Connection to Jool with no extra Ground Station

[Saltem]

Hi Guys

I started with KSP 1.5 with only 1 Ground Station. And my Probe just lost Connection on his way to Mun. It has enough Antenna Power

To put my problem in a larger scale:

How can i archive a permanent Connection from Jool (or any Planet, doesnt really matter) if my only ground Station is on the other side of Kerbin? Do i really have to build a Relay satellite around Kerbin with power of same power as the Tracking Station on LVL 3 (158 Gm). Seems a bit overkill to me

Just two pictures for comprehension:

https://imgur.com/a/eyWjItU

Thx for your help

 

[Pecan]

No you don't have to build a relay satellite around Kerbin.
You have to build a constellation of relay satellites around Kerbin.

Quite simply it doesn't matter how powerful your transmitters, relays and receivers are if there's a planet in the way so you need to guide the signal around the rock until it has line-of-sight on KSC.

That or just enable the other ground stations and assume Kerbals can run cables around the world.  The British had telegraph cables across the Empire in the 1800s so a long time before radio, let alone radio satellites.

(At a minimum you might get away with 2 relays - 1 in synchronous orbit above KSC, the other on a long , eccentric polar orbit so it is nearly always far enough above the plane of the planets to get a signal.  More generally you'd want 3+ around each planet/moon as well as a couple on polar orbits.)

Edited January 8, 2019 by Pecan

[Saltem]

5 minutes ago, Pecan said:

No you don't have to build a relay satellite around Kerbin.
You have to build a constellation of relay satellites around Kerbin.

Quite simply it doesn't matter how powerful your transmitters, relays and receivers are if there's a planet in the way so you need to guide the signal around the rock until it has line-of-sight on KSC.

That or just enable the other ground stations and assume Kerbals can run cables around the world.  The British had telegraph cables across the Empire in the 1800s so a long time before radio, let alone radio satellites.

yeah i got that, but I of the relay satellites of the constellation has to have the same power as the ground Station to have a connection to Jools Satellite?

Edited January 8, 2019 by Saltem
forgot questionmark

[Pecan]

Yes, the overall signal strength is the average of all the strength of each link in the chain.

[cantab]

You don't need your relay satellites to be as powerful as the tracking station. You only need them to be powerful enough. If you equip your relay sats with the biggest relay dish, and the Jool probe with either the same or the equivalent direct dish, then that should do it.

[Geonovast]

I typically will put 3-4 weak relay sats into equatorial orbit using this, and put one relay sat into an incredibly eccentric polar orbit, so the sat spends almost all of its time above Kerbin.  Sometimes I'll do two powerful ones in polar orbit 180* apart.

Edited January 8, 2019 by Geonovast
Forgot the link!

[Espatie]

The high eccentricity & high inclination would be similar to the Molniya Orbit (although a true Molniya Orbit is also semi-synchronious).

[Geonovast]

1 minute ago, Espatie said:

The high eccentricity & high inclination would be similar to the Molniya Orbit (although a true Molniya Orbit is also semi-synchronious).

Similar, yeah.  Although being synchronous would be moot.  Ideally you'd have your ap as far from Kerbin as possible without escaping or losing signal with the weak relays in equatorial orbit, and your pe as close to 70km as you can.  The single strong relay wouldn't need to see the KSC all the time, just the small relays.  The idea behind this is to limit the time it would be hidden behind Kerbin as much as possible.  It would be going so fast when it was obstructed that you'd only lose signal for a very short time.

[Espatie]

Yeah. I was thinking about putting one in place when I go to Duna. With that and a nearside of Ike signal relay the biggest connection loss back to KSP will be when the sun is in the way.

[mrclucks]

you need line of sight between the ground station(s) and the probe and whatever the number of satellites between them.  

in stock, an easy way to get 99% connectivity around kerbin is to make a simple probe with antenna, a power bank and power generation. then you'll want to get either 3 or 4 of them roughly equally spaced around an orbit of atleast 600km for 3 sats and 248,528m for 4 sats.  as long as they can communicate with each other and have pretty much the same orbit(so they dont drift), it doesnt matter what the exact orbit is since they will be able to communicate with each other and that constellation will always be in communication of the ground station.  

you'll need to do the same thing for each other planet you want constant communication with, or you run the same problem of intermittent communications.  

[MaverickSawyer]

On 1/8/2019 at 11:56 AM, Geonovast said:

Ideally you'd have your ap as far from Kerbin as possible without escaping or losing signal with the weak relays in equatorial orbit, and your pe as close to 70km as you can.

Yeesh. That'd be, what, 30+ kerbin days if you punt the ApA out to ~75-80 Mm? LOTS of communications time, with at most half an hour of downtime during the PeA phase.

 

I may have to launch one of those now, just to have it ready for real deep-space missions.

 

EDIT: Field test reveals that at an ApA of ~83 Mm, the orbital period is ~42 days, of which 41.5 is usable even when you have to tuck behind Kerbin at PeA.

Edited January 9, 2019 by MaverickSawyer