121 Jump Street
14 Nov 2015Lothal Vanderheim
It's more than 121 jumps since my latest logbook entry, so I decided it's about time.During the last week, I reached and crossed the Perseus Arm of the Milkyway Galaxy. Not much happened, really. The way back is a lot more relaxed now that I'm back in the galaxy proper.
I found another Earth-like in the Perseus Arm, I think that's it mostly. Astonishingly uneventful. Oh I almost forgot: One jump dropped me between two close suns again and I got burned. Again. Luckily I started with two heat sink launchers, so I still have some heat sinks left. My first launcher ran out after the third time I think. Then I lost some more because I was jumping while exhausted and crashed into some brown dwarfs.
Brown dwarfs may be rather cool for a sun, since they're essentially stillborn dead suns, but they're still hot enough. Their small mass adds to the danger: A jump drops you near the largest mass in a solar system, as you all know. Well, in a dead system with a brown dwarf as the primary mass, you get dropped dangerously close to them, since their mass is rather low for a sun. If you don't react fast enough, the gravitic interaction between the brown dwarf and your FSD in supercruise mode will already heat you up beyond critical and your emergency system will drop you into real space.
Then you need heat sinks to stay cool enough while supercruising out of this mess. This doesn't mean you're lost without a heat sink launcher, but without launching a heatsink before your emergency supercruise, you'll take a lot of damage due to the heat build-up.
Generally, even though you still get damaged, crashing into planets, even gas giants, is a lot safer than crashing into suns, even dead suns: At least planets are either cool or small enough to not overheat you while you're trying to escape their grasp.
But aside from that, please avoid doing this. Every time my emergency alarm starts blaring and I drop into cold space, there's a single thought crossing my mind: What if the emergency system had malfunctioned?