I discovered one Water World, one Earth-Like Water World and five metallic rich worlds.

As expected: while progressing further East on the southern route, most found planetary bodies turned out to be undiscovered. The scanned objects include a few Water Worlds and Earth-Like Water Worlds, which are different from Earth-Like Worlds (the latter do have visible landmasses and or continents). I am halfway towards the South-Eastern WP inside Outer Orion Spur, which will be the turning point to the North connecting to the northbound route through Outer Orion Spur and western Hawking’s Gap.

Most pilots navigate towards specific targets or POIs (points of interest). As a result inside this area of the galaxy most probable courses connect locations in the bubble with the centre, some vary due to deviations to some of the Guardian Sites or settlements on the way North. Plenty of routes pilots choose may lead into the opposite direction towards Colonia or Omega Mining or Rohini, which could be a useful part of any route directly to the colonies. The most common routes from the bubble towards the Hawking’s Gap Settlements are north from my recent location as well as all paths from or to the Hawking’s Gap Settlements and Omega Sector.

While I was going East I frequently issued jump orders for the Shadow Head (Q5N-55M), which is following her given waypoints further North on a course passing Omega Mining approximately 500ly East of the Omega Nebula. So far, it would be very easy to alter her course towards the colonies due to the fact Shadow Head's recent course deviates just one or two degrees from a line between Eleumo and Omega Mining and approximately 7 to 10 degrees from her original route to Colonia she followed in 3306. Of course, this is a new exploration project, so there will be no course alterations.

The first ten of the 80 jumps on the southernmost navigation line were done. So far less than 10% of the stellar objects and bodies were undiscovered or unknown. This equals the rate of unknown to known systems I found during my visit of the Red Spider Sector last night.

Approximately 3kly North of the bubble and slightly Eastward of the line connecting system Smojue XB-B c27-3 with Eleumo.

The Shadow Head started in Eleumo and was parked in Smojue XB-B c27-3 until a few minutes ago. Yesterday I visited a few systems in Red Spider Sector while Shadow Head was progressing on her course, finally waiting in this system. The Shadow Head follows a route towards Buya Aim HC-M d67-2196, a system I saw first in late 3305 on a return voyage from the colonies and again in 3306 during DW2.

For today’s route, I imagined an exploration route drawing a simple box: one line to the East, one line to the North and one line to the West, eventually leading to Omega Mines at the edge of Omega Nebula.

Using my oldest ship Honest Tuck, an AspX, I am following a line straight eastward while climbing ‘up’ from under the Galactic Plain: 80 waypoints (WP) towards Byoi Thae BS-R b34-0, which will be the South-Eastern corner of the virtual box the navigation lines will form on the Galactic Map. This WP will be located in the (north-) western-most corner of Outer Orion Spur. Following this line, this catena, I will cross the western part of the Inner Orion Spur before crossing the imaginary frontier line into the south-western region of the Outer Orion Spur. The first turning point of the four corners of the virtual box of lines will be located in the Outer Orion Spur, the second turning point, the North-Eastern one, lays inside the Western region of the Hawking’s Gap and the temporary endpoint should be Omega Mining west of the Omega Nebula.

My ships do register all passengers (usually); here are a few people I could rescue from the stations under attack mid March 3307:

After defending the summit held in Sirius and providing goods as supplies for said meeting of the so-called leaders of humanity, I took part in the evacuations of most of the star-ports burning throughout the bubble: I used the Python Stanislaw Lem and the Cutter Adelheid-Adele for rescuing people from the evacuation areas close to the launchpads as well as I was collecting numerous rescue pods.

The best place to keep a vessel inside a burning station is along the axis over the length of the docking space; doing so, keeping a position over one of the segments without landing pads is even increasing the chance of not to become affected by the shock waves caused by the numerous occurring explosions in the area. There are two main reasons for this effect: first, keeping a position along the axis means keeping the maximal distance from all sides of surfaces inside the docking area; thus, the shock waves impacting from around the ship are less intense and lost their initial energy. The explosions do originate from locations somewhere under the surfaces of the docking area. As well it seems explosions mostly occur from spaces close and around the numerous pads, which gives the second reason the described position is equal to the minimal chance of being hit by a strong shock wave.

Holding such a position and keeping the ship as cool as possible by using heat sinks and or a cool running vessel allows for plenty of time to collect rescue pods and materials from inside the station before docking. Of course, one should not wait until the docking time were exceeded.

