Nightout on Elysian Shore (p.2)
19 Feb 2022Tiffany Yür
Like I said I gathered up some better components to the Asp Explorer from the nearby systems and got it to range ~26,5 ly in high wake. This would have been a huge year long trip in earlier times. Now you can get a ship that spans the distance in under a minute. Let that sink in, ground pounders. Total spending to the ship was about 18,5 MCr. You can get the distance even cheaper by going out with a DB Explorer, but you need to cut elsewhere then. My estimate of the total distance in hyperspace in these 5 days is 7560 ly. The log says I visited 2400 ly out of the pilots federation district - could be true, as I planned to do a bit of a triangle once I got to the next Galactic Region rimwards. This though proved a bit problematic. The Orio-Persean Gap is real, this is ~100 ly gap between scoopable stars on locations and towards Sanguineous Rim it maybe much wider. On the other places it might be almost not notable, but at least on my escapade replotting the routes became a necessity. If you try to go to the Sanguineous Rim, it maybe possible with a ship like this one. I chickened out after the third dead end on scoopable stars. One thing a traveller to rimwards needs to know is the distance you can fly with a full tank. For my 32tn fuel tank I estimated it to be a bit under 300 ly, though for safety, I did not exceed 250 ly in plotting the routes. Plotting the routes becomes also a chore when the stars thin. Very many times I tried to plot a direct route and ended up going 30-40 degrees off, just because the gaps in stars in the attempted direction were a bit too large for my ship. The lower middle class budding explorer may have more luck getting to Sanguineous Rim towards the outer Orion Arm than what I attempted.
I ended up going towards the triple border of Sanguineous Rim, Elysian Shore (part, Wayfarer's Graveyard), and Inner Orion Spur, I was scared of getting lost if I ended up to Sanguineuos Rim by accident. Here there's an area of Orio-Persean Gap that can safely be crossed even by low-class exploration ship. Soon I noticed that very many wayfarers and explorers had used the same route. Some systems had like 6 different commander beacons on them, and very few had only one. The Plaa Eurk Sector, that still has plenty new places for explorers to map and find, is here explored quite accurately. For those commanders who haven't visited far out the Bubble, Plaa Eurk is the second Sector out of Bubble towards the Rim, the first being Wredguia. Bubble is of course located in Col 285 Sector, as most of you know. The historical Star Names of HIP in the Galaxy Map are a welcome sign for returning explorers, I guess. Historical Index of Points in the sky, this dates all the way to single Earth.
Still one thing about exploring. If you scan and map everything, you do not get very far fast. I spent some three hours mapping one system. If you're planning to go somewhere it's way better to do only the full spectrum, or maybe just honk the D-scanner and check the planetary map. You might end up finding nothing of worth (well if you count maps of 20 moons of no geologic interest worth something then by all means do that.). On the other hand if you don't do mapping at all, you end up flying randomly criss-cross and maybe finding something previous travellers/explorers/mappers have missed. Good luck with finding a water world, earthlike or terraformable that is not mapped. Ammonia worlds are also rare, these are usually quite far from the parent star and many are unmapped. Maybe this is because of Thargoids? Plaa Eurk Sector still has plenty unmapped High-Metal Content worlds.
Next sector out is the Outorst. This sector contains the triple border of Regions. Orio-Persean Gap here is between Plaa Eurk and Outorst so technically, reaching an area of denser stars in Outorst is Perseus Arm. Near the triple border there are some stars that are located, in the sharp borders of Regions, to the Sanguineous Rim, so I had to visit at least one. I took the nearest one, only 80 ly off my previous course, to get bragging rights. Practically, I ended up on a star with nothing interesting and only 3 ways forward, all of which required trust on the navigation computer to find my way back. So, technically, I've visited Sanguineous Rim, though in practise, it was the nearest corner of Wayfarers Graveyard.
There are likely several ways to get through the Orio-Persean Gap in a low-class explorer ship like this, at least two, since I got back. The near Elysian Shore is also quite well explored and the rarer planet types are also mostly mapped. Got to send a few signal beacons over waterworlds and even a few orbiting stars! It's a curious feeling to be first man to see a system, of course you hope there's something special to be found in there, but the numbers are against it. It would probably be easy to make millions a bit further out in Outorst by systematically mapping everything, but the time it takes... Aah, the nightout. Spent a night orbiting an earthlike with huge number of islands. Did not even map it (it was already mapped). Just dreaming that Lewis Vision might in the future be similar.
Found another route back to Inner Orion Spur on the third attempt, spent a night on a double moon which orbited each other within two moon diameters, flew back home. And the pay, that everyone asks? 64'281'552 Cr. That's not bad for 5 days of travel and scanning. The Asp Explorer has paid itself and earned a name. I'm considering setting up a fund off part of the exploration payout, for those rascal youngsters who want to go to space. Maybe buy a Sidewinder capable of minor skimrish, set it up as a price for excelling in something? Let's see how it goes.