Entry 79 - 09.02.3303
03 Sep 2017MBaldelli
Current System: There's something really bracing about getting back into the cockpit when I was in my billet and seeing in the front windscreen an alien sun burning brightly like my homeworld's star. And so, with coffee in hand, at command and starting through my routine of the morning I push through surveying the rest of Pencil Sector IR-W d1-79 before I push onto the next system on the route.
I've been pretty amazed at the amount of HMCs and Terraformables I've been finding less than 1,000 LY from Tchehen. While I'm pretty sure that I'll net the same amount I've been during the last four survey missions, there's always some hope that it will be significantly more than normal.
Oh and yesterday, when I was attempting to surface mine for some Technetium, I saw that the surface scanner was indicating high band frequencies of some technology not too far from my landing site. Doing a bit of farming for materials (none of which was Technetium, I'm afraid), it turns out I stumbled across a downed Federation Probe. While I was able to collect the data successfully, I fear I won't be turning back for another seventeen days, so it's probably going to expire long before I turn back to hand it it. Oh well, it would've been a nice four thousand credits and a bit of reputation, but alas this is a long mission and I don't have time to return to the Bubble for the hand-in.
I have to say that while a good majority of the systems that I've surveyed have been pretty mundane and on the same orbital plane, there have been some that the system map simply can't do any justice to what I was seeing outside my cockpit. I wish I could take a picutre of one without the orbital lines that were created for navigational purposes; but it was a trinary system where two of the stars were within hundreds of LS from each other and each of the inner four planets on each were orbiting in an X pattern around stars.
There's been a handful of systems where the planets had haphazard and lackadaisical orbital patterns that simply defied logic as to what could have possibly happened to knock them out of the standard orbital plane.
There haven't been quite as many rogue planets that have ended up being collected by a star system, but when they did -- they were commonly gas giants.
There have been some bigger than average rocky/rocky-ice and gas giants, but none of them have come close to the million plus kilometer radius gas giant I've discovered when I first joined the Federation Survey Fleet. For Gas Giants, it has to be Synuefai AL-Z b19-0 1 which I discovered on 05.13.3303. For Rocky Worlds; Synuefai ZQ-T d4-12 12 discovered on the same day. Since then, things have been pretty average.
I still haven't had much luck finding a black hole or a neutron star in the parts of the galaxy I've been surveying (well, other than the ones already well known and within the bubble). I can say that I have found more than my fair share of wolf rayet stars; definitely pretty to see when one comes out of witch space.
I have found more than a handful of the gas giants having some sort of water-based (or ammonia-based) life on them. I think when the teams are formed up in the Federation I'm definitely going to sign up to explore and study such life in some of these giants. Reminds me of the book written by Hal Clement called Mission of Gravity where there were intelligent centipede like life forms living and surviving on a high gravity planet.
I can't say that I've come across any moons to gas giants that were terraformable, let alone ammonia worlds. Although I can say I've found more than a generous handful of moons having moons. Hell, I'm currently scanning several of them at Pencil Sector JR-W d1-132.
Since I've started landing on planets to perform surface mining, I've yet to see any form of geyser.
And if you're wondering, yes this is a bucket list.
Well, I'm going to continue heading to the Twin Eaters and then fly around them on the way back to Tchehen. So off I go on the second survey leg.