Eli5 Why can’t we use airplanes to create a starlink like internet?

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Eli5 Why can’t we use airplanes to create a starlink like internet?

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Answer 1

We could. In some ways, modern AWACS systems could be said to do something vaguely similar to this on a small scale.

The problem is that to cover the globe this way, or even just cover all the land, you’d probably have to keep hundreds of planes in the air at once, basically 24/7/365. That means you’d need to keep them constantly refueled, which carries a number of costs, economic and environmental. Satellites don’t need to be refueled once they’re in position, and you need far fewer of them: the Iridium voice network, for example, covers the globe with 66 satellites.