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> Selling directly to consumers will not be Starlinks main line of business

It absolutely will be.

What they have said is that it won't be Starlinks main line of business at the beginning, until the receiver costs have been driven down and the constellation is much more dense. At that point, they very much intend to provide internet access directly to millions of people.

I remember Neil Stephenson once compared the cutting of undersea fiber optic cabling to the use of nuclear weapons: once one nation does it, every one is going to do it, so no one ever does it.

So I think China will innovate and find ways to block access to starlink, without attacking the satellites.

> blow the satellites up

!

They don’t just sit over China. There’s no way they could just start shooting them down without repercussions.

China is the poster-boy of doing things without repercussions. They could shoot down any commercial satellite and suffer barely any consequences.