This week in satellite communications was like watching a high-stakes chess match played by caffeinated physicists using live ferrets as pieces. Somewhere between the orbital arms race, spectrum land grabs, and yet another company promising to “revolutionize” antennas, it became clear: space is no longer the final frontier, it’s the new frontier for corporate melodrama and barely disguised military cosplay.
The United States, never one to skip a sequel, announced its latest attempt to militarize the heavens with something called the “Golden Dome.” Which sounds less like a defense system and more like a knock-off fragrance for ageing politicians. It’s a reboot of the old Star Wars missile shield, except this time the PowerPoint slides are in 4K and the threat assessments are crowd-sourced from Twitter. The idea is to build a triple-decker sandwich of orbital hardware across LEO, MEO, and GEO to intercept threats and, incidentally, anyone trying to upload cat videos during wartime. Dual-use applications, they say, which is code for: “we’ll spy on you, and if we feel moody, maybe zap something too.”
