Профиль пилота duck0 > Дневник

Профиль
Имя пилота:
Текущий корабль:
NOORK'S ELBOW [DUC-03]
(Asp Explorer)
 
Дата регистрации:
25 апр. 2022 г.
 
Внесено расстояний:
0
 
Посещено систем:
3 655
Открыто систем:
404
Elite

It always catches you by surprise, doesn't it, when you've been waiting for something and it finally arrives?

Arrived in system last night in the Omega Nebula and docked at the Omega Mining Operation asteroid base. Feels a bit claustrophobic with all the tourist Orcas suddenly weaving all over the place.

I docked like usual and offloaded the scan data for the last couple of thousand lightyears of scans. Pretty decent haul for just NGC 6357 to Omega, given that it's right across the main thoroughfares to Colonia and Sag A*. The surprise was what happened after; my system UI dinged and I had a message. From the Pilots Federation.

That's right, I'm now an Elite ranked explorer.

This'll take some time to sink in.

I also just realized I still have those lifepods I found out near Maia in my hold, better get those processed now that I can.

Then I guess I'm going back to the bubble or something. Although given current events it might be a good idea to hang around out in the black for a while longer.

For now I think I'll explore the base and see about getting in touch with some humanity. For a while. Until the call of the black gets too strong again.

Jumping at shadows

It's been a while since I opened this logbook. Sorry about that. I really need to document my findings.

After leaving the Rocksteady I headed off to NGC 6357 and had a look at CL Pismis 3, no new discoveries there of course, nebulas being the prime target for any budding explorer and had a quick look via CL Pismis 24 turning back towards the galactic rim and my next target of the Omega Nebula, word has it that there's an asteroid station there that might stave off the space madness.

Word's reached me that there's some strange Thargoid anomalies approaching the bubble after the disturbing news broadcasts from HIP 22460 and about the firing Proteus weapon. It's even got me jumping at shadows.

I was in Lysoorb JT-Z b13-7, and spotted a bright red star among all the usual backdrop; just above galactic disc between the Eagle nebula and the direction of Colonia. Swallowing a sudden lump I paused and trained my FSS on it, but could identify no signal of any kind. Feeling slightly relieved I then spent a good long time trying to find a matching star in on my charts, but nothing even remotely close enough matched. Further exploratory jumps in an oblique direction concluded that it didn't move in the sky, meaning that it was very far away and probably just some bright star and not another UIA. I hope. They say you have to be pretty close to see them.

I've since had some tea and a biscuit and calmed down a bit more and am now moving back on course, cruising towards Omega and maybe some people. While I'm as introverted as they come, some people around right now wouldn't perhaps feel too bad.

53 Jumps to Omega.

I've done what I set out to do

I'm writing this in a rented bunk on the DSSA Rocksteady and the goal I set for myself is completed, to visit the nearest DSSA carrier.

My secondary goal of gaining Elite in exploration is however unfulfilled after having sold the discovery data I gathered a long the way. According to my rough calculations I am still a hundred or so million credits in reward money away from that title which is a bit of a bummer.

For now, I'm going to kick around here for a while, maybe go see some of the sights around here. There's a huge nebula nearby; probably well visited but it might be fun to have a look. I also passed another nebula on the way, maybe going via the Omega sector on the way back would be interesting.

Getting back on the horse

I got back on the horse, after my somewhat maudlin weekend, slept a long time and feeling much better now. On the other hand, what else could I do? I'm 5300-odd lightyears from Sol. It's not like I can take an Apex shuttle home.

Made good progress today on the discovery side of things if not on the distance traveled side. Lots of pristine water worlds and high metal content worlds that I scanned which cut down on the travel progress. No ELWs.

I also ended up using my last heatsink today because of an absentminded frameshift jump that left me lightly scorched by a G-type star. Gotta watch those re-entries, they tend to be a little bumpy.

On that note, what genius designed those launchers to require high tech components in the consumable part? I have no way of synthesizing new ones because it needs high grade temperature conductive materials. Wonderful.

Ship's paint is starting to get patina'd, which is nice. Set down in a crater on an otherwise decidedly knobbly world for the night. I think I mentioned it before but going to sleep in zero G just doesn't work for me, something about the no pillow situation.

On that note, it's time to get some shut-eye.

Across the Gap

According to the map, I crossed the Sagittarius Gap a while ago, not that you could tell that from looking out the window.

Pretty much all systems I come across now are undiscovered, which is nice, quite a few of them have had multiple water worlds, which is also nice, but so far not a single virgin earth like world, which is a bit disappointing.

