Braess Paradox in Delay-Tolerant Networks: How Adding Relay Satellites Can Decrease Delivery

First demonstration of the Braess paradox in delay-tolerant networks with orbital mechanics. Adding relay satellites to a constellation can decrease the delivery ratio by creating topological dead-ends that trap greedy routers.

The paradox lives entirely in Φ, the policy distortion factor of the three-factor sparse law DR = S_T · exp(E[H]λ) · Φ. The oracle-chain exponent is Braess-invariant. Moon n=12 marks the Braess onset (Φ = 0.994), and n=6 is universally the worst constellation size across all 8 solar system targets.

A 17,760-configuration cloud sweep reveals a three-regime Braess phase surface in (p_eff, alt/R) space: giant-planet anti-Braess (coverage-limited), small-body Braess (dead-end-limited), and small-body anti-Braess at low link quality (connectivity-limited).