If I remember that right. It is not that easy to get into the state school in our state. UW engineering departments required GPA 4.0 last year. Kids who had GPA 3.9 or less had 0 chances getting into the UW engineering schools.
But Starlink needs to get the traffic to/from the ground eventually, right? And those ground links having their capacity. So I think it is nice to have laser crosslinks, but they will not eliminate the base stations capacity requirements.