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In 2015, NASA’s New Horizon probe swung past Pluto, gathering important data about it and its moon before slingshotting itself further away from us, now heading forever out of our solar system…pretty cool, huh? :) But we all know the Kerbals and the great Kerbal Space Program is better than NASA by far, and to prove this we must one up them. Therefore, I challenge all of you budding Kerbonauts to design a probe capable of: REACHING THE PLANET OF EELOO SLINGSHOTTING PAST IT ON AN ESCAPE TRAJECTORY OUT OF THE KERBOL SYSTEM LANDING A SMALLER PROBE ON THE SURFACE TO DO SCIENCE! The rules are as follows: The probe must pass within 70km of Eeloo’s surface and the lander must have a stable, prolonged touchdown on the surface The probe must be done in stock but the two DLCs (Making History and Breaking Ground’ are permitted The probe must way between 3 and 12 tons during its interplanetary stage (from leaving Kerbin’s SOI to entering Eeloo’s SOI) To validate your probe, you must send at least 5 pictures of your probe: one in the VAB (clear), one on the launchpad, in orbit around Kerbin, near Eeloo and finally an image of the lander of the surface. Another image is required of the final probes escape trajectory The information for your probe in your message (simply reply on this thread) must include: mass, name, overview, any cool notes and (hopefully not) controversial things, e.g. part clipping Cheats (including unnecessary part clipping) is prohibited and any will be disqualified Don’t ruin the competition. Be sportsman’s like and don’t ruin the fun for others. THE TOP THREE WINNERS WILL BE ANNOUNCED ON JANUARY 15th 2025. The craft will be ranked out of 10 by my own judgement but can get bonus points for: +1p — The whole probe goes within 10km of the surface (proof needed, screenshot is sufficient) +2p — The probe weighs less than 7 tons (including lander) +2p — You put a merry Christmas Easter egg on your probe! ;D +3p — You return your lander to Kerbin safely (can be recovered from within Kerbin SOI by another craft and can use ISRU FLY SAFE AND ENJOY A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR, HOPEFULLY NOT STRANDED ON DUN (i’m still sorry jeb)

Ah, New Horizons. An old mod for KSP, NH rearranged the stock system, moving bodies around and adding new ones to explore. However, the lack of any major updates past 1.3 left it in the dust against the more well known mods of today. However, thanks to the work of several users (link here), a version of NH compatible with modern KSP is available. So today, I thought I'd use this opportunity to land on one of the mod's hardest bodies - Titanus. What is New Horizons? As mentioned, NH is a revamp of the stock solar system. Notable changes include: Interplanetary distances are now much greater Kerbin is now a moon of a gas giant, Sonnah Entire system in inclined to Kerbin's orbit, making transfer more complicated Several other new bodies, including: Ernus - vacuum planet with Eve's gravity, orbiting at an unhealthily close distance to the Sun Vanor - Furthest planet from The Sun. Moons include mini-Eve (Tidus) and high gravity dogtoy (Etal) Titanus - Subject of this mission. Super-Kerbin with 9 atm surface pressure, 2+ g surface gravity and 160km atmosphere. Titanus orbits just past Jool in this mod, and has three moons, one of which happens to be Tylo. Despite a quirk of New Horizon planets having unrealisticly low entry heating, Titanus is the exact opposite - its atmosphere hits you like a brick wall the instant you drop below 160km. Designing the lander Although Titanus is a tough nut to crack, my solution was simple - recycle an old design of mine. Specifically, this abomination v About a year ago I had the bright idea to send a rocket to the 0-mark of Jool's atmosphere, using helicopter rotors to push the rocket. This mission was made more complicated by doing it on Console. I will not elaborate, you probably get the idea from just that. Turns out, the basic design works very well for Titanus, and with a few modifications (more thrust, landing legs, fuel cells for rotors instead of 100+ RTGs) the Titanus mission was ready for launch. As well as this, I gave myself the arbitrary restriction of only using stock parts. Technically my use of ReStock does invalidate this, but I am willing to do this for the sake of prettier rockets. Launch 1 - Lander The first rocket launch was the Titanus lander. The rocket's main feature is the oversized fairing to protect the blades. It was successfully taken to orbit by an SSTO. Yes, it is an SSTO. It certainly cannot fly well, but it is a single stage to orbit. Launch 2 - Transfer Yet another holdover from the Jool Mission of Abomination, this transfer stage is powered by 