Entry 105 - 10.25.3303 - The Life of an Explorer (A Sort of PSA)
25 Oct 2017MBaldelli
I admit I've been entirely too busy on the Extranet the last six weeks. On the one side it's been amazing some of the ideas that fellow pilots have had when it comes to improvement to ships and ship mechanics, procedures, and the future of how Pilots and the Pilot's Guild are going to interact with the Big Three and the Bubble at large. On the other side, I'm left with a sense of slack-jawed amazement on some of the hair-brained, half-baked and over-the-tope ideas others try to feed into the Pilot's Guild hoping to take a mundane task and make it into the sort of job I left on my homeworld (to become a pilot). I've been ruminating as to what I do and realize that while I am most certainly not an Explorer of old seeking out new life, new passages and perhaps new civilizations, I am in fact more of a Surveyor mapping out systems, stars and sections of the Milky Way. On top of that job, I also do the work of a Geologist correlating information as to minerals and material information for surface and asteroid mining. About the only part of Explorer I might have is that I get to have my name files in databases that it was me that first discovered the place -- even if I'm not actually landing and planting a flag with my name or my homeworld on it.
The thing is, there's definitely qualities to being an explorer in the Milky Way in the 34th century that will help bolster their time in the cockpit. Qualities that most people most assuredly don't have (hence why some of the more hair-brained suggestions I've seen in the last six weeks).
- Long periods of time isolated from the rest of humanity.
- The endless scouring of numbers and data from the completed system scans and repeated to the point where it's all just a jumble of symbols on a screen.
- The utter lack of interaction with the universe around you -- like one can get when piloting a fighter in a civil war in some system within the Bubble. And finally,
- The endless sameness of a universe that while it's in flux, isn't in flux in terms of years but instead tens of centuries.
I'm often reminded of the scene from an old movie -- Star Trek III -- where a brash, young Lieutenant questioned an experienced veteran and why she had chosen the duty station...
The excerpt...
Mr. Adventure: Look at you. You're a twenty-year space veteran, yet you pick the worst duty station in town. I mean, look at this place. This is the hind end of space.
Uhura: Peace and quiet appeals to me, Lieutenant.
Mr. Adventure: Well, maybe that's okay for someone like you, whose career is winding down. But me, I need some excitement, some adventure... maybe even just a surprise or two.
Uhura: Well, you know what they say, Lieutenant. Be careful what you wish for. You might get it.
Except with exploration, it doesn't happen much. There are surprises, but never adventure.
Out of all the professions inside and outside the Bubble: Exploration is often the lowest stress. It's like a game of Solitaire and not a game of Rugby. The worst that can happen to an Explorer is more often fatigue and human error, rather than dealing with pirates and/or gankers. But other than perhaps working the Community Goals, in regards to combat and haulage missions -- it is now one of the better paying. It might not be the best, but at the same time doesn't have the gold-rush feeling of asteroid mining which reminds me of the quote, "Adventures do occur, but not punctually."
Take my last run outside the Bubble as an example... On the 22 day mission, I made on average 2,173,802.09 credits/day. An increase from the last mission of 12 days of 1,888,673.92credits/day. And I won't even go into how significant an increase this was from the 6 months ago prior to the memo from the Pilot's Guild that increased payouts.
Another problem with this is the fact that there's no immediate turn around with all this data handed in both to the local factions nor the Big Three. Then again such turn around isn't going to happen overnight, given that it can take years and decades before anyone can set up an expedition into the unknown to form a colony. Those folk with instantaneous gratification takes too long are rapidly growing impatient waiting to see how this data collected will be used.
At least the good thing is that I get to read more, listen to news more and pay attention to what's going on so far from my current location. It allows me the luxury of being an armchair quarterback or armchair analyst without having to worry that my decisions have immediate consequences.
So that's what it means to being an Explorer. You commanders looking for adventure and doing the cherry picking through systems, keep being you. It's people like me that will complete what you don't finish...