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Comment by KuiN | Hacker News Reader

Yeah I'm struggling to get too excited here. Theoretically latency with current geostationary satellites "could be as low as" 477ms, but they're usually 600ms+.

Plus this is for v2, which Elon has said will be launching on Starship ... so some years away.

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These are _not_ geostationary orbits. Starlink's network is of a fast/low/hand-off variety rather than a high/stationary/single-satellite->communications variety.

Their satellites are MUCH closer and are constantly whizzing across the horizon (and so require a motorized antenna) than the transitional geostationary communications satellites. This would require a huge number of satellites to get full-sky-coverage, but that's exactly what Starlink is doing.

1) Speed of light in space is faster than speed of light in a fiber optic cable...

2) And the number of hops in the void of space could be MANY fewer than from city to city to ocean to city.

I'm pretty sure the antenna is not motorized but is a phased array instead.

Looks like both? (I'm not qualified to really assess...)

https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/gr284b/satellite_...

https://www.microwaves101.com/encyclopedias/phased-array-ant...

Neither am I, honestly, maybe I phrased it too strongly. Pretty sure = I think I read it somewhere and it makes sense.

Regardless, hybrid makes a lot of sense! TIL!

To be fair, geostationary orbit is 36000km, whereas Starlink is at 550km. Geo hits, yes, roughly 400ms under perfect conditions whereas 550km would be expected to hit 9ms.

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