24 NERVs. It lacks RCS, however, which resulted in about 20 minutes of pushing the two modules together in orbit until the Sr. docking ports connected. Launch 3 - Crew + Minor lander The final launch used the only rocket I think was vaguely aesthetically pleasing. It carried up the lander for Titanus' new moons and the crew module, housing Jeb, Bob and Val. This docking was thankfully more succinct, as the reaction wheels aligned it better. The rocket was now assembled. Using the Astrogator mod (link here) I plotted my course to Titanus. Thankfully, a combination of the Oberth effect of Sonnah and little inclination made the transfer very cheap. However, what I did not expect was for my laptop to crash KSP several times until I relented on using any gravity assists to capture. The capture around Titanus was uneventful, minus a small Kraken attack. Turns out, this craft isn't very stable (go figure) and nearly shook itself to bits. This was fixed with Autostrut. The Descent The descent to Titanus was terrible. Due to the setup of rotors and heat shields, the craft took 2 hours to fully reach Titanus' surface, leading to an entire session wasted when it fell over on a cliff. The wings did not contribute to this, as despite being behind the heat shields they burnt off after less than a minute. This unfortunate glitch meant that I had to regrettably uninstall ReStock for the remainder of the mission. Finally, a functional lander rested on the ground. My penance for this was several attempts, each taking several hours, consisting of the rotors pushing the craft to about 60km before losing stability and falling back down to the surface. This was caused by me using SAS lock on Radial Out, and the resulting flip when the Navball switched from Surface to Orbit. Once this was finally diagnosed, the craft successfully reached the target altitude of 80km. The Ascent After I had squeezed as much altitude as possible from the rotors, the blades, fins and fuel cells were jettisoned and the Vector engines ignited. This phase of the launch gets the rocket on a trajectory out of Titanus' atmosphere as soon as possible - the 2nd stage needs as much clearance from the planet as it can. This is because it is nuclear and has a TWR of only 0.38, and therefore cannot combat Titanus' surface gravity under about 3km/s of orbital velocity. However, it was doable. I had finally escaped Titanus. The docking was rather boring - the lander still had 2km/s of fuel left and easily docked to the mothership. Jeb returned to Bob and Val and a course was set to Ete, Titanus' closest moon The 'Victory' Lap Now I had been backstabbed by ReStock, another, more annoying problem had emerged - my own incompetence. The lander was initially meant to so a surface return from Tylo, but I forgot to add the external tanks to make this possible. On top of that, I did not have enough patience to haul it to LTO and then attempt a landing, unaware of how doomed it may be. So, after using the remaining fuel of the Titanus lander, the Tylo lander pushed on to Ete. Now Ete has it's own challenge - due to the proximity of Titanus, the SOI minus the radius of the moonlet is only 15km. This was overcome, and the lander safely touched down on the deep blue surface. The lander then rendezvoused with the mothership, with it then being ditched in Ete orbit. The 3rd moon is called Oree, and orbits retrograde around Titanus. The surface gravity was, however, only 0.02 g, so after a ballistic insertion the mothership made contact and the whole crew took a look at Titanus. The Return The return had its own share of problems, which became apparent after leaving Ete for Oree. Having been unimpressed with a recycled Jool mission conquering Titanus, New Horizons itself decided enough was enough and made several attempts to completely ruin the mission. This was displayed in phantom forces which pushed trajectories out of sync, the manuever nodes failing to cooperate and the planets themselves offsetting off their rails during timewarp. Thankfully, I had packed a slight excess (2500m/s) of fuel and after 10 years, the crew was home. The Aftermath Unfortunately, the surface sample was thrown out by RnD because it was a sandbox save. In summary, I enjoyed the mission, excluding the attempted sabotage by the game itself at the end. If anyone reading this has any mission ideas pls reply - I'm fairly new to KSP planet mods and would like to have a go at some other challenges. Thanks for reading. Mods used - Better Time Warp, Texture Replacer (for kerbals), Astronomer's Visual Pack, Astrogator, Re-Entry Particle Effects Renewed, Restock, New Horizons (duh), Planetside (solar panels have funky texture and this is my best guess why).

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.