This was an interesting experiment I did to see whether it would actually be faster to complete some levels in a full-game speedrun by instead destroying satellite dishes. Well, the results are in.

Assuming nearly everything goes perfect, as it does here, yes this actually saves about a second over the current full-game path! The bonus round has been included for those who would like to compare. The bad news is it's next to impossible to actually save that time:

1. The hardest part is actually destroying the shield generator in two sets of downward shots. It is very easy for several of your shots to miss since they could despawn before doing damage. The shield generator requires 8 photons and the satellite dish 12 photons to be destroyed.
2. You need to destroy the satellite dish with one HP remaining to lose the bonus round as fast as possible.
3. You also need good RNG on the bonus round to lose as fast as possible. Incurring a hit from the top or bottom happens way faster than from the left or right.

All in all, definitely not worth going for in an RTA run, but I'm almost certain this would be a faster route for the TAS should someone start working on improving that.