[sbeller]

How did you come to the estimate of 25%?

Because that difference in distance is the actual reason. The geostationary satellites used for your internet in 2009 are at ~2.5 of the earth diameter above ground (35k km, ca 1.5 earth circumference), whereas the starlink satellites are near the atmosphere (less than driving distance SF to LA). And speed of light is rather slow in these dimensions already.

[futevolei]

I misread a different article which said spacex originally planned to have these satellites orbit around 800mi and I mistook that as normal altitude.

[Dylan16807]

The analysis is basically the same for 800 miles. That's 5 milliseconds per leg. Geostationary is 22000 miles.

Though if you got 25%... did you calculate 115 milliseconds of speedup? That's the speedup for one leg. A ping to a server has to travel that distance four times.