[captainperl]

Atmospheric disturbance was a major problem for the SDI (Star Wars) project.

They came up with solutions, and no doubt there are more and cheaper solutions today, given advances in materials, computing and astrophoto stacking techniques.

Note that they were able to use off-the-shelf tank infrared detectors ($50,000 each) to detect ICBM launches from space, so I suspect even more cross-pollination 35 years later. For example, fiber optics are orders of magnitude better now.