PitTrip Part 4: San Tu, Zeta Cassiopaiae and the California Nebular

Moving on on my trip, I would like to explain a bit about the actual means of travel. I will start with long distance travel. I would like to explain the problem in that with a quote from Douglas Adams:

“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.”

Travelling to other stars is a bit problematic because of this detail in the real world. Luckily Elite: Dangerous engineers have solved this problem with the "Frame Shift Drive" that we can install in our spaceship. "Frame shift drive", by the way, is the written form - Everyone is pretty sure it is pronounced "Friendship drive". So, just make sure that there are no big objects nearby, charge the engine and jump on to a nearby star system. How much distance you can cover by one jump depends on the type of engine your ship has and its weight.

If you want to get somewhere fast, strip everyhting but the engine down to the absolute minimum and off you go. Problem is that you now basically fly a burning paperplane soaked in rocket fuel. If you want to get to your target alive some compromises regarding weight should be made.

The ships computer will calculate a save jump to the target system for you and drop you out of hyperspace at a safe distance from the main star. Some stars are binary systems and this edge case has not been taken much into account by the people developing the navigation software. So sometimes, while dropping out of hyperspace, you are still half in extradimensional travel but already see the real world - and fly at extreme speed directly through the secondary star in a binary system. It is the moment I actually am happy not to play in VR. I almost ruin my pants everytime this happens on a normal monitor already.

Also the definition of "safe spot to drop out" is a bit stretched in these systems.

This is fine!

This totally secure mode of travel brought me to the San Tu system first. This system has a huge installation orbiting planet 4C. Like last weeks visit at the Squirrels Nest Bar this installation wanted to be inspected in every detail and at high speeds. It has tunnels everywhere, even curved ones. So this is a great training site for the reckless pilot.

A city levitating in space. After my visit might have some scratches, though.

But I had to continue my travels. After a few jumps I was out of the human inhabitated bubble in space again - exploring dots of light in the vast darkness. Parking on strangely coloured planet surfaces - with pumpkins. Again.

my space camper for this trip

This picture of the "Indesctuctible 4" actually reminds me, that I have to anwer a question I have received after last weeks article. What happened to numbers one and two?

• The "Indesctructible" (it did not have a number then) got a little too close to a huge military Mega-Ship - and I have accidentaly touched the wrong button on my controller. This caused a short laser beam to be directed at the local military forces - suddenly my radar screen was full of fighters with deployed weapons heading in my direction. My ship lasted for around two more seconds.
• The "Indestructible 2" was on an exploration trip. I had just read, that filling your fuel tank from a white dwarf or a neutron star will supercharge your drive and give you extra range for one jump. So I flew very close to a white dwarf (just like I do for refueling at other stars coronae). Turns out that this supercharging has some details about it that I should have read up on beforehand. 

But back to the Trip: The meeting point for this week was in the system "California Sector BA-A e6". The sector is named after the California Nebular in this area.

The "California Nebular" got its name because its shape resembles the outlines of the state of California. Well. Ehmm. Yeah, right.

The sunday meetup this time was at the "Mic Turner Base" where we founded a new religion. Because all gods were already taken we have decided to dedicate our prayers to the local tourist beacon in that system.

All hail the mighty strange looking thingie

 After that the quality of my landing gear was checked by stacking as many other spaceships as possible onto my landed vessel. The landing gear held, so everyone took off with a boost. Note the lightup of shields during this maneuver - also multiple fines for "Reckless Flying close to a starport" needed to be paid afterwards.

This is CMDR Universallaie, currently docked at Wilson Port signing off.