I started rescuing in Sol, where Li Qing Jao came under attack. Then I moved to Achenar, Lave, Eotineses and Nanomam, where Hahn Gateway was attacked. In all systems there were peeps trying to interdict rescue vessels but I mostly ignored these attackers; once I got interdicted myself but shook the peep of, once someone used rockets to bring my shields down. In all cases I was able to reach the related rescue stations none-the-less.

I recognized the attackers were gathering in front of the burning stations or around the rescue mega ships; sometimes they requested docking to block the few L-pads and trick pilots to move away and become an easy target.

The following images shows Adele-Adelheid returning from a rescue mission:

As far as I remember it took one carrier jump from HIP 57784 to HIP 58832. Rackhams Peack is an installation inside the latter system. Arriving there it became obvious, what the population there was requesting: all sorts of liquid alcohol; seemed it was needed even more than the commercials being plastered around the huge space base.

Space commercial for Lavian Brandy:

The installation itself consists out of numerous modules, of which there are two main parts in close proximity of each other without any physical connection. The whole place seemed to be busy and a number of different ships was swarming around said parts of the installation.

The whole post from a few kilometres away made an impressive view hovering above the ED Milky Way basking in the lights of billions upon billions of stars (this may put the light of the Empire into relation, though). I was hoping to find some of the scientists believed to stay at the place measuring the effects of dark matter throughout the galaxy, validating the catalogues of interstellar cartography, measuring precisely for better triangulation of systems, trying to predict the movement of all the known and maybe unknown systems.

Approaching Rackham’s Peak:

Before docking I was circling the installation inspecting all the visible parts, investigating the dimensions of the station and trying to find out about the facilities being run at this place (apart from stores for loot and Lavian Brandy). I saw too, there was no rotation of any part of the installation so mag-boots were required once leaving the ship. Rodnerg told me he sold some Brandy at the local market, which hopefully made him some credits.

My docking location at Rackham’s: It took me a minute to become advised to use the next free pad.

Rackham’s Peak: The two main parts of the installation came into view when closing up. On the bottom left of the next image there is the public docking module, which is used for the local trading and market business. On the right side of the image there is the command module holding the valuables in special stores, keeping the facilities for the local government and the laboratories of the scientific community. As it turned out it took me two days to get access to parts of it: I needed an invitation by someone living on that side and got a permit to enter parts of it after being investigated and cleared by the stations services; thankfully I got clearance at least and was able to visit the science section finally. Thanks to Manager Lilyanna Santiago, I was talking to after handing in some exploration data.

The two parts of Rackham’s Peak:

The mission board of Rackham’s Peak showed mining missions mostly; I would have been out for some mining if I had have the time to do so but the preparations to move the Shadow Head back to Rodentia on the following Saturday as well as my one day visit at the sciences lab did not allow for any mining missions. The return trip of the Shadow Head was scheduled even though most of the commanders I took with me had left using some of the carriers leaving before this week’s end.

On my passage towards the main hub of the command module I was able to get a glance of the construction of storing modules. There were some station class defence terminals installed at the tactically right places guarding this area. If someone would assume the community out here were a bunch of drunken lunatics I had to assure it is not. I was able to further convince myself when meeting the scientists a little bit later. Investigating the storing sections of Rackham’s:

The science labs are located inside the cylinder shaped part at the left of the next image. There I learned that the scientists as well investigate the neighbouring dwarf galaxies as well as Andromeda, which makes sense given the clear view on the neighbours of our local group. I was told they were investigate the possibilities to create a way towards Andromeda but unfortunately they were not allowed to give away too much information; Rackhams Peak seems to be a great place for science.

Command and science module of Rackham’s Peak (left side):

Complete view of the command module and main storage areas of Rackham’s:

The Shadow Head was returned to Rodentia on the following week end.

On 3rd February 3307 I had the opportunity to explore HIP 57784. During that trip I met commander Rodnerg and we decided to land on planet 2 B: Rodnerg with his T9 and I using the Python Stanislaw Lem. The following images show what we found on the surface of planet 2 B.

Our landing site was located at the edge of a crater and using the slope at the edge I was able to make a photo of the two ships, the planet and the view on the ED Milky Way.

The two ships parked next to each other:

Planet 2 B itself is a rocky planet in orbit around a ringed gas giant presenting lots of craters on the surface not too unlikely to earth’s moon – at least I was reminded on the moon.

We made the decision to move with the Shadow Head to Reckham’s Peak to check out that site – it would turn out, both commercials and all sorts of alcoholic liquids were in favour at Reckham’s Peak.