The Outer Arm
18 Oct 2015Lothal Vanderheim
The Outer Arm of the Milkyway is a forelorn place. Most of the middle of the galactic plane out here is just a dense mass of dark, cold brown dwarfs. There are a lot of terraformable worlds out here, though. Too bad most of them are so far above the galactic plane, they're hard too reach, even with an Asp. Other ships will have real trouble getting to them.My ship's computer says I'm only about 3000 light years from the galactic edge now. After that, only the halo. With stars so sparse, even with ten times the range I wouldn't get far. Going over the output from my navigation program, it even looks like I "reach" the edge in about 2000 light years already, thanks to the void between suns growing too fast. Even when perfectly level on the galactic plan, in about 2k light years the Outer Arm will just be too dispersed for further travel.
It doesn't look like I can reach the edge today, maybe not even tomorrow. But it still is a nice boost to my morale to know that I finally reach my goal in a couple of days and can turn back home afterwards.
According to my calculation, I should be back in home in about three weeks straight travel. Welp, time to get on with this, then.