NYND 3308: Day 48
19 Feb 2022Helios Eusebio
February 19, 330808:17:30 UGT
Lunar Hyperlight, Plimbeau ZE-R e4-2732 2 F A (Purple Rings)
MET: 47:13:58:20
Harper is usually not one to give bad news but we got some this morning: the damage to Challenger's bad drive was far more severe than it looked. Based on what she told me we were anywhere between "flame out during liftoff/descent" and "whole drive blowing up." Either way, it's something that can't be patched up and the whole drive is gonna need to be replaced back at the bubble. Which means Challenger is grounded.
So with that being the case I decided it was time to bring out the one ship we haven't flown yet: Lavender Spirit. With all the time we've spent flying around we haven't had an opportunity to do some actual minin. Lunar Hyperlight has got a full tank of gas for the trip home but Spaceball Two is on fumes. Not to mention it's always nice to bring back some LTD's and Void Opals for the friends back home.
The Gas Giants here have very interesting ring systems. Ranging in composition from metallic to icy, a good number of them seem to be very dense and rather small in terms of radius. Almost as if the rings have either condensed to a small band or most of the material has simply disappeared. It's the opposite of what happened with Saturn, where most of the outer rings have been mined away leaving some massive inner rings. No such mining operation exists here but what we're seeing is entirely natural; the one constant about ring systems is they eventually destroy themselves. Material from the ring constantly spirals down onto the planet (as observed by Cassini at Saturn back in 2017). This "ring rain" will eventually deplete the ring, leaving just the planet by its lonesome.
We scanned all the rings in the system. Between the Brown Dwarfs and the Gas Giants this took a considerable amount of time. The last planet we scanned was the outermost one; an icy body with a dense atmosphere. Rhea had told us she may have detected Void Opals and LTD's when she was out mining, so we wanted to see if her scouting report was accurate. Turns out she was right; hotspots for the both of them were in the ring.
Mining is a lucrative but tedious and painstaking occupation and only those who absolutely need a lot of credits in a short amount of time need apply. There's a reason I only mine every once in a while just to keep some rare minerals stashed away on Spaceball Two just in case I need some kind of quick payout. The availability of Tritium and other minerals used in construction adds a level of practicality to mining. You might not be getting rich, but you are helping maintain critical infrastructure (or in the case of a carrier; making sure you're not stranded out in the black with an empty fuel tank).
But there's nothing quite like deep core mining. The rocks that have valuable cores are rather rare, but cracking them open is one of the most rewarding things you can do out here (I often joke that letting Vinyl blow open a rock is what made her fall in love with me). It's a delicate balance getting the right amount of charges in the right fissures to ensure not only a good detonation but that you don't accidentally destroy the core. Pull that off and you've got a cargo rack full of riches.
Again, the main problem is finding these rocks. We spent upwards of a couple hours prospecting the hotspot that our DSS pinged and only found a single LTD core. It would've been satisfying except for the fact we were in a hotspot for Void Opals. Not that we turned down the chance to crack open the LTD rock; we'd never pass up such an opportunity and we were rewarded with a little over a dozen LTD's for our trouble. After some more fruitless scans we were ready to head back to Lunar Hyperlight when Vinyl asked to scan one more rock. Turned out that it had the Void Opal core we were looking for.
The fact these cores are so valuable is perhaps the only reason why I'm willing to fly an Anaconda into the debris field of an exploded asteroid. While the limpets do a good job of gobbling up any fragments that are ejected by the blast, there are other deposits on the shattered components of the asteroid that need to be manually dislodged. Doing that is relatively easy; the hard part is getting your ship in position to knock them loose while also not smashing it against the debris. Smaller ships don't have as much of an issue; but for some reason I prefer mining in larger ones. To think, I used to mine in a Type 9 before I bought Lavender Spirit.
With our precious cargo intact, it was time to head back to Lunar Hyperlight. New Year New Discoveries 3308 has come to an end for us. Once again it's been a great expedition: we've done tons of research for Cannon and Vista Genomics, added our names to a few hundred more star systems as well as travelled farther north in the Galaxy than ever before. And all of this in a region that is frequently visited by commanders and now has a massive infrastructure project.
Just goes to show that you don't need to go on the road less traveled to find something new.
But now it's time to take the long road home.