[1.3] [Kopernicus] New Horizons v2.0.1 [2JUN17] - It's Back!

[KillAshley]

true, theres a couple planets that could be regarded as a new Duna. However each has it's own challenges now separating them off a little more. That's how i wanted it when designing the system, really. I needed a change-up from the standard minmus grind then straight to nice & easy Duna landings from stock playthroughs, at least with Nh i have made them different enough to warrant the slight fear of traveling there

@eddiew - beautiful shot as always dude. I take it the color is fom KerbPaint or something? looks awesome!

@Project Pluto - Arin is such a beautiful planet, and your screenshot shows it off nicely! Very nice work dude!

Keep these screens coming in boys, they keep me motivated to keep working on polishing NH and looking at new things for it. I'll add some to the OP too so everyone can enjoy them

[eddiew]

A successful, but inefficient, capture burn!

Any capture you can fly away from... with standard heating, Arin toasts anything I dip into the atmosphere, so I can see why you needed a big ship with many nukes How did landing (from orbital velocities) go?

In many ways I see Serran as a "new Duna". Both are among they closest worlds to Kerbin, both have atmospheres but not necessarily enough to land with chutes alone, both require an relatively modest amount of delta-V to launch from. Serran seems to be somewhat more challenging, but that seems fitting.

It does have a rather lower science multiplier though. Which is totally fair, given the nature of NH, but it does make it less rewarding target

In other news, has anyone managed so much as a flyby of Ernus? Little bugger is evading my manoeuvre nodes

Edited August 4, 2015 by eddiew

[KillAshley]

In other news, has anyone managed so much as a flyby of Ernus? Little bugger is evading my manoeuvre nodes

little tip - make sure your peri on your encounter doesn't go below ernus's orbit...it sits pretty precariously in a temperature zone of around 1500-1600K so anything closer sill make the heat even worse. make sure to bring a lot of radiators

Seriously, Ernus is my favorite planet, especially seeing as it's such a hard end-game destination. High gravit & extreme heat makes it so much fun! Kerbals only get about 10 seconds on EVA before they explode from the heat....so satisfying!

[eddiew]

Seriously, Ernus is my favorite planet, especially seeing as it's such a hard end-game destination. High gravit & extreme heat makes it so much fun! Kerbals only get about 10 seconds on EVA before they explode from the heat....so satisfying!

Are planets any cooler on the night side? Ernus looks like its tidally locked, my brain wants it to be freezing on back, but I'm not sure if that can be modelled in KSP...

I'm inclined to set up a refuelling base on Laythe's moon first though. It seems like it would be a good staging ground for the inner solar system.

I also realised this morning that it should be possible to burn for Laythe straight from Kerbin orbit - if the Sun, Kerbin, and Sonnah are in alignment. An experimental node gave me a PE that was dead right for less than 1km/s, just need to get the right launch timing, and suddenly it's a much less intimidating target with a lot less fuel budget than if you circularise around Sonnah first Unfortunately MechJeb is way out of its depth with this one, so it'll probably need a lot of fiddling, but I'm hoping that Transfer Window Planner is giving me the right time, plus or minus half an orbit ^^;

[Nori]

Anyone though of setting up refueling on/around Aptur? Working on a mission there and planning ahead. Seems like it would be hard considering the really low gravity and small SOI, but probably is the best option.

OH and I had to load a quicksave cuz Valentina feel down a small incline and never stopped. Just kept on bouncing around the planet. I gave up trying to regain control after 2KM..

[eddiew]

Feeling a bit smug now

Asked Transfer Window Planner to give me a burn time for an orbit from 45,000km around Sonnah to get to Laythe, then took the nearest opportunity when the planets aligned... and it works. My previous Laythe burns all required me to circularise around Sonnah first, then go from there with MechJeb, but this is a significantly cheaper approach, verging on a stock run to Duna TWP's suggestion was nearer 1100m/s; I needed 938, so it looks like there's some gain from using the combined orbital momentums to fling you out of Sonnah's SoI.

