The World of Death
It’s time! I’m ready to leave. The fullness of the Galaxy awaits!
To begin with, I need to make a short initial shakedown trip follwed by a much bigger one. The first is mainly a shakedown voyage for the Lovely Jubbly. Just a small one, only 600 odd light years from Colonia. A local landmark. Somewhere I’ve been dreaming of visiting for quite some time!
Of course I’m referring to the infamous World of Death! (or to give it its proper, yet far more mundane name – SPOIHAAE XE-X d2-9 A1). A planet that has a highly eccentric orbit around one of the deadliest phenomena in the galaxy. A white dwarf. White dwarfs have very large exclusion zones compared to their size within which a ship can heat up very rapidly. The World of Death, at the far end of its orbit only brielfy exits the exclusion zone before passing through the jet cone. It is then briefly still outside the zone as it emerges from the deadly spray before it dives into the EZ again on its way back to the star.
So landing on the thing can be rather tricky! It is, however, more than worth attempting. Because the view as the planet approaches, then slingshots its way terrifyingly close around its deadly sun is one of the greatest shows in the galaxy!
I sent the Esmerelda Weatherwax from its mining berth 500 light years toward the system leaving just me and the Lovely Jubbly 13 jumps to catch it up. From there it would only be a mere 3 jumps to reach the system. I’ve decided to do the majority of my exploring this way because 13 jumps is a nice short burst with which to explore before handing in my cartographic and biological data at the far end, and it is how I intend to do most of my exploring as we travel – short hops, catching my fleet carrier up each time. I watched excitedly as Esme was swallowed up by the hyperspace counduit and waited until both she had vanished, and the tear into witch space had faded. I set a course to rendezvous…
And jumped!
The journey there was mostly uneventful. Found some nice bios, including the rather lucrative Stratum Tectonicas, and by the time we had caught up with Esme I had earned around 300 million in exobiology data. Also, as a pleasant suprise, I discovered I had neglected to hand in the last page of data from my journey out to Colonia and that was worth a wopping 900 million. So, quite a nice paypacket for 13 jumps! Now, it was just the small matter of travelling the remaining 100 odd light years and attempting a landing.
Once I jumped into the system (SPOIHAAE XE-X d2-9) the enormity of the challenge became immediately apparrant. The orbit takes around an hour so I had to wait a while for the planet to come within range. I had never done this before so it was with great trepidation and excitement that I hoped I had judged it right.
I had, however, made a mistake. I thought I’d been careful to travel around the jet cone enough so that I woudn’t cruise through it on my way to the planet but I was wrong, As I neared the body alarms began to sound and the Lovely Jubbly suddenly started to throw itself around like a small boat in a storm as the stream of the jet cone took control. Somehow, I manage to fly through, frantically following the planet as it made it’s own way through the cone to emerge safely on the other side. I had to land now or it would be too late, I would enter the exclusion zone before reaching the surface, my FSD would cut out and I would fry as I tried to escape back outside. If I had survived that I would then have to wait another hour for the planet to come back around.
I headed toward the night side, desperately following the deadly globe until, with some considerable relief, I managed to enter orbital flight. After what seemed like an age, the ship engaged glide, I gently flew down to the planet surface and landed.
I had made it!
I sat there, giddy with excitement. I was down. On the World of Death! Almost in shock I deployed Rodney, the Lovely Jubbly‘s SRV Scarab, dismissed the ship, turned Rodney to face the cone spraying over the horizon and settled down to enjoy the ride.
It’s rather difficult to describe the light show of actually sitting on a planetary surface passing along the jet cone of a white dwarf. I’m afraid screenshots do the experience no justice whatsoever. The fountains of light, of multitudinous shades of saphire, dance, weave and pulsate in a great fan spreading endlessly into the sky.
It gradually grows in intensity, becoming brighter with every passing minute, arching over my head. Panning behind I could see the tip of the cone, far off now, streaming endlessly off into space. It was breathtakingly beautiful. I just sat there, in silence. Entranced. Speechless. Moved, almost, to tears.
But the best was yet to come!
The jet began to slowly change it’s angle until it was almost parallel with the horizon, like a giant celestial river of azure and cobalt. Soon it began to dip behind the distant mountains. I began to panic. Had I landed somewhere where I would miss the finale? I remembered I should look behind, that would be where the star would rise.
Then it happened.
The stars began to move and spin as the planet reached the closest point and the gravity of the star caused it to spin where it’s pull is strongest. The blazing white dwarf shot up into the sky, huge and blinding, bathing everything in a cold light. It was so spectaular I inadvertantly blurted out an “Oh my fucking GOD!”
