Proof of concept
23 Mar 2020DrPillman
Finally.After washing yesterday´s soot from my eyebrows and the stench of scorched circuit boards out of my throat, I decided that enough was enough and that the digital service facility in LHS 2948 wasn´t that important anyways, at least not for me. Time for a break and a tour to the hardware store.
Besides, a Boom time back in Gateway and good trade in Farack opened the opportunity to make a decent coin for necessary investments in gear and upgrades (yeah...I bought another 2 ships..it´s becoming a habit lately. I always had that collector gene...well, I always wanted the FDL, and after struggling with outfitting the Phantom, I was just really interested to have a Krait Mk II for comparison. Also, that would mean I can take Florence along for some wetwork, so she doesn´t get rusty guarding my cargo day in - day out).
And then there was that old toolshed project I wanted to pick up on. I tweaked around with the Phantom, how to keep some jumprange, but not be totally naked, and bring both exploration and mining gear along. The idea was, that being able to pick up materials from surface signals while exploring proved really useful with the DiamondEx, but it was a real pain to leave all these diamond and painite deposits untouched, knowing I wouldn´t revisit them any time soon.
So yeah, thus the idea of the deep space-exploration-gem-miner was born.
So I packed medium sized collectors, refinery and fuel scoop, a prospector, the smallest vehicle hangar I could find, reduced the powerplant size to be just enough to run the mining stuff, then walked around nervously for some hours, drank a coffee, chewed on my eraser gum for some time, and finally also reduced the shield size to free up cargo space, figuring I´d better use the boost speed for defence, anyways.
Then I was forced to sacrifice 32t of cargo space to also get the surface scanner on board.
That hurt. That really hurt.
But no matter how I rearranged things, I´d be down to 96t of cargo after all the equipment was installed. The Phantom has just too many large, and not enough small slots. You always feel, you are missing something.
Hm.
Well, I thought, I wouldn´t engage in bulk mining everyday stuff, anyways, and reducing the cargo bay would motivate me to be a little picky, and not weigh down the craft too much on the way back. I have the Type 9 to gobble up mountains of bauxite from the neighborhood, if need be. I finished the experiment with a new paint job, something with that certain ruggish outdoor-work look to it.
I wasn´t really sure if I had built a practical workhorse or a terrible abomination, so I took her for a spin, see how this hybrid behaved pre-engineer.
I have to say, I am quite happy. I still got plenty juice for racing, and my worries that sacrificing so much cargo to bring all my toys along would be economically shooting myself in the foot somewhat vanished when I came back after a fairly short tour, and brought 3,7M worth of scanning data and 22t of low temperature diamonds home, enough to pay for all the modules I had bought, and then some.
This might be just the vessel for a nice long working holiday out between the stars, far away from the bubble and its petty struggles. Deneb, here I come at last!
Can´t wait to take Lise out into the great wide open.