Exploration record - Weighty reunion
02 Nov 2020Godthab
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Now that his participation in 4-month Outer Arm expedition onboard Blodeuwedds Branch was over, cmdr Godthab transferred all his fleet and ship parts he brought on BB back to the original location - onto the carrier owned by one of his non-squadron mates anchoring not so far away from the centre of the Bubble. In the meantime he reunited with all his old mates, cmdr U, cmdr B and cmdr R - on cmdr U's carrier dock. They raised their glasses to the reunion, and the convo during the celebration let all of them to a plan of a short trip together. A system located roughly 15000 Ly away from the Bubble was chosen; just 3 long-haul jumps by FC and the team should arrive at the destination.
The destination, HD 148937 was a unique system in that it had 10 scoopable stars (8 red dwarfs and 2 whites) other than its main star, a Blue-White one. It was a green system, where you were able to collect all the raw materials needed for FSD injections. Yet that wasn't the point that's making this system outstandingly unique.
The 3rd planet from the main star, a high metal content world, was the only landable planet amongst all 15 planets, and it was a high-gravity world ... 9.78G! The main objective of the trip was to give it a try to land on this high-G world on each one's personal fleet respectively. This was the first challenge for cmdr Godthab to do a high-G landing. He brought his tiny sidewinder with him onboard the carrier just to be on the safe side. Others took much bigger fleets with them; cmdr U on Beluga Liner, cmdr B on Cutter and cmdr R on Adder.
The main star was shining its glaring blue-white light on every object in the system including the planet surface. Cmdr Godthab was extra cautious to watch the approach angle so that it wouldn't be too steep. He reduced his fleet's altitude, literally little by little. Seemed like the feel of high-G wasn't so obvious in orbital cruise level. Which he actually already guessed; the moment of challenge would be from dropping out of orbital cruise till landing - the safe landing.
He cut the engine at much higher altitude than usual. Far down below he saw cmdr U's Beluga Liner already landed on the surface. Toward that location he was thinking of free-falling landing at first, but soon recognized it as a little too dangerous way. The power of gravity was so strong that he rushed to thrust up, but thruster didn't help him to raise the altitude urgently. Before the fleet fell down at a critical altitude he made it to activate engine boost. That was close. Then he struggled with thrusters and engine controls to stop the fleet in the air, then started to lower altitude controlling sensitive balance between thrust-up power and planet gravity. Eventually he made it, landed on the surface - but even with that extra cautiousness it turned out to be a little rough landing; the small sidewinder bounced a couple of times then stopped. The barrier successfully prevented the fleet hull from direct damages.
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System: HD 148937
Planet: 3
Place: Strong G
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Cmdr Godthab was the 2nd in landing on the strong G planet and he waited for the arrivals of other two. Soon after his arrival he saw the huge Cutter was approaching, which was of cmdr B. Through the comm she let us know she was thinking of landing by switching on-and-off of flight assist. This sounded a good plan to land a heavy fleet, such as Cutter. However soon she noticed it wasn't enough to decrease the landing speed. She ended up making a hard landing also, yet the super thick barrier of her fleet didn't seem to have a damage.
Then finally cmdr R's yellow-coloured Adder showed up. Adder was indeed bigger than Sidewinder, but much smaller than Beluga or Cutter. At first it appeared he was approaching the surface steadily and safely ... but in the final touch-down stage the strong G showed its fangs. R's Adder had to do a rough hard landing and for his case, the barrier wasn't thick enough to protect the hull of the tiny fleet. Adder got smashed up. Uh-oh.
Cmdr R had to give it a second challenge, which he made it. Through the comm he sounded exhausted. No wonder. As other three brought SRV they deployed theirs to approach the tourist beacon set on the surface; cmdr Godthab watched their SRV doing a bit of sumo-wrestling on their way to the beacon. All 4 made it to the surface at the end of the day, anyway.
Cmdr U promised the team to fly his carrier back to the Bubble swiftly in a couple of days. Cmdr Godthab notified him and mates that he was going to take his DBX to do a solo return back to the Bubble. On the route back to the Bubble he found a small (apparently) planetary nebula called Fine Ring Nebula and he thought it wouldn't hurt to pay a visit there rather than choosing a straight carry to the Bubble by the carrier. Just 7 jumps were needed to reach the nebula with his DBX.
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System: SHAPLEY 1
Planet: N/A
Place: Fine Ring Nebula
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Cmdr Godthab jumped in the system. He found only two stars there; the main one was Wolf-Rayet, and the other one was Yellow-Orange. He flew the fleet toward the direction of other star to distance himself from the main star. After a while he stopped the engine and look around. In a quite, very vague and subtle manner something that seemed to be a part of Fine Ring Nebula was visible around the fleet. Its light was mixed with the lights of the galaxy milky way.
15+ jumps were still left to go back to the Bubble. Looking at the map of Universal Cartographics cmdr Godthab noticed another notable location was on the return route; Coalsack Nebula. In the end of October 3306, he started hearing of several strange rumors at the station bars and docks; and several of them were related to the findings in this famous dark nebula.
He plotted the visit in this nebula on the route. It was going to be the next waypoint. That's all for today.
CMDR Godthab out.
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