Your plane isn’t connected to the internet the way you think… it actually calls space first. 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. 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 ...