>>13578505A 12" Dobson reflector can resolve Jupiter in the night's sky and Andromed and the Magelanic clouds with sufficient observation time and moderate to low light pollution. Now theoretically, imagine if each Starlink Gen2 satellites had a 12" reflector but they were pointed downwards towards the Earth, and then you had a fleet of 29,000 Starlink satellites across multiple shells covering the entire globe.
>>13578513Gen1 Starlink satellites are limited to 60Gbps throughput aka 30Gbps bi-directional. Gen2 are expected to do around 100Gbps throughput or 50/50 bidirectional. You could easily create a dedicated 1Gbps channel for this 12" integrated observatory (theoretically) and have its own laserlink that's independent of the main system. Its purpose is purely observation and data returns.
SpaceX can easily partner with Tesla for sensors, cameras, and silicon engineering for data fusion. If you consider what Telsa talked about on AI day, and note the fact that the liquid alloy they use with their gigacasting was developed in partnership with SpaceX under a material science contract; and you reverse the flow for what observation, you can see the synergistic exponential benefit here.
Commercial entities, Universities, DOE, DOD, DOI, FAA/NASA, NOAA, all will line up with fat checks for wanting a slice of that data pie. The economics of scale here allow for an unprecedented scientific data collection vector that can be used to shape policy, dictate how new infrastructure growth is handled, observe erosion at scale and at rates unseen in human history, be able to track that giant fucking patch of plastic the size of god damn Texas in the pacific, its growth.
You can even say do 30/30/30 splits where 30% of all Starlinks have reflectors and see in pure light, another 30% do infrared, and another 30% do XRAY or high energy equivalent observations. With Infra/Xray, you can see beyond the ocean surface and track migration, oil leaks, methane pockets, real time.
