Last night I moved my fleet carrier to Shaulai DA-A d83 in preparation to continue the search for Kelly Eldridge's lost Green Gas Giant. That system was one of the systems Kelly Eldridge was known to have visited, and close to the area judged most likely for the GGG to be found.

In the time since I logged off last night, Cmdr Orange! found the Lost GGG - Shaulai DL-P d5-274 7! It was only 480Ly away - just one jump for my fleet carrier.

I've also realized that I had mixed up my units for my tritium reserves for the flight home - it wasn't nearly 2,000Ly, it was nearly 2,000t. That makes a big difference - it's nearly 10,000Ly of range. Although now I won't need it.

Some keen commanders have found Kelly Eldridge's blue supernova remnant gas cloud - it is almost certainly Splohoa BL-P e5-814. It's a blue planetary nebula and has been confirmed that it was First Discovered by Kelly Eldridge. It's a further 14,000Ly from the Blue Lantern!

The bottom line now is that the location of the GGG has been 'narrowed down' to a 18,000Ly stretch of the Perseus Arm.

I've now flown Cosmic Forge to the "Blue Lantern", Shaulue GA-A e20. According to my calculations I will end up with less than 2,000Ly worth of fuel by the time I get back to the bubble. This will be as far as I will take my carrier.

I've been reading a copy of forum postings from Kelly Eldridge that I found on the ATEG Discord:

Posted May 23, 2015 01:53

• Continuing on my adventure along the Perseus Arm, I'm mostly finding just rocks. But there are still some surprises out there.
• Aliens! Well, sort of. A gas giant with water based life. They may just be microbes, but still.... aliens!
• The rare and very valuable Earth-like world. So far I've discovered 23 of them. I'm kinda hoping eventually I'll find one of these with city lights on the surface.
• A supernova remnant gas cloud. It's very... blue.
• This has to be the strangest gas giant I've seen so far.
• This last one is a bit hard to see clearly, but here's the gravitational lensing around a Neutron star.

Posted May 23, 2015 08:52

• Found another 'Permit required' region - Hyponia sector, approximately 550Ly across.

Based on comments in her later postings, I estimated Kelly's daily travel distance to be about 6,000Ly. She found Hypnoia, the "strangest gas giant", and a blue supernova remnant on the same day - so within 6,000Ly 'north' of Hyponia. Shaulue GA-A e20 is ~4,000Ly 'north' of Hyponia, so well within the expected distance and not too far from her known visited systems.

I've managed to convince myself that the Green Gas Giant we're looking for is somewhere between Shaulue GA-A e20 and the last system Kelly is known to have visited before Hyponia: Hypo Fruia DA-A d679.

There are two other systems Kelly is known to have visited: Muenaa TD-K d8-63 and Hypo Fruia UJ-I d9-316. I'm planning to fly economical routes filtering for unvisited systems between these known points and see what I can find.

WP6 is the furthest ATEG waypoint from the Bubble.

New information has recently come to light narrowing down the location of the Green Gas Giant (GGG) sighted by Kelly Eldridge that the expedition is searching for. She saw it shortly before encountering the Hyponia Restricted Sector while heading home to the Bubble, perhaps by only a day or two.

Hyponia is another 8,000Ly beyond WP6. I really wanted to take my fleet carrier out there as it makes long distance travel much easier. After checking fuel reserves and estimating fuel required to travel to Hyponia and back, then return to the Bubble, I found I would still have about 3,500t of Tritium in the tanks.

It's also known that at the time Kelly Eldridge was out there, boosted jumps were not possible. That may help to find the "breadcrumb" trail of her travels and hence find the lost GGG.

Close to WP4 for the ATEG expedition the Canonn EDMC plugin advised me that the nearby system Dehe PP-V d3-57 had an interesting trinary group of shepherd moons orbiting a gas giant.

For notable systems like this one, or the expedition waypoints, I've been noting the missing system data in the plugin and surveying to fill the gaps.

Just after midnight local time I arrived at WP2, Thraikoo PS-U e2-4. The black hole is almost directly above my fleet carrier.

Round figures for this first leg are 20,000Ly using 5,000t of Tritium or 4Ly/t. With 18,000t left in storage I should be good for another 72,000Ly! There is roughly 53,000Ly for the rest of the expedition. I had considered flying the expedition loop the traditional way in a ship, but after running the numbers I'm comfortable that I'll by able to fly my fleet carrier for the entirety of the expedition.

Those numbers mean my fleet carrier has approximately a 96,000Ly one-way range, or 48,000Ly round-trip range. That's a long way, but not enough to do a return trip to Beagle Point, which is about 65,000Ly from the Bubble, or 130,000Ly return.

My fleet carrier has made long distance travel quite the hands-off affair. In a ship you have to be jumping every minute to travel long distances. A fleet carrier jumps once every 20 minutes. With a Spansh Fleet Carrier Route saved to a document, I can copy-paste to queue the next jump then spend 20 minutes doing something that I wouldn't have been able to if I had to actively fly.

Alternatively, I'm able to fly ahead of my carrier and have it catch up to me while I explore, or the other way around - I let it jump ahead and I explore while I catch up.

I arrived at WP1 for the At the Eldritch Gate Expedition - LAWD 26.

The scheduled mass jump is at 3AM my local time, so I couldn't make that. Instead I decided to leave early and make my first stop HIP 86908, where a commander found Quarantine Site UC-001.

The logs to be found here are quite spooky!

Then I set off for WP2...

When I recently signed up for the At the Eldritch Gate expedition I didn't think I'd be able to take my fleet carrier. However, when I ran the numbers and found that I only needed to mine about 3700t of Platinum to be able to fill my carrier with Tritium by simply buying the stuff I changed my mind.

I ended up mining nearly 7,000t of Platinum. That netted me about 2BCr. I spent just over 1BCr buying Tritium from Avdeyev City.

At this time the Kalb system had Tritium at both a good price (~48,000C/t) and in huge quantities (~150,000t in three stations). That meant I could fill my hauling Cutter with 696t a trip and barely move the economy. It was still a lot of hauling.

Having just purchased my fleet carrier, I thought I would try using it at the platinum triple hotspot in the rings of Parrot's Head Sector EL-Y d83 1.

Before I even got here, the system I jumped to on the way had a planet with icy rings, so I checked it for a tritium hotspot and found a double! I've forgotten now where that was, but I quickly realized that being this close to the bubble and the platinum triple hotspot that mining platinum was a much faster way to obtain tritium than mining tritium directly.

A good selling price for Platinum is about 294,000Cr/t. I was able to get a little more than that. A good buying price for Tritium is about 48,000Cr/t. Roughly, that means 1t of Platinum is worth 6t of Tritium. Combine that with a triple hotspot and mining Platinum is much faster.

I don't bother with mapped mining, I just drop near a hotspot and start laser mining. It takes about an hour to fill a 256t cargo rack and 10t refinery. An hour is a good amount of time and the switch to supercruise to fly back to the carrier to unload is a nice regular break.

It would have been rude to leave the Golconda after having refueled it and not pay a visit.

Here, I'm flying my new Imperial Cutter "Imperial Miner", just before I head out to the Platinum triple hotspot and fill my fleet carrier!