Jools Sphere of influence

[Mr.Rocket]

Im going on a mission to jools moons (with my skill i put on the unlimited fuel cheat, because i just love to explore), with a ship that has 5 landers. The question is, how far can i be from it to get caught in its gravity. I had the closest approach meter,( with kerbal engineer redux), and i kept on making it smaller, and then it dissapeared. Does that mean that when i warp there, i will be able to get caught in its gravity?

[Captain Sierra]

That might mean you have a collision course, which is very bad. What was the lowest number you got before it vanished? Also, engineer can give you a 'time to SoI change'. If that is a number, you know you have an SoI change somewhere, likely at Jool since, like Eve, it's gravity well is something akin to a black hole.

[Dynamo]

If the CPA (closest point of approach) has dissapeared, you're going to smack into the planet.

I don't know how the mod displays that information, but that's my judgement on what you've described. If you look on the map screen, your projected trajectory should show up in orange, and if there's no Apoapsis near Jool's orange sphere icon at your rendezvous, you're going to drive your spacecraft straight into Jool's killzone.

[Mr.Rocket]

So far, its closest ecounter would be about 7 million kilometers, i think i can make it smaller, but how small should it be to atually get into its gravity?

Edit: somehow with manuver nodes i can get it to about 2 million kilometers. is that good?

Another edit: but wait, what is that i see, i messed with the manuver nodes and got a jool ecounter, hoping it will work.

Third edit: now that i got into orbit , anyone know what a safe orbit is?

Edited September 30, 2013 by Mr.Rocket

[Captain Sierra]

Well, the Jool system is incredibly dangerous with all those moons. First, make sure you did not enter the system retrograde. Second, pick which moon is your desired first target. You will want to be as far away as possible orbital altitude wise but you need to not put other moons' orbits between you and the target. Otherwise, you might catch a bad gravity sling out into interplanetary space. Execute the transfer, obtain an orbit, and then you can transfer between the moons as desired.

[Kasuha]

When planning maneuvers, the game shows minimum distance only up to certain distance between the two orbits. Sometimes the distance may be smaller if you reduce the orbit because you get at the endpoint later - but if you reduce it too much the distance between the two orbits becomes too large and the game stops displaying the minimum distance. In that case you need to step back and try changing other parameters of the maneuver.