FLIGHT MANUAL / 06 · SYSTEMS
Communications & throughput
A link is more than a red line: KMS models reach, margin, delay, capacity, processing, storage, and route contention as separate constraints.
Link budget
Antenna type, gain, transmit power, distance, pointing, peer compatibility, atmosphere, occlusion, and ground-station capability determine whether an edge exists and its usable margin. High gain increases reach and trunk capacity but narrows operational flexibility.
End-to-end throughput
Route capacity is the minimum remaining capacity across its hops after reservations and competing flows. A powerful antenna does not bypass a weak relay processor, saturated inter-satellite link, or undersized destination gateway.
Command traffic, telemetry, science, and service traffic use distinct priorities so bulk data cannot starve basic vessel control.
Onboard routing hardware
KODY compact routers provide basic packet processing. Backbone routers add switching fabrics for dense constellations. Processor cartridges expand routing headroom, while store-and-forward buffers preserve science when a path is intermittent.
Optical mesh
Optical terminals form high-rate links only with compatible optical peers and require pointing and clear geometry. Add RF to gateway spacecraft so an optical mesh can reach ground stations or non-optical vehicles.
Ground and access networks
Ground stations must participate as first-class network endpoints even when the active vessel is not landed. Access nodes can serve deterministic surface cells while carrier gateways bridge that service traffic into the space network.
Check edge existence, then margin, then route selection, then processor capacity, then traffic reservations. A green antenna animation alone does not prove usable end-to-end service.
Traffic classes
Control receives a small protected reservation. Telemetry is continuous but bounded. Science uses available bulk capacity and may queue. Service traffic models user or payload demand independently from the spacecraft's own command link.
Schedulers expose requested, admitted, queued, and dropped rates per class so congestion is explainable rather than a hidden multiplier.
Map and telemetry display
Map lines encode route class and state, while thickness or annotation expresses useful capacity. Hover details identify both endpoints, medium, range utilization, signal margin, one-way delay, bottleneck, and reserved load.
Red denotes an unusable or failed edge, not merely a weak but working link. A degraded link uses a distinct warning state so pilots can tell failure from reduced service.
Constellation design patterns
Access satellites serve nearby users with broad coverage. Backbone satellites carry traffic between planes using high-gain RF or optical links. Gateway satellites connect the mesh to ground. Dedicated routing hardware prevents a radio-rich spacecraft from becoming processor-limited.
Design for loss of one satellite, one plane crossing, and one gateway. A constellation that works only with every node healthy has coverage, not resilience.