Jan 4, 3304: Wredguia Sector, deep space
05 Jan 2018Cyphermox
I am now stopped at Wredguia FF-A b42-3 A 4 for the night... Or at least for the night. I stopped here because I was tired enough to figure it was unsafe to keep flying, and took a short stop to make sure I was well stocked in sulphur, phosphor, and other such elements require to synthesize fuel and do repairs on the Equinox and on the SRVs. I took a few soil samples, so I may stay longer on the planet to analyze them.My only regret at the moment is that I left for this short expedition with a materials storage that is pretty full already. I've always been a bit of a pack rat, but now this may be getting in the way. I've saved a lot of salvaged materials in the ship in case I would need them for repairs and modifications, but it looks like some of it may be entirely superfluous.
Yet, I find myself lacking the materials to build new heat sinks, so I will need to use the 6 I have sparingly. Everything else I expect should go well: I think we're already well stocked for various refueling and repair scenarios.
I may make stopping on a new planet for the night a standard procedure for this and any future expeditions: it makes sure I think ahead about stopping, where I stop, and that I have a chance to make sure I'm not short of anything once in flight. Power usage is minimal too. I made sure everything I could shut down was shut down on the ship; which means any landing also requires a bit of time to boot the SRV bay computers, but I think I can live with that.
Before leaving, I finished delivering the modular terminals to Marco. He was so happy he gave me contact information for a Professor by the name of Palin. He insists that I must have traveled over five thousand light years away from the center of inhabited space, which is why I'm doing this new trip now. I will come back immediately. I just need the travels to be recorded by my ship computers so I can show the records to Professor Palin. I'm using the opportunity to visit three nebulae I haven't seen yet: the North America nebula, the Pelican nebula, and the Veil nebula. I may stop elsewhere on the way too, but those are the planned stops for now.
I say planned stops because I spent many hours hunched over galaxy maps before picking these destinations. I broke the trip in manageable chunks, usually stopping somewhere interesting, and not doing too much distance at a time to avoid errors caused by inattention or tiredness. As such, after Wredguia FF-A b42-3 my next stop will likely be FW Cephei, just by the North America nebula.
So far, I've done about a fifth of the planned route, stopping just a bit father than the original plan since the chosen end system did not turn out to contain any suitable planet to land on. The next leg of the trip should only be about 600 or so light years, so that will give me plenty more time for scanning and exploring systems on the way.
I have attempted to take a souvenir picture with the onboard camera module, but it seems the thing is busted for now. It keeps losing signal for no reason. I'll work on fixing this in the morning.
End of log; Cyphermox out