from Starlink isn’t their downlink frequency, but instead unintentional electromagnetic radiation (UEMR), thought to be caused by the onboard electronics of the satellite."
One interesting complication is that it seems the propulsion, the electromagnetic ion thrusters, are one of the sources of unintended emissions,
> "Communication with SpaceX engineers suggested the UEMR originated from the propulsion/avionics system of the satellites as they were orbit-raising at the time of detection."
That's quite a big deal actually, if the propulsion system is the major source of interference. Firstly the propulsion system's operation is infrequent (at least at individual satellite level, although if you've got a constellation as big as SpaceX's you'll have satellites doing orbital transfer somewhere a lot of the time). Secondly it isn't a critical part of SpaceX's tech, and other solutions exist for future Starlink generations which wouldn't compromise its service offering at all. Of course interference from a propulsion system is also less directional and tweakable...
Uh, given there's been radio telescopes there for longer than starlink has existed, I'm not sure why they haven't stopped broadcasting in that area then.
It's possible they haven't requested it yet. I've only heard SKA complaining loudly in the media while American radio telescopes have very obvious blackouts visible on SpaceX's map because they've requested them.
> This radio emission at lower frequencies from Starlink isn’t their downlink frequency, but instead unintentional electromagnetic radiation (UEMR), thought to be caused by the onboard electronics of the satellite. This UEMR is not currently regulated by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the organization responsible for managing and allocating the radio spectrum for various uses.
Feels like this is regulatory UB, and therefore allowed.
There are several related things I find odd about Starlink, with the ongoing defense of the impact it has on scientific research being one of them.
Having used it it is genuinely impressive, but it will inevitably lead to everyone wanting their own independent LEO constellation for military purposes (communication and observation), which will then lead to a big interest in anti-satellite weapons since these will become major targets in a hot war.
The end result here is going to be huge quantities of space junk and investment in defense over-the-horizon ground radios (again) which to some degree is already happening.
there is no evidence that there will be a hot war, that it will involve destroying satellites, or the process of destroying the satellite would result in space junk that didn't naturally deorbit within a few years
if we have a hot war with a country capable of launch rockets into space to destroy satellites, then we're super fucked anyway, because that's also a nuclear country. satellites would be the last of my concerns, i would be digging a bunker in my backyard
Big % of mega constellations will be be >500km where deorbit is decades to centuries. Unless regulatory changes, VLEO will be minority because orbit slots is limited.
>which will then lead to a big interest in anti-satellite weapons since these will become major targets in a hot war
If anything, the other way around. Were Starlink a traditional satellite constellation, with a few in geosynchronous orbit, they would be very appealing targets. But there are thousands, and soon tens of thousands, of Starlink satellites, which makes any sort of weapon against them other than maybe a laser impractical.
>The end result here is going to be huge quantities of space junk
... the Starlink portion of which naturally falls back to earth within five years.
Readit News
https://www.pcmag.com/news/despite-spacex-protests-fcc-clear...
Comment period ended in July.
https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/search/search-filings/results?q=(pr...
The source article is quite clear there's no regulatory violations here.
> "Although this IEMR abides by ITU-R guidelines, these intensities are large compared to the strongest astronomical radio sources in the sky and will therefore have the potential to disrupt astronomical observations at SKA-Low frequencies;"
> "The detected IEMR and UEMR are outside of the frequency bands protected for radio astronomy, but are at frequencies of great interest for key experiments for the SKA-Low facility, and at frequencies where RQZ protections at the SKA-Low site are in place;"
The claim stands whether a regulation will be put in place which will require SpaceX to fix or switch off their (thousands) of satellites polluting the spectrum or the band will simply be handed to SpaceX.
"This UEMR is not currently regulated by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the organization responsible for managing and allocating the radio spectrum for various uses"
They'd be begging for the FCC after that.
Mitigation might have to involve some sacrifices. I don't see how policy is going to be able to mitigate much here. And of course the Chinese are under no obligation to listen to US policy makers. They might have their own debates domestically around this topic and they might be reasonable about the topic internationally even. But building international consensus; or even enforcing what little there is on that front could be challenging.
A more practical approach might be accepting that earth based observations are inevitably going to suffer a bit as the number of satellites grows from thousands to tens of thousands and eventually well beyond that. Luckily we now are able to launch stuff into orbit a lot cheaper. Including astronomy related hardware. That's already happening of course. And otherwise, astronomy is very interesting and cool but mostly it concerns observations about things that are really really far away and not directly relevant to a lot of things on earth. Unless of course the thing under observation is on a collision course with us.
