Trail of Breadcrumbs IV - The Antilaes and first landing
04 Jul 2020Toasterfire
It's been a few days. The past week I've been holed up on Knapp Platform in Hiwi doing some reseach, tinkering, in-station jobs and watching tv- you know that show "Dark" that's based on the thousand year old german program? Really good. Can recommend. I found the Pilot's work as well- now I want to stroke the Breadcrumbs and tuck it into bed each night, while eyeing up a Diamondback explorer.28th June: The last time I flew. It was a pretty aimless but fun ride- throw a dart at the galactic map and go for it sort of thing. It mostly stayed in the Antilaes. Added a couple of codex entries- standard gas giant, terraformable candidates, but what I really want to talk about is HIP 60958. It's a system with several double moons waltzing around each other like two birds in a mating ritual, spinning around their gas giants. I'm sure it's not unusual to the experienced commanders here, and I'm aware they're only rocky ice planets, but it was my first. And you never forget your first I'm sure.
They're quite pretty while you swoop in between and do a figure of 8 in supercruise because you're looking for a nice angle. And you know what? On a whim (and because I was totally sure I was going to do this exploring thing) I'd picked up a suv to play with before heading out. I decided this pair were as good as any to attempt the landing.
I had naively assumed you can just shoot down there after supercruise drops you out- there's no atmosphere or anything and I hadn't thought to look at the manual. But it drops you out in glide mode and I panicked, reaching for the handbook on my terminal and then when that didn't help a search engine for a video.
There are icey blue mountains towering 10km high above the wide red-brown valleys they create. The geological signal I had chosen to follow was in one such valley, and it was quite fun swooping down and circling the approach. I could see some features that must be the signal sources reveal themselves. Landing proceeded without incident- I found a gently rolling patch of ground and touched down without exploding anything.
You forget how big even one of these "small" ships are once you get inside them. I know you see them in the station and all and can even pace round them in the pressurised workshops, but you never get to walk round them out in the open, not hemmed in on all sides by walls or station landing pads, until you get in the SUV and go for a spin.
Anyway. I found silicate vapour ice fumaroles. Really quite fascinating- I drove round and found a few of them at that site, and I'm sure there's more elsewhere on the planet judging by the scan results. I've no idea about the geology (chemistry? Biology?) behind them being present, but I'm glad they are. Driving on an airless rock with the galaxy, nebulae, and its sister moon hanging in the sky is pretty awe inspiring, but I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.
Took me a little while to escape the planet- I think I might need more practice or at least pay more attention to when I can enter supercruise. I sold the exploration and codex data for some nice funds at Knapp platform in Hiwi, but it's not huge money. That's fine, I'm just going to enjoy a few more sessions of pootling around and seeing how far the Breadcrumbs wants to go before we decide to go and do something else. I'm glad I've watched the Pilot's videos this past week- makes the ships feel much more like a character, something to bond with. For a new pilot I guess that's essential to realise to keep flying?
Dunno. It'll probably help me though.