I’m loathe to even ask (I can’t think of a more accursed combination than Lockheed Martin and cryptocurrency), but: why do you need to shoot a computer into space to measure latency? Can’t you just introduce latency?
The core idea - a content-addressable globally distributed cache - seems sound to me. And I don't believe the core IPFS protocol has any blockchains baked into it.
Filecoin is a token thing which builds on top of IPFS, but my understanding is that IPFS can exist and work entirely independently of Filecoin.
Or am I misunderstanding IPFS here?