Require by who and on what authority?
My point here was not to contest that but make the point that the cat is out of the bag and that it is indeed impacting SKA-Low EoR science and the people involved with that have to deal with that.
Getting the cat a little bit back in the bag via policy and other means is maybe worth trying (good luck) but I don't give it a very high chance of success.
“We” as in the select few countries that have the launch capability and the space tech.
Again a public good is being commoditized and being sold to the highest bidder.
Just like the inclosure movement, right?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclosure_act
With privatization, the public is paid something. Whereas StarLink's use of LEO is a taking. They're denying others open access usage. Without any possibility or threat of consequences.
"Use" is such an inadequate term, but I couldn't think of another. Commandeering?
There has never been more access to space-based imagery and other sensing. With multiple companies selling this stuff ever cheaper. Every news outlet can now afford to buy images. And that's because of cheap launches.
No kidding! If something is worthwhile, people should and sometimes do go to the trouble!
Just roll over is not good advice here!
The Chinese (correctly) view these satellite constellations as a key military capability, and have gone all-in on creating their own version. (I mean, I don't see how that's even debatable at this point—having seen the influence of Starlink in Ukraine. Future conflicts will only amplify the gap between the haves and have-nots).
They haven't yet launched a large number (~120); they don't now have the launch volume for large-scale satellite constellations. Their race is to first catch up in launch capability. They have dozen private startups—heavily subsidized and favored by the state—in the race to build a viable, reusable launcher comparable to Falcon 9, that they would then use to launch Starlink-like constellations at the same cadence.
Some starting points:
https://www.wsj.com/world/china/chinas-own-elon-musks-are-ra... ( https://archive.is/Ukmoa ) ("China’s Own Elon Musks Are Racing to Catch Up to SpaceX / Private sector takes bigger role in building reusable rockets, advancing Beijing’s goal of independence from Western technology")
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/07/23/world/asia/st... ("This Was Supposed to Be the Year China Started Catching Up With SpaceX / It’s looking unlikely. Here’s why")
Can't feasibly do VLBI or other radio astronomy at useful scale in space even if launches were free. Look up the scale of SKA or the EHT.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.06708
Why can't humanity launch 2^17 small antennas into deep space, as a free-floating constellation?
Seems more effective for astronomers to embrace it. Perhaps by getting SpaceX to add a few dozen hundred satellites kitted out for radio astronomy. Link them together and it could be amazing for radio astronomy!
Honestly once Starship is operational SpaceX should subsidize launches of non-commercial astronomy hardware. Could build some goodwill to offset the negatives.
Nobody anywhere is anywhere near SpaceX’s launch cadence, reusable or non.
> Whether they like it or not,
A swarm of LEO satellites because in the current political climate it's easier to massively pollute orbits and prevent astronomy than do municipal internet is not, in fact, a law of nature; nor is it inevitable.
> But building international consensus; or even enforcing what little there is on that front could be challenging.
Ah, a challenge! Let's all give up immediately; this could make some rich people a lot of money, after all!
> Luckily we now are able to launch stuff into orbit a lot cheaper. Including astronomy related hardware.
Would you like to pay for launching Vera C. Rubin (8.4m, nearly 20,000kg for just the camera and mirrors) into space? How about the TMT (30m, expected ~2.6 million kg)? Truly spoken like someone who knows nothing about astronomy.
> And otherwise, astronomy is very interesting and cool but mostly it concerns observations about things that are really really far away and not directly relevant to a lot of things on earth.
Apparently fundamental physics is not very relevant to us here on Earth! This is one of the most small-minded statements I've ever read.
Your underlying question as to why some of those are launching satellites is much easier. They are apparently quite useful for things like communication, providing internet, etc. And people are willing to pay for that kind of stuff. It's not more complicated than that.
Starlink is nothing compared to the value Starshield provides, and the civilian product drives costs down.
With drone warfare being the next thing, the US probably can't afford to not have a company running a major LEO ISP.
Humanity is what humanity is, not what we wish it'd be, so key military capabilities need to be developed or you get razed by the guy who did develop them. Doubly so now that we've rediscovered that culture is much more resilient than we'd thought, and that different people want Earth to look in different ways.