Just to be sure, I deleted the node and recreated it. Purely by eyeballing it, I was able to get the encounter on two separate occasions.

Of note, anyone wanting to do this with New Horizons will want to edit the settings.cfg file and make this change:

CONIC_PATCH_LIMIT = 5

...the default is 3, and doesn't do well at seeing past Sonnah's SoI from a Kerbin burn.

[KillAshley]

Minor SciDef alteration proposed for Eli's Orbital Telescope observation: "Eli looks ill, you don't want at land at all now." to "Eli looks ill, you don't want to land at all now."

Chers for letting me know dude! I've updated the DMagic SciDefs, if you spot any others just let me know!

and just so you know i laughed pretty hard when you didn't pay attention to Dero's GeeASL and crashed your probe

Anyone though of setting up refueling on/around Aptur? Working on a mission there and planning ahead. Seems like it would be hard considering the really low gravity and small SOI, but probably is the best option.

OH and I had to load a quicksave cuz Valentina feel down a small incline and never stopped. Just kept on bouncing around the planet. I gave up trying to regain control after 2KM..

Probably around would be best in orbit with a lander transferring fuel from a mining ship on the surface. Haven't tried it yet myself though....

Feeling a bit smug now

CONGRATULATIONS! You've finally stumbled upon my main challenge for NH! Been waiting a while for someone to mention things related to this! To be honest the main challenge from NH ISN'T the delta-v requirements to get to other planets, it's all about the change in thinking about maneuvers and burns to other places. Using the initial orbital velocity of kerbin to shoot out at other planets is the first big step into the world of New Horizons, the change in thinking about how to harness the gravity of other planets is the next step...and that step is: SLINGSHOTS! It seems weird that until now people have been trying to brute force their way to the other planets, always wondered how long it would take for people to come to the conclusion that you have! Have a cookie:

You've earnt it, EddieW!

[cantab]

To me it doesn't really look any different to leaving the Mun for an interplanetary trip, or departing Laythe or Tylo to go back to Kerbin, in the stock system. Though I'll grant that NH's inclination will add some complexity. In particular I imagine identifying the ideal parking orbit inclination for IP transfers will require breaking out a spot of trigonometry.

[eddiew]

Lol, why thank you. I feel bad it took me so long to realise... To be fair, even having thought about it (about 2am yesterday night as I stared at the ceiling) I wasn't sure the game would predict me an accurate path until I'd tested it out. Thought it might not be accounting for the path through Sonnah's SoI properly - but I am delighted to be proven wrong, and may even increase my conics patch limit further and see what madness I can invoke.

And if you want slingshots...

...Kerbin to Serran to low (I think) Sonnah and back to Kerbin at a 35km periapsis. Total accident, but I thought it was brilliant. I would have loved to get that trajectory on an early launch...

- - - Updated - - -

To me it doesn't really look any different to leaving the Mun for an interplanetary trip, or departing Laythe or Tylo to go back to Kerbin, in the stock system. Though I'll grant that NH's inclination will add some complexity. In particular I imagine identifying the ideal parking orbit inclination for IP transfers will require breaking out a spot of trigonometry.

I never bothered going interplanetary from Mun, but I'm sure you're right ^^

With regard to Laythe at least, I'm consistently finding than when it's in its window, then a prograde burn (from Kerbin or Sonnah) gives you something very close to Laythe's inclination - which itself isn't that far off the rest of the inner planets... Really thinking that a Laythe staging ground is the way forward. Even though I don't have ore drilling/processing yet, I can send tanks there on the cheap and make the second phase of the journey easier to plot.

Edited August 4, 2015 by eddiew

[Tynrael]

I think I am going into the probe crashing business! The trick is to use Kerbals to create a high risk high reward scenario... At least that way I would feel bad if something blew up, though I have a nagging feeling explosions may be wanted by some!!

