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How to set up three relay sats.


GKSP

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Hi guys.  Today, I was toying with MJ while setting up relays around the Mun.  In doing this, I have figured out a perfect way to set up your relay sattelites. 

1. First off, this requires three relay sats, all attached to the same vessel, and, unless you are a rocket scie-- have internet access, MJ.

2. Get into the altitude you want for deploying your relay sats.

3. Deploy one satellite.

4. Make sure you are clear of it, then open up MJ's maneuver planner window.

5. Create a maneuver for a 2/3 resonant orbit and complete the burn.  It doesn't matter when.

6. Tell MJ to circularize at your AP.  Delploy Sat 2.

7. Repeat with Sat 3.

Give this a like if you found this helpful with your relay systems.  It took me far too long to find this out myself.

Edited by GKSP
Correction....
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4 minutes ago, GKSP said:

1. First off, this requires three relay sats, all attached to the same vessel, and, unless you are a rocket scientist, MJ.

It's not that bad.  This calc does it for you.  You just need to fly the ship instead of letting MJ have all the fun.

https://meyerweb.com/eric/ksp/resonant-orbits/

 

3 minutes ago, GKSP said:

5. Create a maneuver for a 2/3 resonant orbit and complete the burn. 

Careful with dive orbits, depending on the body and what altitude you're putting your satellites at, a dive orbit may be detrimental.

 

5 minutes ago, GKSP said:

7. Repeat with Sat 3. 

Note that when circularizing your sats, it's not so important to perfectly match ap and pe (which would work), but to match orbital period.  Much easier to do than perfectly matching AP and PE, plus you can make small adjustments easily anywhere in your orbit.  The small difference in orbits shouldn't matter unless you're only doing 3 sats and are right at the minimum LOS line.  This is why I usually do them high and use 4 sats.

 

7 minutes ago, GKSP said:

Give this a like if you found this helpful with your relay systems.  It took me far too long to find this out myself.

Hey, at least you figured it out!  I had to google it.

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When I did this, I wasn't actually expecting it to work.  I was going to set up the relays anyway, but with horrrible alignment like I did with my Kerbin relays.  Sometimes, I don't have the best of luck when googleing things.  I also make sure to put my relays extra high up just in case, say, I have an emergency dive orbit.

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22 hours ago, Skystorm said:

This is actually a fairly well known technique.  There is a resonant orbit calculator for the stock solar system and various other planet packs such as OPM, GPP, and Real Solar System.

https://meyerweb.com/eric/ksp/resonant-orbits/

 

And it works nice with KAC so you can launch to the calculated orbit, deploy sat #1, the set an alarm for next AP and go on with other stuff :)

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@GKSPGood on you for finding a good method :)

I figured it out myself as well, only I use a little different method, might interesting as well. It may not be the most efficient, but gets the job done with little effort. It does need KER though.

*circularize your deployment vehicle at the desired orbit and watch the orbital period, its handy to take an orbital period you can easily divide by 3.

*Calculate 2/3 of that orbital period, and 4/3 of that orbital period. (eg: OP of 6 hours, makes 4 and 8 hours)

*Release first relay and burn prograde till you have an orbital period of 8 hours

*Turn deployment vehicle retrogade, launch 2nd relay and burn retrograde till you have an orbital period of 4 hours

*Launch 3rd relay, move deployment vehicle out of the way and correct speed of the 3rd relay to the orbital period of 6 hours

*4 Hours later, circularize the 2nd relay at Ap to the orbital period of 6 hours

*Again 4 hours later, circularize the 1st relay at Pe to the orbital period of 6 hours

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10 hours ago, LoSBoL said:

I figured it out myself as well, only I use a little different method, might interesting as well. It may not be the most efficient, but gets the job done with little effort. It does need KER though.

Your described method is nearly identical to mine, save one little difference.
Of course its depending on which body you intend to establish a network, but with the relays equipped with a small amount of fuel and engine, it isn't necessary to repeatedly try to match your previous orbit as close as possible with the entire weight of your seeding craft plus the remaining satellites. Instead, you merely find your proper seeding period (2/3 or 4/3 resonance for 3-point net) and repeatedly deploy each satellite one orbit apart, using the satellite engines to circularize. Burn at AP for 2/3 resonance; burn at PE for 4/3. It's imperative that you do not miss an orbit unless you want to wait an entire cycle to deploy the next one, or you're good at thinking in reverse about things like this.

I haven't bothered to do the math to find out which is more efficient, but there is of course, a handy caveat to having extra deltaV among your satellites in the event you miss the mark a bit for not wanting to bother with Mechjeb's alleged precision. A little station keeping never hurt anyone (unless they were really bad at it xD )

TL;DR: LosBol does it by the numbers too, but may or may not be as simple or efficient.

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13 hours ago, Dark Lion said:

Your described method is nearly identical to mine, save one little difference.
Of course its depending on which body you intend to establish a network, but with the relays equipped with a small amount of fuel and engine, it isn't necessary to repeatedly try to match your previous orbit as close as possible with the entire weight of your seeding craft plus the remaining satellites. Instead, you merely find your proper seeding period (2/3 or 4/3 resonance for 3-point net) and repeatedly deploy each satellite one orbit apart, using the satellite engines to circularize. Burn at AP for 2/3 resonance; burn at PE for 4/3. It's imperative that you do not miss an orbit unless you want to wait an entire cycle to deploy the next one, or you're good at thinking in reverse about things like this.

I haven't bothered to do the math to find out which is more efficient, but there is of course, a handy caveat to having extra deltaV among your satellites in the event you miss the mark a bit for not wanting to bother with Mechjeb's alleged precision. A little station keeping never hurt anyone (unless they were really bad at it xD )

TL;DR: LosBol does it by the numbers too, but may or may not be as simple or efficient.

That makes perfect sense! And it's even easier as long as you can calculate the right starting orbit, way more efficient. The deployment vehicle needs a whole lot lets DV and it saves half of de burntime for relay's as well. 

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