Capacitor Overflow

Description
Punching a message through hundreds of thousands of kilometers of space isn't easy, so the traditional solution has been to dump a huge amount of power into the transmission array through capacitors. If we could dump the same amount of power over a longer period, then the opening characters of a message stand a better chance of reaching the receiving vessel uninterrupted.

Cost
- One MINOR MATERIALS breakthrough

Capacitor Overflow also requires one free hardware slot

Impact
The first time this upgrade is purchased, ten characters at the start of all messages to the shuttle are guaranteed to arrive unscrambled. Each subsequent purchase extends this guarantee to the next ten letters, so for example if three Capacitor Overflow upgrades were purchased the first thirty letters of a message would be guaranteed to arrive unscrambled.

Note that it is critical to understand that this only applies to characters which successfully leave earth's atmosphere; scrambling caused by hostile action of another agency is not affected by the presence of upgraded capacitors.

Future Research
Our experience with high-power capacitors opens an interesting avenue of research - what if instead of dumping all that power into space, we fired it at the ionosphere? Such a Broadband Transmission could be used to contact the shuttle for free! Your engineers will have the basic materials knowledge to attempt this once they have installed one or more Capacitor Overflow devices

Note that this research is repeatable