Search the Community

Beyond Jool What lies beyond the green giant? 1.4.3.1. Download on SpaceDock and GitHub! EVE* and Scatterer support! Savefile destrucion-proof!** *Not volumetric support. Yet. **Should be. Hey, it worked with me. Please back-up your save file. Since the dawn of spaceflight, kerbals knew of 5 planets and 2 dwarf planets. Moho, Eve, Kerbin, Duna, Dres, Jool, and Eeloo. The Kerman Telescope, however, has found new bodies in the Kerbol System. Beyond Jool is a planet mod I've been wanting to make since I bought the game. Last year, I finally did something with it. The "version history" is here. Quick planet descriptions. Link here. DOWNLOAD GITHUB And also CKAN! Beyond Jool is compatible with SpaceDust. (Needs SpaceDust Unbound) Minor Planets Expansion Silan Distant Object Enhancement Research Bodies Kopernicus Expansion Here's a little map of where things are as suggested by @Kimera Industries @Kimera Industries also very nicely made a grand tour path, exploring Jool-Sarkin-Plad-Elross (yes the orbits are slightly different from the map, but that because of 1.3.0 updated that) Grand Tour Path And the post. And a challenge thread! - - Plans here. Beyond Jool uses a MIT License. To install, download Kopernicus and dependancies into the Gamedata subfolder. Then insert the following folders from the zip file into Gamedata: 001_DuckweedUtils, Beyond Jool, 000_NiakoUtils. To install Eeloo as moon of Sarkin, go into zip file, into to Extras, then drop Eeloo.cfg into the BeyondJool folder. To install Eeloo as a dwarf planet, go into zip file, into to Extras, then drop Eeloo2.cfg into the BeyondJool folder. To install Anune, go into zip file, find AnuneExpansion, then drop the AnuneExpansion file into the BeyondJool folder. KNOWN BUGS BELOW Beyond Jool-Extras are here. (not to be confused with the folder mentioned above) Images! Special thanks to @Sushut , @FTLparachute and @Lt_Duckweed for helping with the mod, and @Kevin_kerman for hosting BJ on his GitHub and… for something more? Feedback and bug reports are greatly appreciated

First of all, i am not a good player. In fact, i'm bad. So this is not fully legit. (I used orbit setting to put the mothership in Kerbin orbit.) 1. Introduction This is my first grand tour and the first grand tour in the planetpack "Beyond Jool". I used 4 vessels, 3 landers and 1 mothership to get to the planet. The whole tour was packed with flawless moments, and mistakes, making it truly - follow the Kerbal Way. The "Pre-Update" is there because Anune will be accompanied by another gas giant, and two other moons. Otherwise: The Anune 3. 2. Anune Itself Anune is a small, purple, ringed gas giant in Beyond Jool, far away from Jool and Sarkin, the largest planet. It has 3 moons - Merrink, Merza, and the atmospheric Arachnid, and i went to every single one of them. 3. The Vessels. 1. NS "Landerling", used as a lander for Merrink. It had enough deltaV to land and go back easily. 2. NS "Stern", a lander for Merza. 3. NS "Sandpiercer", the atmospheric lander for Arachnid. 4. The mothership, NSIPM-019E "Nauren" So, how did we get there? 4. The Mission Start - Getting out of Kerbin The mothership had 13 Kerbals, but only 5 of them were important: Jeb, Bill, Bob, Val and Gradock Kerman. Here's the mothership in orbit, just before leaving it. This thing has a TWR of pain and suffering, so the mission was lengthy and stressful. Year 1, Day 161 - Anune Transfer Burn The mothership began it's burn on this day, for Anune. Year 12, Day 332 - Anune Arrival After 12 years and 332 days, the Nauren finally captured itself in orbit of Anune. It began to start it's journey to Merrink, the innermost and smallest moon. Year 12, Day 335 - Arrival at Merrink It took 3 days to get to Merrink. The mothership started to prepare Valentina and Gradock for landing. Anune looks beautiful here. Departure for Merrink Shortly after, Val and Gradock left Nauren for the moon. Merrink - Landing Valentina and Gradock landed flawlessly at Garantina Hills, and planted one of Neospace's unoriginal flags into the regolith. The lander proved itself to be very reliable. Merrink - Rendezvous I used MechJeb to rendezvous and dock with the mothership. There were some problems but in the end, i did it. Merrink - Departure for Merza Shortly after