The Cat's Eye Exploration and Passenger Mission
05 Mar 2019iGRiM R3AP3R
LONG HAUL PASSENGER TRIP of nearly 14,000lysGetting bored with the usual day to day credit earning missions transporting cargo, bounty hunting or mining I decided to accept a long haul passenger mission to work on improving my exploration rank. I had already moved up to Pathfinder recently, but now Elite status is getting close I am starting to focus on travelling a bit. Currently I have been working on engineering upgrades so I am based in Procyon system working on reputation with Sirius Corporation and a Sirius permit. I have already got to level 2/3 FSD jump range upgrades with Filicity Farseer, but my Orca Liner is still only getting a maximum jump range of 29.63LY. But since some commanders are getting up to 60LY jump range I decided this is a real necessity for those long trips.
Destination: Pyraleau AA-A H39 - The Cat's Eye - A triple black hole system 6,898.90LY from Procyon
I accepted a passenger trip to The Cat's Eye triple black holes system, a total of 6,898.90LY from Procyon. With only a 29LY jump range, this is a bit of a trip. The route plot took a couple of minutes to compute, but did return a result of 250 jumps. Thinking I could maybe shave off a few jumps with neutrino stars, it still seems like quite a journey. All in I reckoned maybe I could make it in a couple of days. So kitted out the Orca with a new paint job and first class accommodation and started my trip. Also I made sure I had my detailed surface scanner to get extra reward for scanning any water worlds, earthlike planets, or ammonia worlds.
Ship: FSS Kuruuzusen - Orca class ship with 29.63LY jump range and custom paint job
Setting out early on a Sunday (but not too early), I figured I would get a few jumps done and see how it is going. Four hours later I had made it out of the bubble and was starting to find some unexplored systems. Time to do some scanning, and once the discovery scanner had established the objects in the system I then starting gathering data. I knew that finding and scanning an earthlike planet would surely bring in some big cash for this trip. But are they easy to find, nope! Breaking for dinner and getting out of the chair I found I had only got about one third of the way. So fully refreshed and with an energy drink I decided to get down to business. Another four hours and I had found some water worlds, but still no ammonia or earthlike. But feeling like progress has been made I decided I was close enough to make it and pressed on. After about twelve hours
I finally hopped into the system, and what a shock! Not just my first black hole, but three of them and I got too close. Serious panic ensued and I reversed and started to drop heatsinks to keep my temperature down. No repair docks nearby and too long already invested to lose my ship and mission. But escape seemed impossible. No idea which way to turn. It seemed I was surrounded by black holes. It was squeaky bottom time for sure! Then I had a flash of inspiration, find a target to navigate to. So I looked in my navigation panel and found the tourist beacon. Pointing in the right direction I jumped to light speed and made it. A scan of the beacon, then a 360 view with my external camera and my customer and I were satisfied. Not really a place I wanted to hang around in, so I jumped out to a nearby system and decided to land on a planet for the night.
Next morning, feeling refreshed I decided to plan my route home. Much to my relief I used an online tool to make a better route using neutrino stars to greatly reduce the number of jumps down to about one hundred and fifty. Having done a lot of exploring on the way I had already found a lot of waterworlds including a giant one, and even some ammonia planets. However, my quest for an earthlike world continues. Making a quicker journey home only stopping to surface scan a few more water worlds, I made it back in about six hours. My FSD drive had taken some damage jumping with neutrino starts, but at seventy five percent was still working with the occasional reboot. Finally hitting the bubble and getting into a station I splashed out on a full repair. Another five or six jumps and I was back in Procyon and dropped off the passenger to collect my ten million credits. What a long trip, was it really worth 10mil? No way, but I was hoping my exploration was going to bring in a few extra credits, and boy did it do that. Logging into universal cartographics I starting selling off my data. With all the discovery bonuses, I netted another seventy million making a total of 80mil for 2 days of hard jumping and scanning. Also I ranked up a full level to Pioneer with just one more exploring level to Elite. Time to pay up for a new paint job, as you can see here my ship was a complete mess after such a long journey...
14,000LY later and paint work has been battered by space dust to 0% health
80 million credits and jumping a full rank to Pioneer, heading for double Elite soon!