Found a nice little system that hadn't been scanned. The star had been discovered but for some reason 10 planets were not. Not the greatest of planets but they are teaming with life. 10 first scans, 10 first mapped, 7 first footfalls, about a dozen new life forms discovered.

My job here is done, time to move on.

I don't know why I stopped here. Late and I need a place to sleep I guess. Woke up this morning and spent the whole day scanning, mapping, biologing, and first foot falling. A whole day, on 8 little measly already discovered planets in a dark star system here by dubbed Latrine 69 aka AUCOKS JC-L A2 1-5.

Since being here I have stepped into a methane geyser and got blown into orbit. Mistaken the star for a gas giant that needed scanning. Supercruised past the last planet I needed to scan not once, not twice but 4 times!!!

Good ridden AUCOKS JC-L A2 1-5. Good ridden.

Very interesting and short first leg. We reach the Musca Dark Region LS-T C3-35 System to find nothing but a Star. System scans reveal "Nonhuman Signal Source". Since I have never seen a Thargoid I thought we'd investigate. Warp into the signal source and come out in the middle of debris field. Instantly targeted and attacked. Power to shields and evasive maneuvers, launched a heatsink. We start taking hits to the shield as we power up the Supercruise drive.

We escaped but suffered 1% hull damage. AFMU can't fix it since it's not module damage. Still have 99% so we will carry on. Not going to mess with the Thargoids on this expedition.

Expedition Long Way to Nowhere begins now. Leaving Shinjo Station in the Kamaki System heading to Vihara Gate Station in the Kashyapa System. Most direct route is 19,430.32 ly but the planned travel route should take us 23,244.31 ly. I expect overall distance to increase as I plan to explore along the way. I have a total of 5 waypoints planned near locations of interest.

Second star to the right and straight on till morning! o7

Recently refurbished and updated with advanced Artificial Intelligence I give you, The Argo. I plan to take this out into the deep dark on a months long expedition to Colonia. I have been there, but this will be by the path less traveled.

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been building and testing exploration ships with the winner of the tests being the ship I use for a new long-range expedition (LRE). The ship will also get an ARX makeover.

I built and tested a Dolphin, Python, Orca and an ASP Explorer. I have a very reliable Diamondback Explorer that I truly love and has many lightyears on it. I wanted to try something new.

As I started building and flying these ships, I fine-tuned them based on the evolving goal of the LRE. I found that the ability to not overheat while scooping, jump range, and planet landing operations were the bulk of what I need from a capability standpoint. I also started out with the idea having at least one small passenger cabin in order to make some credits from passengers and to give me a direction to explore in. While interesting and fun, it's not what I want to do for this upcoming LRE.

I really liked the Dolphin, it scored pretty well in the thermal category, and was a delight to fly and land. I could scoop around a star and be just about full by the time I was aligned and ready to jump. I don't think I had to use any heat sinks to save me from overheating and only saw smoke like once in the 400+ jump test trip. The view from the cockpit is almost overwhelming at times and the way the sky reflects off the roof on a planet is spectacular. You can literally land this thing anywhere. Jump range was on top end of the scale as well. The downside was the cargo capacity. I found I liked collecting the escape pods and other cargo found along the way. I also began feeling like it would be nice to have a second seat so I could have other pilots join me should I meet any. With that in mind I moved up to the Orca.

Like the Dolphin, this ship was amazing to fly, though the view was noticeably less grand than the Dolphin. It was a little harder keeping the temperature down while fuel scooping but not by much. I loaded up both a double SRV hangar and a 32-ton cargo hold, maybe 64? The double SRV was nice as I had one regular SRV and one of the new Assault SRVs. The Assault SRV were great in taking out some of the sentries at the wrecks and it was nice knowing I had a backup. The biggest downside of this build for exploration was the sheer size. It has a large footprint for landing on some of the planets and cannot dock at outposts. Though a dream to fly, I had heard about a Python build I wanted to try.

The Python was a bit disappointing. It fared the worst in jump range as well as thermal shielding while fuel scooping. It also is a big ship for landing in tight places and is locked out from the Outpost sized stations. I am sure that I could have fixed most of these issues, as it's a proven ship for exploration. The biggest kicker for me that had me wanting to move on quickly was the disappointing view from the cockpit. That got me thinking about where to go next.

The ASP Explorer "The Argo" will be taking me into the deep dark. This ship is amazing, I love it. Although this build doesn't jump as far as my Diamondback, it does support multicrew. It comes in with the longest jump range of these builds, it will gain a few more once I get it topped off with Engineering. I had to lose one SRV as there is no Class 4 Optional Internal slot. With a 6A fuel scoop and a 5E Cargo rack I can scoop up super quick and pick up stuff along the way, like a load of mugs for Colonia! I think I will ditch the Advanced Docking Computer and add a second Class 3B AFMU, as I recently discovered neutron boosting!

Another day or two of preparations and I will be off into the deep dark.