(A stack of 60 Starlink test satellites atop a Falcon 9 rocket, close to entering orbit ~ above)
Elon musk is both loved and hated for what he is and he isn’t.
Most people associate him with Tesla as well as a company called Starlink.
Starlink is in the news a lot because of all the rockets that are being sent into space, a private company launching rockets almost weekly.
From Google’s Gemini, we learn:
SpaceX launches a high number of Starlink missions per year, with the number increasing annually to support the growing constellation. In 2025, SpaceX completed over 146 total missions, with more than 100 of them dedicated to launching Starlink satellites. The pace of Starlink launches has rapidly increased, going from around 12 launches per year in the past to over 100 in 2025 alone
.Have you ever asked what the need for all those rocket launches is?
Satellites, my friend satellites, LEOs to be exact (Low Earth Orbit) satellites, is the meaning of the acronym.
And the numbers are staggering. As of late November 2025, there are approximately 9,099 to 10,006 Starlink satellites in orbit, depending on your data.
For a long time, through the present, you could get satellite service and in rural areas from companies like HughesNet.
The primary difference between Starlink and Hughesnet is orbital height. HughesNet satellites are in a high geostationary orbit (GEO) at approximately 22,236 miles (35,786 kilometers), while Starlink satellites are in a much lower Low Earth Orbit (LEO) at around 340-750 miles (550-1,200 kilometers). 025 alone
Starlink satellites are a total counterpoint to this, hovering the chest 22,236 miles above the Earth, significantly reducing something we call latency.
That’s the time it takes for the signal to launch from Earth, get bounced off a satellite, and return back to Earth.
Starlink has significantly lower latency than Hughesnet due to its use of low-Earth orbiting satellites, with median latency around 45-60 milliseconds compared to Hughesnet’s 600-700 milliseconds
Then, if you have a Starlink antenna, and we’ll get into the different types in a moment, you can access the internet from almost anywhere on the planet as long as you have an unobstructed view of the sky.
When I was first considering Starlink, some friends told me “All I needed was a cell phone with a hotspot.”
Here’s the rub: first of all, the way we travel, we have found complete days we had no cellular service whatsoever.
Further to that, we’re web developers. Well, meeting friends said, “We could stream movies with our cellular hotspot.”
I would nod and say, “That’s nice, but we have one website that’s almost 6,000 pages, and I back up that site to my desktop a couple of times a month.”
While on the road, one day I had to restore that site to a server, and the restoration took a little better than 12 hours.
A cell phone battery would have started on fire, let alone possibly even blow up from the bandwidth required to upload literally over 400,000 files.
Another Starlink well-kept secret is that you can use the same antenna for your home and your RV.
You’re required to have different plans. Here’s a bit from Google’s Gemini explaining the two scenarios.
Starling antennas are flexible; you can mount them permanently or temporarily, depending upon your needs in the application, is seen in the video below.
The two most popular antennas today are the Generation 3 and the Mini. I have a chance for you but I’ve heard good things about the mini as well.
If you have oodles of money, you can actually use think your next Baja dune buggy race or for cruising along the surface of the ocean at 25 knots.
The mobile antenna goes for $2500, and ocean pricing looks like:
- Mobile Priority 50GB: Starts around $250/month.
- Mobile Priority 500GB: Starts around $650/month.
- Mobile Priority 1TB: Starts around $1,150/month.
So if you’re in rural America, where it’s hard to get an internet signal, or you’re nomads like we are Starlink is the right choice for you.
- Roam 50GB: Starts around $50/month for 50GB of data, with the option to purchase more data at an additional cost.
- Roam Unlimited: Starts around $165/month for unlimited data in coastal areas and on land.
How much bandwidth does it provide, you ask? We share two tablets, two cell phones, two Roku boxes, and one notebook, and I’ve never found the service to be sluggish whatsoever.
Set up is not complicated and is orchestrated primarily through your cell phone.
I did have one technical issue that required opening a support ticket.
It took a painful 3 days for someone to get back to me, but once they did, because of my confusion and trouble explaining the issue, they actually called me on my cell phone, and we were able to work it out.
Their AI support desk provided very accurate answers to the questions that I asked.
Feel free to reach out should you have any questions re**************@***il.com
Written by Mitch Rezman
Approved by Catherine Tobsing
