Satellite Contracts

[Sma]

To cover both of these:

i would love this it gives satellites an actual use in game other than orbiting objects that have little to no use

I really shouldn't suggest this (because I sure as hell can't do it!), but how about a mission to put a communications satellite into kerbinstationary orbit... at a specific longitude? (After all, commsats are useless if you put them into an orbit where they're below the horizon for the relay stations they're supposed to connect!) Maybe with a tolerance band ("100 degrees west longitude +/- 5 degrees") to allow for the inherent imprecision of our flying and our simulation, but this would probably be an accurate simulation of the single most profitable, and largest, sector of the contract spaceflight industry...

There are some mods that "require" sats in order to work, RemoteTech 2 (RT2), Kethane, S.C.A.N. Sat, and I think KSP Interstellar has some things you can use sats for too (orbital power transmission, antimatter collection etc), just to name a few.

I'm sure if the development on RT2 is going well (I haven't been keeping up with it lately) there will be a contract(s) for just that. For those that don't know RT adds the need to setup comms networks in order to use probes and/or transmit data beyond a certain range of KSC. It would be pretty simple I imagine for there to be contracts for RT.

As far as setting up kerbostationary orbit, one isn't all that hard, you just have to get to 2,868,750m I believe it is and make it circular (check out some of Scott Manleys earlier youtube videos, he has a few on how to achieve this). Of course on the other side of Kerbin you'll have a comms blackout area so ideally you'd need at least 3, though you could have 4, 5 or more "komm sats" (as I call them) in a lower orbit that would bounce the signal around. Then of course as you go to other planets you would need the same thing, although not all planets/moons/muns have a big enough SOI to have stationary orbits. Keeping 3 stationary sats roughly equally spaced though is a little bit of a challenge, as if they don't all have the same Ap/Pe or same orbital period they'll start drifting apart and grouping together over time.

Also RT has different antennas/dishes with different ranges and coverage. Some dishes are meant for far away places like Duna, Jool etc, and as such they have a really long range, but narrow cone of signal...I forget what it's called...so you have to plan for that as you don't want a super long range pointing at say the Mun because its narrow cone would only have a tiny coverage area.

As for Kethane, it has sensors that you put on sats/craft that detect Kethane deposits, which you can then land at, mine, and convert to fuel, oxidizer, monoprop, or xenon.

S.C.A.N. Sat is basically a mapping mod, which will map the different planets/moons and provide you with a map of altitude, slope, and biomes. I like this because it makes it a little easier to find places which you haven't landed at yet to collect science. Plus it's just another example of a need to for sats that do something.

I'm sure all of those will end up having their own contracts that can be done, as soon as they fix any possible bugs that might show up.