Entry 68 - 08.13.3303
13 Aug 2017MBaldelli
Current System: Wredguia IY-L c7-10I decided last night that if I wasn't able to sleep, I might as well take advantage of my insomnia and continue this leg of my surveying. At least until I was ready to pass out in my bunk once again. I remember that I saw another low-gravity world eligible for surface mining that had Tellerium in it's composition. And down I went into that gravity well.
While I was successful in finding both plenty of Tellerium and even more Selinium, something odd also showed up on the radar that I hadn't seen since the time I did a couple of those Tip missions from the Federation. Heading towards it, I thought at first I was looking at the wreckage of a downed ship from the distance; but what I encountered was a deep space unmanned probe.
The hazard warnings did go off a couple of times as I got closer to visually inspect the probe, and I could almost hear the crackle of electricity.
Hoping that I wouldn't need to use the manual data-link, I attempted a remote link to see if I couldn't figure out what happened to probe to have crashed here.
I couldn't tell you entirely what had happened to this probe. Based on the initial observations something had hit the probe causing it to lose trajectory and course correction based on the damage it has suffered to its power plant. I can tell you that it was an Alliance Probe. It wasn't an older probe, the registry numbers seem to have been generated within the last century. However once the download had been completed, whatever other secrets it might have contained about its purpose and mission, the data had performed a self-encryption routine making and then informing me that when returning to Alliance Space, there will be a modest reward for the retrieval and return.
Yes, it's modest: under ten thousand credits. At least it was money to be earned all the way out here in the Deep Black.
As of this morning, I have made a total of ten touchdowns and excursions in my SRV. Pretty amazing how quickly I got used to getting into this frail looking buggy and flying across a planet's surface as I'm looking for the various minerals and rare-earth materials for my Synthesis, AFMU and for future work with the engineers. While I might never treat my SRV like the off-road vehicle from hell like a certain Commander that I used to communicate with a lot, I can tell you that I'm no longer remotely afraid of the occasional ding to either the hull or the paint. All this going on without the use of the handbrake or attitude controls.
Over the next couple of days I think I'm going to simply focus on space surveying. While it's fun and entertaining to go planetside and bounce around in a smaller cockpit looking for materials, I'm feeling like it's distracting me from the overall survey mission. So unless I find a planet or a moon with significant amounts of rare-earth materials, I think I'll stay in my ship...
Well more than the couple of moons that I just surveyed showing Arsenic and Pollonium in the surface scans this day.