I keep jumping and scanning and it's getting a little disheartening. But I reached my subgoal, across the gap before the end of the week. Let's keep soldiering on, at least until the DSSA Rocksteady.

Just the other day I was looking at the map, a thousand or so lightyears spinward from where I currently am is the Omega nebula, which reputably has an asteroid base. I'm contemplating diverting to check it out, but that would mean quite a lot longer a trip to the Rocksteady.

Maybe on the way back. If there is a way back.

Addendum

I forgot to mention; a while after getting back on track towards my current goal of the DSSA FC Rocksteady, I found a virgin system with four water worlds, three of which were terraformable.

Nice.

A skip and a tumble

The day before yesterday I landed on a .5g planet to check out some bacteria that supposedly lived on the surface. It had a huge crater, and I thought that would be an interesting site to drive around in, and it was in a way. I decided to land on the edge and have a drive down in my SRV, thinking it wasn't far. By the time I realized my mistake it was quite steep and bumpy and inevitably I was going too fast. One bump sent me first soaring and then tumbling, making me black out and knocking bits off the SRV. By the time I regained consciousness I was a fair bit off the ground and sideways, with the hull down to 26%. With some judicious use of the jets and a fair scooping of luck I got myself wheels down and facing in the direction of travel that allowed me to slow down and come to a sweaty stop.

At this point I realized that the crater that I was so carelessly sliding down into was much deeper than I first thought (on later measurements, around 10 kilometers) and I'd better get my act together since I only have one SRV and any kind of medical aid is thousands of lightyears away.

Keeping the speed low and aiming for less steep bits got me down to reasonably flat ground with only an additional percent of hull off.

I then recalled my ship and loaded the SRV up to be repaired by the Depths automatic systems while I stumbled out of my suit and fell over in my bunk.

By the following day the Depths had repaired the SRV and I took it out looking for that bacteria, turns out they were white and live on the rocky ground that was pretty much also white which was fun. I ended up just cruising around and getting out to scan occasionally. Sometimes the SRV HUD would blink and I knew there was one somewhere out in front.

Once I'd gotten the samples I took a sweeping launch and looked again at how huge the crater was and left. Here's a video capture from my shoulder cam as I left.

Embarrassment in not-so-deep space

I had a look at the starmap yesterday and was kind of embarrassed.

I left the bubble, disgusted with the Federation government with a plan to maybe find a DSSA fleet carrier. My feeling was that I was deep in the black, exploring and finding new systems... and I was 1300Ly from Sol.

The closest DSSA carrier is something like 8000Ly from sol.

Just embarrassing.

So I have now put the Depths into high gear again, aiming to cross the Sagittarius Gap within the week. Right now I'm some 3500-odd lightyears from Sol and feeling a little better.

It's pretty dark out here, but so far I have had only minimal problems routing thorugh the gap; I bumped into the maximum fuel usage limit a couple of times, but could always route around it. I don't know if my Asp (at its current configuration) could have managed that.

At least nobody can see my burning ears out here.

We've hit tea!

Spent the last couple of days on economical routing along FGK stars steadily going towards the core and I've found a number of undiscovered systems. Only high metal content and metal-rich worlds in them though, and the occasional biological signal, when there was something interesting at all.

I did come across a couple of water worlds and one ELW, but someone had always already been there. Still, should net me a bit at the end.

The estimate readout is currently at... (checks screen) 41 million. Not quite at the 200-ish million I need for my elite ranking. Wonder how accurate that estimate is.

I was beginning to feel a little homesick; my supply of tea was running short but on the last system I was in before calling it a day I found a planet with a crash site of some poor unfortunate soul and wouldn't you believe it they had been shipping tea! The canister looked just fine, although it seems my exhaust plumes from landing caused it to have a little adventure downhill.

So now I have a ton of what smells like pu'erh. I would have preferred some nice ceylon (maybe even earl grey), but beggars can't be choosers I guess.

I guess I can stay out here a while longer now.

Undiscovered country

You know that feeling? When you jump in and the radar is entirely blank?

Yup. I'm in undiscovered country now.

Nothing spectacular so far though, mostly high metal content worlds and the usual ice balls. A couple of worlds with nice atmospheres, one of was purple the other puke green.

I did spend a fair amount of time doing some on-foot bio scanning, one of the planets had four species and the last one was a fungus that apparently only grew in broken mountainous terrain, covered in boulder that made it essentially impossible to drive an SRV on. I ended up slowly scooting the Depths a few meters over the surface to find genetically diverse samples. And then to find a landing spot...

The labcoats better appreciate that one.

I'm going to linger in the star neighbourhood a bit and see if this undiscovered system was a fluke.