docking, Nauren proceeded to burn towards Merza, Merrink's bigger cousin and the biggest moon of Anune. Merza - Arrival (Year 12, Day 341) After starting to orbit Merza, Jeb and Bill prepared for undocking. However, one of the stupid engineers in Neospace welded a docking port the wrong way, rendering the lander unable to dock, and the lander itself accidentally jettisoned supporting lander tanks. Merza - Landing Despite the inconveniences, the spacecraft landed quite easily, thanks to Jeb's good piloting. Unfortunately, Jeb forgot to plant a flag on Merza, so we don't know how to name their landing region. They were rewarded with a distant view of Sarkin, however. Merza - Ditching The Lander Unfortunately, Jeb and Bill couldn't take Stern to dock with the mothership, so they had to ditch it nearby and EVA to Nauren, followed by departure for Arachnid. Arachnid - Arrival (Year 12, Day 349) The crew arrived at the frigid desert moon of Arachnid 8 days later. This time, Valentina and Bob would land on it. Arachnid - Landing The lander worked without any problems, and the duo planted the flag in it's sand, at Iznyoska Valley. Arachnid - Departure Bob and Val, spending 4 grueling days in orbit of Arachnid due to mistakes in MechJeb's programming in their lander, finally docked with Nauren, but they broke off the top part. Year 12, Day 361 - Anune Departure After 26 days of being in the Anune System, the Nauren departed from it. Year 18, Day 5 - Kerbin Transfer Burn 2 years passed, and the engines started up again, to make a burn one last time - to The Pale Blue Karble. Year 28, Day 273 - Kerbin Arrival The crew celebrated coming to their home after 28 years, making history as the first ever mission recorded to Anune, and the first ever Anune Grand Tour. A retrieving spaceship arrived to them shortly after. 5. Conclusion Although it was my first grand tour and i've met some problems on the way, it was fun. Beyond Jool is an amazing mod, i highly recommend checking it out. There are even more interesting objects than the three moons and Anune, i just chose them because they were fairly easy. So goodbye, and sorry if the post is bland, but i'm tired. Special Thanks to: @Mr. Kerbin - The Developer of Beyond Jool, and for making this awesome mod @FTLparachute and @Kevin_kerman for being the cool guys i've had fun discussing this mod.

Welcome. Until now, our sights were set on the stars far beyond Kerbol's reach, on the backs of your R&D department and World Firsts. But, one day, while looking at our pictures from the Kerman Telescope , something blue in the sky moved. Far beyond Jool, for that matter. While very slow, we looked into it, sending some missions to enhance the telescope. And we found entirely new worlds, from gas giants of wonder to desolate rocks. So now, we have our sights set on the worlds not beyond Kerbol, but beyond Jool. But, we don't quite have the funds to explore-explore them. So, in a partnership, we'd like to have you explore these new worlds. Mods allowed include: Atomic Age Restock NFT suite. Mods NOT allowed: FFT (unless I say you can) MechJeb2/MechJeb Hyperedit Points work like this ———— 15 points for completing main objectives. 5 points for completing each side task. ———— Mission Set 1: Initial Exploration Mission 1: Sarkin Surveyor (Easy) Mission 2: Newer Horizons (Easy) Mission 3: Hamis Explorer (Easy) Mission 4: Edge of Kerbol (Intermediate) Mission Set 2: Voyage into the Unknown Mission 5: The Dead World(Intermediate) Mission 6: Trekking through the Stars. (Intermediate)

(I'm aware the pictures are broken, I lost them all lol sori. if you want to see moach, check out beyond jool) (this was a stupid idea) The last two missions I have done for Beyond Jool have been relatively simple. However, mod author @Mr. Kerbin decided to make another challenge for the mod, landing a plane and rover on the moon Moach. During the design phase, I was surprised that, testing my lander as a LKO SSTO, it was able to achieve orbit with 2600m/s remaining. And so, I began one of the hardest missions I've ever done. TLDR today I'm landing on Moach and returning with an SSTO. What is a Moach? Moach is a moon of Sarkin, the mod's Saturn / GP2 analogue. It is a dead world, with frozen wastes, desolate continents and an oxygenated