The problem with slingshots, can you work them into efficient transfer windows? I don't have a lot of experience with them myself but watching some Scott Manley he seems to be able to get anywhere for minimal fuel with them, but it takes a lot of orbiting and feels pretty dynamic and hard to plan.

[Tellion]

I think I am going into the probe crashing business! The trick is to use Kerbals to create a high risk high reward scenario... At least that way I would feel bad if something blew up, though I have a nagging feeling explosions may be wanted by some!!

The problem with slingshots, can you work them into efficient transfer windows? I don't have a lot of experience with them myself but watching some Scott Manley he seems to be able to get anywhere for minimal fuel with them, but it takes a lot of orbiting and feels pretty dynamic and hard to plan.

Yeah, I imagine accurately plotting multiple gravity assists would require something a little above the scope of Transfer Window Planner and such. The other option that comes to mind is the Trajectory Optimization Tool, but I doubt it takes in custom solar systems. If it did, that would be awesome of course.

[cantab]

It does. There's a plugin that can create a bodies file specifying all the planets and moons and their orbits, that the KSPTOT program can then read.

[Tynrael]

KSPTOT does let you load in all of the planets by connecting to KSP with a plugin, I did not have any luck with the porkchop plots for transfers however. My results were always 3-4x as expensive as what TWP would come up with- they were valid maneuvers but where TWP would give me a direct bounce to the Mun for example, KSPTOT would give me an encounter that shot out past Serran and then rendezvoused with the Mun on the way back for 3kdV versus TWPs 800 option. I do plead complete ignorance on using KSPTOT (IE I am sure it is my fault entirely) and while I meant to try the mission planner to see if it had better results I never found the time. It also did not like Aptur at all, it said Aptur had no sidereal year and a maneuver could not be calculated.

[Nori]

KSPTOT does let you load in all of the planets by connecting to KSP with a plugin, I did not have any luck with the porkchop plots for transfers however. My results were always 3-4x as expensive as what TWP would come up with- they were valid maneuvers but where TWP would give me a direct bounce to the Mun for example, KSPTOT would give me an encounter that shot out past Serran and then rendezvoused with the Mun on the way back for 3kdV versus TWPs 800 option. I do plead complete ignorance on using KSPTOT (IE I am sure it is my fault entirely) and while I meant to try the mission planner to see if it had better results I never found the time. It also did not like Aptur at all, it said Aptur had no sidereal year and a maneuver could not be calculated.

Yeah I think Aptur is problematic because of it's really close orbit to Kerbin. TWP get's NAN results for a long of maneuvers there.

[KillAshley]

yeah most of the transfer programs have issues with Aptur because of it's relative distance and strange orbital path. I have thought about changing it a couple times, but luckily it's close enough to home that you really don't need a transfer window planner

[cantab]

Aptur is in a 1:1 orbital resonance with Kerbin isn't it? That would quite probably break all the usual calculations about transfer windows. I imagine you'll get similar results with Harvest in Kerbol Plus, which sits at the Sun-Kerbin L5 point (or the Sonnah-Kerbin L5 point if you have NH as well).

[KillAshley]

Aptur is in a 1:1 orbital resonance with Kerbin isn't it? That would quite probably break all the usual calculations about transfer windows. I imagine you'll get similar results with Harvest in Kerbol Plus, which sits at the Sun-Kerbin L5 point (or the Sonnah-Kerbin L5 point if you have NH as well).

yeah it does, thats why Aptur is such a pain for planning tools haha!

Harvest in K+ wouldnt be that breaking though I wouldn't think, as it's technically on it's own orbital path just 60degrees off from Kerbin. I've yet to look at it though, as K+ is pretty buggy atm...

