Deep Space Journal No 4. The Sol to Alpha Centauri run.
01 Apr 2020Kris Afron
This-afternoon, I finished the supercruise run from Sol to Alpha Centauri, that's 4.38 light years of mind dulling supercruise flight!Basically I wanted to see if it could be done and my previous experiments seemed to indicate that it was possible.
When I did the third supercruise test I figured that the journey (actual flying time) would take between 19 and 20 hours to complete. So in the end I did decide to split the journey and take an overnight rest in deep space at the end of the first day's travel.
I started yesterday and set off from Galileo in the Sol system at 10:17 a.m., entered supercruise and targeted Alpha Centauri and just kept going. Progress was steady, if not uneventful and I reached maximum supercruise speed of 2001 c at 11:16 a.m.. All the rest of the day's run was at 2001 c until I decided to stop with 1.47 ly of the journey remaining at 23:19 last night. That was a total of 13 hours and 2 minutes.
This shot was taken at about the halfway point,
Today I set forth at 9:25 and I pulled into Al-Din prospect at around 15:50, so a total of 6 hours and 25 minutes today. Overall then a supercruise journey of 19 hours and 27 minutes, so my original estimate was about right.
The paint on my Hauler doesn't look much more worn than it did on the run from Procyon to IL Aquarii even though the journey was nearly 4 times as long. I have 27% fuel remaining out of a total of 28 tonnes, so the Hauler could probably take me a light year or two further before it runs out of fuel.
OK, I've proved my point now and satisfied my curiosity about achieving the journey, so I'm going to retire Proximity Illusion once I get it back to Sol and I'm not going to get it repainted this time. If you feel like attempting a similar journey yourself, you have my blessing. But I'll tell you what - I'm not going to come out and rescue you if you run out of fuel on the way.
CMDR Kris Afron signing off. Fly safely commanders.