What about a cubesat solar system relay system? Each with a few directional antennas pointed at the nearest neighbor in the grid. Maybe offset from the solar system plane to avoid impacts. It would take a few billion sats to blanket the whole solar system but they're cheap. If we built them in space we could have spares all over waiting to fill gaps.
I tried to do the math but failed. Pluto's orbital diameter, according to wikipedia, is about 4.4 billion km. That means the main solar system has a circumference of about 27 billion km. Starlink cubesats orbit at about 550km. Relay sats wouldn't need to punch through atmosphere so they could be farther apart.
I pictured a series of circles. The close to the sun the smaller. I'm sure if I'd listened in cal 1 I could use a summation to figure this out.
Losing a few sats periodically isn't a big deal and it won't bring down the whole network.
It might slow signals down to propagate through the mesh but communication is already slow in space. If a probe/ship needs to communicate quickly it can use its own high power dish or laser.
I tried to do the math but failed. Pluto's orbital diameter, according to wikipedia, is about 4.4 billion km. That means the main solar system has a circumference of about 27 billion km. Starlink cubesats orbit at about 550km. Relay sats wouldn't need to punch through atmosphere so they could be farther apart.
I pictured a series of circles. The close to the sun the smaller. I'm sure if I'd listened in cal 1 I could use a summation to figure this out.
Losing a few sats periodically isn't a big deal and it won't bring down the whole network.
It might slow signals down to propagate through the mesh but communication is already slow in space. If a probe/ship needs to communicate quickly it can use its own high power dish or laser.