[eddiew]

Thing with Harvest is that it's on the same orbit, so you can just drop to a lower solar altitude then back up again (or vice versa) whenever you want to. Aptur is tricky because it crosses orbits with Kerbin, and tends to be very close, so it's tricky to hit its SoI rather than Kerbin's. Certainly not impossible though, just takes a bit of time to figure out the best transfers

[cantab]

Regarding the sun in New Horizons, I was looking at how some of the body distances compare with standard KSP. Kerbin is about 2.3 times further from the sun than in stock, and that same multiplier in the 2-2.5x range multiplier comes up for Urlum and Neidon with OPM installed. On the other hand Eve and Jool are about level with their stock counterparts. Duna in its NH position ends up about 3.6x further from the sun.

This makes me think that a star 4-5 times as luminous as in stock KSP might be appropriate. If the sun stays the same size then applying the Stefan-Boltzmann law that should be a surface temperature 40-50% higher than in stock, which puts in in spectral type A, a bright white with maybe a hint of blue. (I'm ignoring that the stock Sun is already underluminous for its size and temperature which could be explained away by the KSP universe having a different Stefan–Boltzmann constant).

On the other hand that ought to make many of the inner bodies even hotter than they already are. Laythe in this imagined NH ought to be like Eve in stock, Eve ought to be hot as Venus I would guess, and Ernus probably should be boiled away

PS: Turns out there's a pretty simple equation to estimate the temperature of a planet or moon, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_equilibrium_temperature . It's really only a starting point because atmospheric compositions and rotation rates and other factors come into play, but it could be used as a simple "does this make sense" kind of check.

Edited August 6, 2015 by cantab

[KillAshley]

**snip**

Interesting thought, I'll keep it in mind, but the star has been pushed back yet again unfortunately. It will get here eventually though. I'm currently trying to properly learn some of the more compicated PQS mods to create even better things in the future and along with work experimenting takes most of my free time.

With that said though:

v1.6.3 is now live!

Nothing too major in this update, a lot of terrain fixes, and some more of those lovely SciDefs (thanks to MinimumSky5)

Changelog:

[B]SciDefs & Dmagic SciDefs:[/B]
-Ete
-Oree
-Vanor
-Tweaked typo for Ete

  [B]Major .cfg cleanup[/B]
-Removal of "junk" mods that have no effect on planetary bodies

  [B]Terrain fix[/B]
-Removal of lines/stretchmarks across terrain ( [URL]http://imgur.com/a/lxdYG[/URL] )

As always, make sure to back up your savegames before installing, and report any issues straight back to me so can fix them up ASAP.

[run1235]

any plans on adding this to ckan so we dont have to manually install it every time?

[KillAshley]

any plans on adding this to ckan so we dont have to manually install it every time?

I have to figure out how to do it, i set up the mod in 1.6 so that it will work for CKAN installation, however i just need to figure out how to get it there

[Tellion]

I have to figure out how to do it, i set up the mod in 1.6 so that it will work for CKAN installation, however i just need to figure out how to get it there

The fix for the ground was setting maxLevel to 6 from 12, right? Do you know what this does exactly? The Material section looks like it contains ground textures, but I am not sure here either... Mind pointing me to a description of that (if it exisits)? Thanks in advance

[Sigma88]

I have to figure out how to do it, i set up the mod in 1.6 so that it will work for CKAN installation, however i just need to figure out how to get it there

I think you can just add a pull request here

https://github.com/KSP-CKAN/NetKAN/pulls

[KillAshley]

The fix for the ground was setting maxLevel to 6 from 12, right? Do you know what this does exactly? The Material section looks like it contains ground textures, but I am not sure here either... Mind pointing me to a description of that (if it exisits)? Thanks in advance

it has to do with the general 'resolution' of the derived heightmap...still not 100% but it works really nicely for general smoothing. The material section governs the ground textures for any given planet, you can set them manually in the .cfg's if you want custom textures or if you use a template then you can just leave them out and it'll use your template's ground textures. There's no tutorial on them (yet....) so for now you'll have to experiment a lot