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Not long ago I was looking to spice things up a bit and embrace some new challenges. I play purely stock, but I figured I could still play the game my way by just adding some new scenery. I was trying to decide between adding OPM or installing GPP when @Sigma88 and @Ultimate Steve suggested New Horizons. I had heard of it, but never really payed much attention. When @MinimalMinmus mentioned the difficulty of Ernus (which I've since discovered for myself: he was not kidding), I was intrigued. But it was @Geschosskopf's description of the mod that really convinced me to check it out. The thought of your home "planet" being a Kerbin-sized moon (with Kerbin atmosphere and gravity) of a gas giant just sounded like it could be really interesting. It's turned out to be an absolute blast. Not to mention freakin' beautiful. A lonely Kerbal stares up at his dual "home" worlds. Just sitting on the launchpad is captivating. The above pics were taken before I could figure out how to make Sonnah"s rings show up with color (they were translucent). Thanks to @Micro753 for the solution. Whenever Sonnah's visible, I can't seem to take my eyes off it. The most ordinary launches are beautiful to watch. Please excuse the ugliness and thrown-together quality of the ships I've been using. I don't think I was adequately prepared for the effect this arrangement of your homeworld would have on each launch. Not only do you have to reach orbit, but to go anywhere you first have to travel within the SOI of a gas giant. I guess about the best stock equivalent would be if your homeworld was Laythe. It doesn't sound so bad until you start launching and realize the task ahead of you to actually get anywhere. I always play career, and so I quickly realized that travel here was going to be expensive. I constantly feel like I'm spending too much, and I try to keep costs down however I can. And after a few launches, I realized my Kerbals weren't leveling up. I thought the mod was bugged at first, but then I realized that I wasn't really going anywhere. Even traveling within the system (and landing on every body) could only get me 2 stars. I was gonna need to go interplanetary sooner or later. Laythe seemed to be easily attainable, so I set my sights there. Well whataya know, Kerbin's "sister" world has a moon of its own. Ugly ship, but I fulfilled a bunch of contracts by landing this thing on Derso. It was my first landing outside the Sonnah system, so I was pretty happy about it. Wanted another nearby planet, so I aimed for Arin next. I was not fully prepared for it. This first mission was an absolute failure. The capture burns at all of these planets seem to be unusually high. My failure rate has been staggering. I play without info mods, so I'm always playing by "feel". I know the stock worlds so well by now that I almost never have a failure anymore (except on Eve, which is another story). I have now been transported back almost to square one. I have no idea what each planet and moon will need until I go there. It's a lot of fun, but it can be disheartening at times. I know I can just overbuild everything and succeed that way, but part of the fun is trying to get it just right. It's been really difficult, but I'm enjoying the challenge. And I never give up. Had to go back to Arin several times before I finally succeeded. i decided, since Arin has an atmosphere, why not use it? When back with an "Eve style" lander, and used it to aerocapture. This was not so easy either. Had to try several times. Finally found that, as long as I was under 6km/s, a Pe of about 20km would give me a direct (and safe) aerocapture. Again, a brutally ugly lander. Completed more contracts and made about 4,000,000 bucks. Had to get Kerbal and retract the landing legs for a minute, because one of the contracts specified that the station had to be on motorized wheels. It wouldn't pay until the wheels were on the ground. And those tiny rover wheels were the only ones I had at launch time. The return ship made it back to orbit; where it promptly ran out of fuel. I was still happy, though. Waiting for a window to send a refueler. And now that contracts are really paying off, I'm gonna splurge on a good lander to go along for the ride. Arin's 2 moons are tantalizingly close. I want to reach both of them next time. I'm no fan of probes, but I also bow to reality now and then. Some of these planets are so tough, I figure I could really give myself a safety net if I send drills along. So I sent out a few probes to scan for ore. The one below reached Moh, which has Moho for a moon. This will not be easy. These flybys left me hungry for more. I fully intend to conquer this system. It's gonna fight me every step of the way, though. I sent identical probes pretty much everywhere. I was excited to see the infamous Ernus. I never did. The probe was incinerated the moment I switched to it. I didn't think to check the heat tolerance of all the parts. It has a crappy probecore that blew up immediately. I haven't had to unlock the techtree in so long, I forgot what the lesser probes were capable of. In short, this system is a blast, and I feel like I did when I first bought the game. Except, thankfully, I'm not completely clueless anymore. Just partially. Sorry for all the pics, but I thought you guys might like 'em. I cannot recommend this mod highly enough if you're looking for something new. If GPP is like this, I've got a lot more to look forward to. I'm just really excited and having a lot of fun. Plus it's raining, so I've got the day off. With an empty house. Livin' the dream.

New Horizons doesn't come with visual enhancements, so I went in to fix that. This mod is in the Public Domain. You can share it and remix it. As I was writing this I made a download so.... Here Can we move this to add on releases?

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/new-horizons-refines-course-for-next-flyby In case you can't open the link, the New Horizons probe just performed an adjustment burn in order to intercept MU69, a KBU (Kuiper Belt Object). "After the burn the spacecraft transitioned out of a so-called “three-axis stabilized mode,” the operating mode that allowed New Horizons to make new telescopic observations of six KBOs over the past week. These science observations will reveal new information on the shapes, surface properties and satellite systems of these objects, in ways that can’t be done from Earth. Images from these studies will be transmitted to Earth in the coming weeks." Edit: I shouldn't say JUST performed a burn, the article was published on 2Feb2017, but this is the first time I've heard about it.

I've decided to play two career games in parallel. One is my long-term career that has already been started, in which there are 44 celestial bodies (not including the sun) and a large amount of other mods too. The other is this. This is going to be a playthough using the New Horizons planet pack (as soon as the 1.2.x version is released, which will apparently be soon), except I will also be using Sigma Dimensions to scale up all planets and orbits by a factor of 6.4. This is directly inspired by the 6.4x scale mod that became popular a while ago, but I am extending that concept to use the New Horizons pack. It is likely to be quite an interesting experience, as I will have to gauge delta-v information by first conducting flybys, then orbital missions, and then finally landers and return missions. Everything will be experimental, rather than designed for a known delta-v map as is the case for the stock system and outer planets. It will also necessitate large rockets, and in fact one of the main reasons for the increased scale is because I enjoy making large rockets. Mod list: I'll start out this thread by scaling up the stock system and playing around with launch systems to figure out how to orbit Kerbin. Once New Horizons is released for 1.2.x, I will begin the series properly. By the way, if anyone knows how to multiply all antenna ranges (stock and modded) by 5, this knowlege would be greatly appreciated.