[mhandley]

On routing: the best path in this sort of network changes something like every ten seconds or so. To make it work, you need to consider all the links that can delivery good enough SNR, so you're already factoring in rain for example. You've got many many possible paths, and you're considering the best route constantly, but you're only factoring links with acceptable quality into the computation. If you do this (and can solve the queue avoidance issues too), turns out jitter isn't such a big problem. As one path gets longer, it eventually gets longer than the next path, and you switch to the new path as close to that moment as you can. If you do this, you minimize step changes in latency. It only works if you've got enough satellites, but it looks like SpaceX will have.

If you can't eliminate all queuing delays, you can't factor all delays into your decision of when to change routes, and so you will get some jitter and hence reordering. If so, you need a reorder queue in the final receiving groundstation, so as to avoid confusing TCP. This removes jitter at the expense of adding some latency. How much latency depends on the queuing delays you're trying to smooth out, so it all really comes down to avoiding queues in the satellites.