02 · The bet
Light
c is 3×10⁸ m/s. LEO is a few milliseconds. GEO is a quarter-second round trip before routing. The speed of light does not negotiate.
In English
Radio and laser still travel at c. Up and down to 550 km is a few milliseconds. Up and down to GEO is ~240 ms before anyone routes a packet. That floor is physics.
- Try this
- Ping LEO, then GEO. Watch the dot. Read RTT.
- Keep this
- LEO ping is terrestrial-ish. GEO ping is a satellite.
Lab · ping the sky
Light is 3×10⁸ m/s. LEO is a short hop. GEO is a long one. Routing, processing, and a bent-pipe double-hop make the real ping worse. The floor is this cartoon.
One-way 23.1 ms · RTT 46.2 ms
One-way time is range/c. GEO range ≈ 36 000 km plus a bit of slant; 120 ms one-way, 240 ms RTT. LEO 550 km is ~2 ms one-way before elevation and routing.
Bent-pipe GEO doubles the hop. Inter-satellite lasers on LEO can walk the mesh without another ground bounce. Processing delay still sits on top of c.