Week Eight Out

Eight weeks into my journey and the last few days has been about scanning and moving across 2000Ly. The move, made mainly over the weekend to get closer to my next navigation point, has resulted in quite a difference to the star field around me. I'm now surrounded by bright points of starlight (as seen in the photo above), the stars being far denser in number now, which is a good indicator that I'm getting closer to the core and where i need to be.

The final stage of the exploration trip beckons nearer and I'm starting to think over exactly what i want to do and where i want to go. The plan was always to scan as much as possible and then head for Sagittarius A* — the final destination before heading for home. Currently that remains the plan but the amount of time needed to get there and back home look as though it will be longer than i thought. Sagittarius A* is, after all, 25,900Ly from home.

So I'm playing with the idea of extending the trip slightly OR the other option of not visiting Sagittarius A* at all — though a visit to the super massive black hole would make a great finale to the outbound trip. In the end it might be the heart, rather than the head, that finally determines when i turn the ship on a course back to the bubble. Even at my current distance from Sol it would probably take me around two weeks to return home.

Probably my best course of action is to play it by ear and see what happens. I can’t imagine the trip being extended by any more than four weeks anyway — and most of that would likely include the return trip back to the bubble. The upside of staying out longer is more scan data can be collected and handed in when i get back. I certainly need to think about this carefully and hopefully i may have come to some conclusions by the end of the month.

As for material/element hunting, I did manage to get the Anaconda set down on Friday night with the aim of going vanadium hunting in the morning. As i posted previously, I wanted to refill the AFM but actually finding the vanadium required was proving to be tough. I managed to find most other material and elements but no vanadium. Well i finally managed to come across some that morning which boosted the AFM ammo supply nicely. Yay!

After delving into the forum posts it appears that geographic location is a factor in the types of materials and elements recovered. With this in mind I'm going to vary future planetary landing sites when I'm searching for materials— it’s probably likely that I've been landing and looking in the wrong locations for specific materials! I’ll report any ‘research’ findings in later posts.

This coming week is more of the same — more scanning and probably another move of around 2000Ly at the weekend to keep pace.

Until next week… Fly safe.