That was close
18 Sep 2016Lassombra
Continuing my journey to Sagitarius A* today, I had my first real "oh shit" moment as a commander. Lot's of times I've had things go really wrong, but this time, it was really really bad. I arrived in a system, inside the corona of not one, but two stars. That's right, I found myself a binary system so tight that the corona's actually overlapped. I got out of there and snapped a few pictures.
I decided to shut everything down and relax in the light from these two suns for a while. I also figured this was as good a time as any to fully shutdown my cockpit systems so I could install the new control systems I've been sitting on. For a long time I've been relying on a pretty junky hobbled together control rig which consisted of a wireless keyboard with some commands mapped to it, a basic joystick (with a miniature throttle) and a 2-axis pointing device wired up to linear thrusters to control landing. Needless to say, this was not ideal. But as it turned out, stopping here gave me plenty of light to take the time to wire up, and configure my shiny new "X-56 Rhino" control system. After a lot of "fiddling" I figured out the best control wiring and now have completely replaced the hobbled together system. I now have a small keyboard for text transmissions (and writing these logs) but everything else is controlled through buttons on my stick, throttle, or at the base of the throttle (for some non-combat functions).
I made a lot of progress today, almost 2k ly closer to my destination!
