Explorer's Anchorage is HERE!
22 Feb 2019Scubadog
I slept HARD. I was beat. Francisca and I had fixed the SRV hanger and everything was finally working, We then hit some systems surrounding Stuemeae FG-Y d7561, not finding anything really new and interesting, but at least decent data. Then we went back to one of the moons the d7561 system to get some sleep. We didn't set any alarms and just woke up when we were ready. A quick systems check and breakfast and we launched to do a turn through the system to see if anything new showed up. The scanner exploded with new signals. Encoded signals were everywhere. My heart started racing as I pointed the ship toward the Earth-like World in the system. And there it was: Explorer's Anchorage.
Clearly, the station has a ways to go before it's ready to be really relied upon. But, still, it was a welcome site. Skeleton crews were still scattered around the exterior, but I went ahead and locked onto the beacon and sent a docking request. I half expected the controller to either not respond at all or simply deny my request. To my surprise, he gave me a pad number. In we go!.
I think I may have been the first independent commander to set down on the station! I've not seen anyone in the system the entire two weeks I've been out here, and I wasn't picking up any comms traffic outside of the workers. Anyway, I anxiously pulled up the station display to see what was functional at this point. Not much, really. I was able to refuel. If The Ceti Azeria had needed repairs, that would have been out of the question. And, would you know it, I couldn't sell off any of my cartographic data. The Mission board is up, and there are already several factions listed, but nobody had any missions--I expect those to come in a week or so with the DW2 fleet arrival. There's no restocking yet and the passenger terminal isn't functioning properly, either. There's a little bit of Outfitting available, but nothing above about a C-class module. The Remote Engineering support is in place.
So, Explorer's Anchorage is now in place, about as close to Sag-A as you could safely build a station. At least now I can continue exploring the region and have a decent place to park. I'll be staying on the ship, though, when we're docked at EA...the staterooms in the station are straight up utilitarian right now. I've got more room on my ship and it's not so stark. I'm guessing the station accommodations are sparse for now because of all the miners and construction workers coming in soon. Let's face it, some of those folks are as untidy as it gets. Maybe the station will upgrade those later, after construction is completed.
It's finally getting lively here in the center of the galaxy!