Do we all wish we'd stop ecological collapse instead? Yeah. But it's not going to happen so it's irrelevant.
To have internet everywhere you need to either accept bad latency (300-500ms round trip) or have closer satellites, which means they’re moving faster, which means you need more of them.
Then whoever has the most sats will say "that's it guys, LEO is full and you need our approval to launch more" and if someone raises a stink you guessed it, they can get nuked from orbit
I don't see big potential for the current US government to value scientific interests higher than the interests of SpaceX.
Wouldn't be surprised if SpaceX just continues to launch such satellites causing unintentional interference, to then claim in case of escalation how uneconomic it will be for them to correct this issue now and how the financial impact to SpaceX needs to be valued higher than scientific needs.
This LEO Direct-to-cellular strategy seems to play out similarly, with SpaceX launching massive amounts of satellites which are technically not capable to prevent interference on private spectrum while crossing country-borders, so ITU/FCC/CEPT now need to find a solution to deal with this situation.
Do not underestimate the motivating factor of spite in the current US administration.
At least Starlink satellites need to be replaced every few years anyway due to their low orbit. That is a natural ceiling for economical questions - ITU et al take years anyway until anything is actually enforceable, so SpaceX has ample time to prepare should there be a relevant movement in ITU.
The company I'm working for has its own EMC chamber (maintaining that huge room fully calibrated and standardized is ultra expensive... just looking at these EMC test receivers that go up to 40GHz my me cry in $$$$) and we invested giant engineering effort into our products to be far below every radiation limit norm in the world.
Shouldn't satellite companies have even better stuff and more strict regulations or are these unintended effects maybe caused by the harsh environment?
Most companies won't spend a penny, take a second of time, or add a gram to a satellite if it doesn't affect their mission or chance of approval. Especially not one as cost-optimized as SpaceX. They won't change a thing unless the US government forces them to do so, or if they think that a government order is imminent so they come to some voluntary agreement ahead of time to avoid what would probably be a more constraining official regulation in the future.
The actual issue is probably caused by switch-mode power supplies or some digital signal on the satellite that isn't fully shielded, possibly one that does digital control of a motor or thruster. It probably isn't the communication radios since they operate at a much higher frequency. You can fix the issue by adding filtering and/or shielding, but that takes extra components (meaning extra cost and weight) and requires testing (meaning time). Plus you have to identify the offending system, which means you have to start with testing and detective work. This interference was only detected on some Starlink satellites, so you have to do detective work to find out if it is a particular operating mode or generation of satellite that is offending, do testing to confirm it, and then work on a fix.
It might apply to some of the emerging Starlink competitors however, especially the Chinese ones and AST.
The only thing that they can't stop would be things like reflected unrelated ground communications off of the satellite, but that would be very weak.
Not sure this will help against the mentioned unintentional electromagnetic radiation (UEMR) likely caused by the electronics of the satellites themselves.
"This radio emission at lower frequencies from Starlink isn’t their downlink frequency, but instead unintentional electromagnetic radiation (UEMR), thought to be caused by the onboard electronics of the satellite."
> "Communication with SpaceX engineers suggested the UEMR originated from the propulsion/avionics system of the satellites as they were orbit-raising at the time of detection."
Feels like this is regulatory UB, and therefore allowed.
Having used it it is genuinely impressive, but it will inevitably lead to everyone wanting their own independent LEO constellation for military purposes (communication and observation), which will then lead to a big interest in anti-satellite weapons since these will become major targets in a hot war.
The end result here is going to be huge quantities of space junk and investment in defense over-the-horizon ground radios (again) which to some degree is already happening.
there is no evidence that there will be a hot war, that it will involve destroying satellites, or the process of destroying the satellite would result in space junk that didn't naturally deorbit within a few years
if we have a hot war with a country capable of launch rockets into space to destroy satellites, then we're super fucked anyway, because that's also a nuclear country. satellites would be the last of my concerns, i would be digging a bunker in my backyard
They naturally fall out of orbit after a few years.
And no they can't be "blown into" GEO orbit.
If anything, the other way around. Were Starlink a traditional satellite constellation, with a few in geosynchronous orbit, they would be very appealing targets. But there are thousands, and soon tens of thousands, of Starlink satellites, which makes any sort of weapon against them other than maybe a laser impractical.
>The end result here is going to be huge quantities of space junk
... the Starlink portion of which naturally falls back to earth within five years.