<Izaya>
Hmm, maybe rather than building my mapping satellites to be as cheap as possible I should build them to be moved, so I'd spend 75 grand on one then re-use it to map everything
<SporkWitch>
Can do, but they're honestly so cheap anyway, no real reason to, and personally I like leaving them in orbit, as if it's a permanent surveilance satellite
<SporkWitch>
after all, any geologically active body or any that has an atmosphere (and thus weather) would have things change over time, thus you'd want to keep watching.
<SporkWitch>
what really drives me nuts, though, are the "reposition satellite" missions. I swear, they ALWAYS try to tell me to move my commsats out of position so they no longer serve their purpose lol
<SporkWitch>
they should have some logic written in so those particular missions can't be generate to tell you to move anything classified as a relay, since obviously relays are in very deliberate orbits
<Izaya>
so far I have like three generations of mapping satellite in Mun orbit, and they're all doubling as communication satellites
<Izaya>
the high-end ScanSat sensors cost nearly as much as a nuclear engine though, so I'd like to be able to re-use them I think
<Izaya>
maybe that will be my next design project; a reusable mapping satellite
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<Izaya>
deployable communication satellites would be a nice touch too
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<SporkWitch>
i just do two each, one with all of the low-res sensors, one with all of the high-res sensors. It's possible to have all of them at ideal range, so nothing suffers, though I don't think the same is true of a single with all low AND high res sensors
<Izaya>
for a hypothetical Jool mission I guess you'd want a pair of high-power ones in low polar Jool orbit, then a trio in equatorial orbit of each moon
<SporkWitch>
for commsats? depends on the size of the body; generally planet-sized objects you want a polar triangle and an equatorial triangle, but most moon-sized bodies you can get away with just a polar triangle
<Izaya>
the two in Jool orbit would be for uplink to KSC, whereas the ones around each body would be to provide uninterrupted coverage
<SporkWitch>
you'd still want three around jool itself; just because with two you have contact with the KSC doesn't mean you have line of sight to the ones around jool's moons. With three, you ensure the ones around the moons have line of sight on the ones around jool itself, and the ones around jool have line of sight to each other, and at least one has it to the KSC, unless occluded by the sun
<SporkWitch>
(and that's where the solar relays come in, for deep space coverage)
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<SporkWitch>
grrr, couldn't find the answer to the question i had, but did stumble across a fun fact: jupiter and the sun's barycenter is actually slightly above the surface of the sun
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<Izaya>
hmm, so what I'm hearing is that for a Jool mission I'd want 6 sets of 3 relay satellites
<Izaya>
and that one of each set could happily do mapping too
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<Izaya>
>:D they're paying me to add a habitation ring to my Mun space station