Starlink could do laser comms with other satellites, probably, assuming they shared positioning information and whatever proprietary laser sauce is keeping their intraconstellation links up.
But their radar link to ground is Ku band, which is already getting congested (partly by Starlink itself!). That’s why everyone’s talking about moving to Ka, despite the worse attenuation and higher cost. Much more bandwidth is available at Ka band, as well.
Edit: I’m slightly out of date, Starlink now also operates at least partially in the Ka band.
I want to giggle like most everyone else with this comment...
...then I look at what I'm doing at my new job in nuspace (I jumped out of LEDs and LASERs,) and realize I'm one of the people that is tasked with making this some sort of a possibility, without having been explicitly told so.
Faaaaaaaaaaack me. Well, I have a chance to shine if I can talk sense into the right heads.
Oh there will be something up there that they call a datacenter. It doesn't have to actually work for them to point at it and say "the data is up there and therefore is not subject to whatever regional regulation you're hassling me about."
It's a bit like how one guy bought alpaca socks on the silk road and thousands pointed to those socks and said "see, it's not for crime."
But their radar link to ground is Ku band, which is already getting congested (partly by Starlink itself!). That’s why everyone’s talking about moving to Ka, despite the worse attenuation and higher cost. Much more bandwidth is available at Ka band, as well.
Edit: I’m slightly out of date, Starlink now also operates at least partially in the Ka band.
...then I look at what I'm doing at my new job in nuspace (I jumped out of LEDs and LASERs,) and realize I'm one of the people that is tasked with making this some sort of a possibility, without having been explicitly told so.
Faaaaaaaaaaack me. Well, I have a chance to shine if I can talk sense into the right heads.
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dome_(missile_defense_syst...
I hope the engineers who weaponize space understanding how destructive that is.
It's a bit like how one guy bought alpaca socks on the silk road and thousands pointed to those socks and said "see, it's not for crime."