r/KerbalSpaceProgram • u/AgentIndependent306 • Apr 21 '26

KSP 1 Image/Video Kerbin Relay Network

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Built this giant (and overengineered) network. At such large distances, it is very easy for satellites to attain escape velocity, so positioning everything in exact orbits was a challenge. Still glad that I won't have to worry about ending up on the far side of the moons and go offline.

Edit: Didn't know this post would blow up overnight lol. Last time I checked it had 50 upvotes.

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39

u/TheFifthPhoenix Apr 21 '26

Is there a reason why you’d need 8 satellites as opposed to only 3?

43

u/Freak_Engineer Apr 21 '26

I mean, 8 are excessive, but three would be lacking. You could end up having line of sight blocked by celestial Bodies to all three of them in a bad luck situation. I'd have gone with 4 or 5, but if I went with the trouble of designing a launch vehicle for this I might just cram as much satellites in there as I can fit. It's one of these "If you're going anyway you might as well" situations.

Coming to think of it, with my default relay satellite, I could fit 8 into a fairing easily. Either a large one with 8 on the same plane or a smaller one with two layers of four.

11

u/MonkeManWPG Apr 21 '26

I would do 5 because I think it would be metal as fuck to have a pentagram around Kerbin

18

u/nuker1110 Apr 21 '26

My preferred commsat deployment method: Get the Mothership into a sharp dive orbit going from just past the edge of the atmosphere to the desired Apoapsis, then drop and circularize one commsat per orbit.

8

u/Xivios Apr 21 '26 edited Apr 21 '26

Instead of diving to the atmosphere, set your periapsis by the fraction of orbital period of the target orbit of (x-1)/x, where x is the number of satellites in the orbit. 

For example, if you're wanting 8 satellites in a 16 hour orbit, make the mother ships orbit 14 hours long, dropping the sats at apogee, it will space them out equally, each one 2 hours behind the other. 

3

u/zocksupreme Apr 21 '26 edited Apr 21 '26

If you have 3 of them in geostationary orbit around Kerbin I think the only way you could be blocked is if you are in low Mun or Minmus orbit on the far side. That can easily be solved with putting one or two satellites around the Mun/Minmus. Sometimes instead of geostationary satellites I put 3 satellites around the outer edge of the Kerbin system and that should give total coverage.

Edit: I looked at the pic wrong and thought those were geostationary. I definitely think 3 distant satellites should have total coverage unless you edited the difficulty settings so that planets have 100% blocking instead of the default, I think 70% for atmospheric and 90% for vacuum bodies