Have you ever asked yourself how a plane even has Wi-Fi up there at 35,000 feet? Here’s the surprising part: the plane isn’t connecting straight to the internet. Instead, it beams your data to a satellite which could be 36,000 km away in geostationary orbit, or just a few hundred kilometers up in low-Earth orbit. The satellite then bounces it back down to a ground station connected to the web. Kind of like making a phone call that goes to space and back before your meme even loads. But wait wouldn’t that round trip make it really slow? Exactly. With those faraway satellites, signals can take half a second just to go up and back. That’s why airplane Wi-Fi used to feel so laggy. Newer systems fix this by skipping satellites entirely and connecting the plane directly to special antennas on the ground, basically turning the plane into a flying cell tower. And the latest upgrade? Airlines are starting to use low-Earth orbit satellites, like Starlink, which orbit much closer. That cuts laten...