atmosphere. While this leads to the conclusion that it is 'Laythe Easy Mode' (tbf its 100km smaller in radius), the problem comes from Sarkin itself, which is massive. The giant has a surface gravity of 4.11g, which combined with its general girth makes Moach spin around it at >6km/s. This makes transfer to and fro really hard. So, what craft have I engineered to get there? The SSTO This is the Daphy, an SSTO (im shocked). Running on 6 Rapiers and 2 Nervs, it has enough range to get to Minmus. However, the cost of high dV is low vacuum thrust, with a Kerbin TWR of 0.12 fully fueled. The cockpit design is borrowed from previous planes I have built, wanting to keep the plane looking somewhat flush. It also serves a second purpose, as on the end of its fuselage is a Convertotron, which is needed to get even close to Moach. The only issue is the front nosecone (which also has fuel) clipping into the front fuel tank, so this part has no Oxidizer to keep this looking nice without clipping fuel. In order to qualify for the challenge, I had to stuff a rover into the cargo bay (hence why I went with the MK3 form factor). This birthed the Potatus rover, a very unstable design which looks more like the Bat-cycle from Dark Night than an actual rover. The worst feature is the docking. Having seen @MythicalHeFF's recent Jool 5 video, it seems I was inspired to make an even more convoluted method of re-attaching the rover. It drives in backwards into the Daphy's cargo bay, where on Kerbin this bay must then be closed slightly to stop the rover getting stuck on the floor. A MK2 docking port then attracts the lander's port, aligning them. If the gravity is too high to let the two auto-attach, a set of Twitch engines on the rover then pushes the rover into the port until the two connect. oh it also has a scanning arm. Y1 - Launch The two modules had to be separately loading in, as despite my best efforts the Potatus would remain attached even after separation, is the two were the same craft. One quick drive from the Launchpad to the Daphy, followed by loading, later, and the crew of Jeb, Bill, Bob and Vall took off. The ascent from Kerbin was very sketchy, as poor TWR lead to a short re-entry during orbital insertion. But, it was successful, and 3 separate burns were done to get to Minmus. I initially landed on a plateau overlooking the Great Flats, as I wanted to pay homage to my first surface base, located in the same spot. However, it seems old me was an idiot, as this area had no ore, so I instead landed in the south strip of the Great Flats, which has ore (and was the site of my favourite suface base, go figure). Val and Bob took the rover out to scan nearby surface features, although the slippy surface of the slope resulted in some interesting ways to keep still. After returning, the rover was reattached to boost overall EC, and the mining began. Y3 - Transfer to Jool The transfer was done at Y3, as I was trying to use Jool as an assist to reach Sarkin. This plan was scuppered when, forgetting the Oberth effect was a thing, I spent 2.5km of dV ejecting to Jool from Minmus' orbital height. Just when all hope seemed lost, I remembered Pol existed. Y6 - Pol Landing Landing on Pol was tense, as by this point Daphy was running on fumes. Landing though, was achieved. The rover was not deployed, as there were no large features on Pol. During the mining process, I was able to experience a Jool eclipse. The colours are extra vivid as I installed Spectra Scatterer, which makes the eclipses, IMO, look better than stock Scatterer. Following this was a 19 year long wait for an efficient Sarkin window. Y25 - Transfer to Sarkin This was pretty standard, though this did take place during a rare Bop eclipse on Jool. And, after 11 years... Y36 - Sarkin Arrival After several assists of Tyrant, the capture burn around Moach began. Half of it was done at Sarkin periapsis to keep the actual encounter as efficient as possible. Even still, the full circularization took several orbits. The descent was turbulent, as Daphy span out hard. Luckily, I was able to stabilize the plane, and made a successful landing on the surface. (see top of post) The rover was deployed, before being stowed for the mining process. I'll do a second post for the return, as this is getting quite long.

