> form a mesh that can make paths that are shorter than the great circle distance I think that's a slight mis-wording - you can't beat the great circle distanc

> form a mesh that can make paths that are shorter than the great circle distance I think that's a slight mis-wording - you can't beat the great circle distance over the surface unless you go underground, but you can definitely beat a packet-switched, zig-zagging network running through the ground with a more or less direct point-to-point mesh running 100km above it.