JACQUES RECON AND RESUPPLY - DAY 16
20 Jul 2016James Hussar
Current location: PLOI AIM GL-Y D196, planet 1. Distance to Sol: 9,922.20
Distance to Jacques Station: 12,164.28
Distance to Sagittarius A: 17, 010.69
After a week of downtime performing maintenance and running a variety of experiments, I'm back on course for Jacques Station. Reaching the mid-point in the journey. I really underestimated the impact of such a limited jump range. I was also wrong to go with a maximum shield generator and the next-size down of fuel scoop. A larger scoop and smaller shields would have been more than adequate. The shields are only really necessary when landing on a high-G planet, so long as you're otherwise careful, and refueling takes too long no matter what.
Ship condition is nominal. No additional damage besides a few scrapes before the maintenance window due to hitting a stellar boy exclusion zone in supercruise. I haven't even bothered to fix things there and won't until I either NEED to make repairs or reach Jacques.
So, experiments. These life-bearing gas giants fascinate me, more than terrestrial worlds, water worlds and even ammonia worlds. Gas giants are such a marvelously different environment, completely unrelatable to me. The radioplankton exist in the upper layers of the atmosphere where some utilize photosynthesis but most survive, even thrive by way of radiosynthesis - they feed on electromagnetic radiation from the nearby star or from the planet itself and its magnetic field.
I haven't the equipment on board to perform a detailed biological survey of the samples I've collected so I will be packing them in deep storage and find a proper facility to work with on that once I return to the Bubble. I'm eager to know if they are genetically similar to each other, or to other life-forms - maybe even to us. The prevalence of these microbes in deep space certainly serves to underscore the panspermia theory - that life throughout the Universe arrives on planets from elsewhere rather than evolving from non-living matter. A genetic study that shows similarity among distant samples would further support this theory, and with enough samples from a large enough volume of space would allow us to observe genetic differences between the samples and walk those differences backward to see if we can determine the general direction from which this life has come to the planets it currently inhabits. This has been done on Earth to determine how human population migrated to colonize the entire planet, and it has been done to map the evolution of human languages, and to locate the places where ancient discoveries were made - it's a fascinating application of Big Data analysis.
The experiments I was prepared and equipped to perform have been a lot more practical. By using the subsystems of the secondary field-maintenance unit I've been able to create a rudimentary microbial furnace that uses the radioplankton instead of the genetically engineered yeasts and other common microbes. Getting the appropriate chemistry and pressure of the environment just right took a bit of doing, and once that was done, being able to manipulate them closely enough took a bit more doing, but I'm rather pleased with the results.
What I've found is that once the proper equilibrium is established and the optimal parameters for the radioplankton are set up, the plankton will, in many cases, filter additional materials out of the atmosphere as a waste product of their metabolism. The additional of raw gassified metals, for example, will lead to the precipitation of microscopic crystals of those metals, resulting in a collectible dust of pure metal. Gassified alloy will be converted to the dust made up of the constituent metals. AND VICE-VERSA under certain conditions.
This is, in my view, a HUGE opportunity. Some alloys are damned near impossible to synthesize today at large scale. Sure, we can use nanobot assemblers but the time and energy needed to do so is cost prohibitive. Outside of laboratories and for very limited purposes, we just can't make materials that are light enough, strong enough, etc, in useful quantities. Using biologics like some radioplankton could change this.
Another MAJOR result... I've made meta-alloy! Just a few grams of it, and nowhere near the size of granules that can be harvested from the "barnacles" in the Pleiades sector - but the spectrograph says it's the same stuff. I do not have an electron microscope on board so I can't see the micro-structure of the dust made by the radioplankton, and I do not expect the aerogel-like lattice structure to be there, but the alloy itself is right, at least in the preliminary experimental "proof of concept" stage.
This leads me to wonder... Maybe the "barnacles" are related somehow to the radioplankton. Maybe they're alien microbial furnaces or factories for the assembly at the molecular level of a raw material the aliens need for some purpose. We know meta-alloys help to repair stations damaged by alien artifacts. I'd need to get my hands on an artifact or probe and see what the plankton wold make of the material of which those are made. Maybe the aliens use meta-alloy to make their own ships, if they're a technological race. Maybe the "barnacles" are a sort of terraforming machine. I don't know enough about what goes on under the surface of the planets where they have been found. Maybe they convert the metals needed to make meta-alloys into some sort of a scaffold under the surface - like pouring molten aluminium into an anthill...
Anyway, the people at Canonn Research will probably be better equipped than I am to do further work in this area. I'll contact them once I return to the Bubble - I've put my experiments in storage and sent my data to an escrow service for no - just in case I do not return, they will relay the data to Canonn.
While in the Eagle Nebula, I scoped out a few of the star systems there. It would have taken much too long to do a proper survey. Many young stars there, many with planets. I landed on one and spent the night. In the "morning", with the ship on low power and a number of non-essential systems powered off, I heard things. Strange things. The ship makes it's own noises, but with most systems off, there were sounds for which I could not account.Only possibility is the modified FMU running the plankton experiments, but that jut didn't seem to be it.
It was melodic. Like chimes and almost chatters, with an occasional thin and distant whine - almost like what whale-song on Earth sounds like. I tried to sort out what it was, but was also eager to resume my trip, so I didn't linger. But, a few systems out of the nebula, I landed again and was struck by the lack of these sounds. Their presence was vague when there, but blatantly obvious in its absence. I missed it and nearly turned back. I have to wonder - had I stayed longer, would I have been able to leave? Might there be Sirens in the Eagle Nebula, luring other pilots there to their end? I saw no crash sites, and no USS in space, but I feel drawn back there even now. It's odd.
Once I'm done with this venture, I'll need to revisit the Eagle Nebula in a more jump-capable ship to see if I can find the source of those sounds. Unless I only imagined them.