In my previous mission report for Beyond Jool, I sent a Cassini style mission to the mod's Saturn analogue, Sarkin. This completed the mod's 'Sarkin Surveyor' challenge. The next challenges were probe exploration of minor planets analogues for Pluto, Haumea and Eris in the 'Robau Belt'. However, as there was no Comnet range past Sarkin, and as I wanted to keep this mission stock, I decided on the logical solution - doing a full crewed mission to each. And throwing in a mission to another body for good measure. Mission Objectives: Land on Plad (Pluto analogue) and its moon Chau Land on Hamis (Haumea analogue) and its moon Haki Land on Elross (Eris analogue) and its moons Mrokrok and Bongbong Land on all moons of ice giant Anune Fly-by Jool at least once System map for reference: Rocket The rocket being used for this rocket is a remake of a launch vehicle I used extensively on console - the Finale series. It uses a fairing-protected MK3 fuselage (+ some MK1s, which is still less fuel than the fairing volume could hold) and 7 NERVs, assisted by a 2nd stage of 4 Wolfhounds and a 1st stage that is bolted together. This, alongside the placement of the Wolfhounds and a set of struts along the rocket, was to lower the amount of joints and keep the rocket as rigid as possible. The lander is fairly solid, however the Science Jr is stuffed into the side of the cockpit. There is also the problem of the command stage having the radial tanks slightly clipped into each other. I suffered for that mistake. NBs If you want to have a go at these yourself, note that Anune is part of its own pack, AnuneExpansion. See the Beyond Jool Thread (link above) for details. Halfway through this mission, I re-installed AVP, so the skybox will change in some of the pictures Missions I have a lot to say about each, so they've been put into dropdowns. Arrakis 1 (Anune) Robau 1 (Hamis) Robau 2 - Plad Robau 3 (Elross) Conclusion The combined efforts of all the crews netted me over 50,000 Science. Werner was content with all expeditions except for Elross, where the loss of a single gravity scan over the lowlands triggered a perfectionism. I think these have also passed the remaining challenges, though there seems to be some more in the works. @Mr. Kerbin, bring 'em on. (btw, this took over 2 hours to put together. why did i do this)

As of late, I stumbled upon the mod Beyond Jool. An alternate outer planets mod to OPM, it is very well made and one I would highly recommend you try out. Now, after getting some SpaceDust configs into the pack and realising that I need a much more powerful computer to begin attempting Tyrant, the mod's big bad and (spoilers) the villain of this post, I decided to do a Cassini-esqe mission to Sarkin. Mission Goals - Orbit Sarkin, the mods Saturn analogue - Fly-by all of Sarkin's moons - Land a probe on one of the atmospheric moons The Launch Launching the rocket took 2 attempts as attaching the interstage to the bottom caused the entire lower stage to remain on the rocket. The transfer stage has about 3400 m/s on it, as before it goes to Sarkin, I've decided to make a quick pit stop Wait, that's another modpack! Yes, this is Crokslev, from the Minor Planets Expansion. I wanted to do this as 1) Beyond Jool has MPE compatibility and 2) MPE's 1.1 update has given Crokslev a significant glow-up. I did pay for this, as my shoddy trajectory cost me the whole transfer stage to recorrect. But, 5 years later, I had arrived. The Landings You may notice 2 atmospheric probes on the probe. These are for the 2 bodies small enough not to incinerate a probe - Moach, a dead moon still retaining an oxygenated atmosphere, and Volatus, the Titan analogue orbiting Tyrant. Approaching Moach - the probes are detatched early so as to save fuel on the main probe. Tyrant visible in background. Unfortunately, the first one was wrecked, as the drogues were not enough to slow the craft. This looks quite intimidating. Until recently, this used to be identical in colour to Eve. The aerobrake in question, done against Volatus' orbit. Sarkin and Tyrant overhead. Tyrant, by the way, is a terrestrial with greater GeeASL and radius than Alternis Tylo. Touchdown! The Volatus lander was much more successful. Although the entry speeds were upwards of 8km/s, I correctly judged the thick atmosphere would slow the craft fast enough to keep it only slightly charred. At least I had one success. Foreshadowing + The rest of the flybys Unfortunately, my sporadic quicksaving came back to bite me when a borked fly-by of Tyrant left me in a revesed orbit of Sarkin. However, I was still able to fly-by the other inner moons, Kotta and Aron. Kotta, an oblate moon. The large crater on the right is Sushut Crater. Aron, the Enceladus analogue. The 'Crater of Nertea' is plainly visible. The 'Grand' Finale Now, I was at this point hoping to do a dive into Sarkin similar to the one done by Cassini. This plan was thwarted by two factors (Sarkin's atmosphere being very short and thus getting very thick very quickly, and the orbital velocity being 25km/s), which, instead of a fireworks show, instantly deleted the craft. Conclusion While the mission achieved most of it's objectives, the lengths to get to Crokslev and the sabotage by myself Tyrant left me unable to reach the other two moons, Sapp and (big shocker) Eeloo. Despite this, I enjoyed the rest of the mission.