It was utterly, utterly spectacular. I watched it gracefully retreating off into space. I’m not sure how long I watched. But when I thought it must have been at a safe enough distance for me to recall the ship and leave, I recalled the Lovely Jubbly, boarded Rodney into his bay, and began the lift off sequence.
I was wrong again.
We were still inside the exclusion zone. I hadn’t waited long enough. Soon after launch the Jubbly began to rapidly overheat. Alarms began blaring desperately in my ears. Before I could do anything my heat was at 110% and rising fast. The hull began to degrade as I fumbled for the heatsink controls. But they wouldn’t show up. Heat 120%. No matter how many times I cycled through the fire groups there seemed to be nothing to fire the heatsink. Heat 150%. I was sure I’d included the heatsink launcher in a fire group. Heat 160%, hull degrading fast, modules degrading, sparks and smoke erupting from the console. I checked my fire groups on the right terminal. It was there! Why wouldn’t it show up? I cycled again, alarms and COVAS screaming. The heatsink control appeared. I fired one off and the ship cooled.
Not out of the woods yet. Ship still heating back up rapidly. I fired off another heatsink, and another. Ship was still continuing to gain heat, but I had no heatsinks left! I fumbled with the module list and began the process to synthesise more heatsinks. Ship was at 130% heat once more before the process ended. I fired off one more heatsink to cool the ship just as she left the EZ. I breathed a huge sigh of relief. I was out.
For an intial voyage – I don’t think this one will ever be bettered!
I flew straight back to Esme, and then jumped her back to Colonia. All in all I had earned well over a billion on this trip, there and back (some of it earned well before, just not claimed) so I decided to increase my ship pool to add to the variety of ways to explore the galaxy! I ordered my Type 9 – the Freddled Gruntbuggly and my Imperial Clipper – the Samus Aran (if you want a full list of the ships I’ve taken then go and read the introduction to my Great Expedition here). While I waited I mined some more tritium and, once they arrived, I got them ready for exploration, with the Gruntbuggly as another mining option. Now it was time for the shakedown voyage for the Esmerelda Weatherwax.
And the destination I had chosen promised to be just as spectacular!
The Collection of Wonders
Skaude AA-A h294 is one of the most spectacular systems in the galaxy. Boasting binary black holes, a ringed red giant, ringed white dwarf, ringed neutron star and every type of gas giant that can be found. Located about halfway between the Bubble and Colonia and not far from the Colonia Bridge it is an essential destination for any apsiring explorer’s first voyage. It is, of course, a place I have wanted to go ever since I first heard of it and, of course, I had chosen it as the destination of the much longer shakedown trip for the Emerelda Weatherwax.
I used the Spansh Fleet Carrier Router to plot Esme’s route to the system. Again launched the Jubbly and sent the carrier away on the first hop so I could catch her up, and I would carry on like this for ten more hops. Then it was just a case of searching for a suitable mining spot and recalling Esme to that point. There I could fill up her tanks and carry on.
Again it was a mostly uneventful trip, but I scanned whatever I could. Not absolutely everything but I scanned in places that looked like I could get a good return for my time.
I did, however, find some stunning Recepta Umbrux, which I have never encountered before. A single bio signal on a sulphur dioxide world.
There was also a system with several carbon dioxide worlds about half of which was a home to Tubus Cavas which is the most valuable of all the Tubus.
After about six hops I decided to give the Lovely Jubbly a rest and took out a ship that I had enjoyed exploring in before. My Imperial Courier, the Silver Machine!
See yourself going by
The other side of the sky
I’ve got a silver machine
The thing about the Silver Machine is that it’s tremendous fun to fly and explore in, looks stunning in any sunset, but it does tend to heat up quickly when fuel scooping.
After nine hops the fuel in Esme’s tanks were getting low, so as I made my way toward her after sending her on her tenth hop. I scanned as many ice rings as I could and, on the final system before reaching my carrier I found a ring with several tritium hotspots. I recalled the Weatherwax and docked. It was time for the Freddled Gruntbuggly to shine!
I thought I’d found a tritium overlap, but the other hotspot turned out to be void opals, still, I had no choice but to mine the stuff right here.
It took a while, I’m not all that efficient at mining anyway. But after a few sessions I was able to fill up Esme’s tanks and I could carry on. Still another 9 hops to go!
This time I didn’t explore along every hop. My gaming time was getting shortened so sometimes I only had time to log in and send the Weatherwax on without leaving her. Then when I next logged in I would already be at the next waypoint and the engines would be ready for the next hop. There were a few hops, however, where I decided to get out and explore the distance and, for those, I decided to get back in the Lovely Jubbly once more. I really missed her character, the way she dances and flits about so effortlessly searching for life. Finding a nice, dark, figid and distant neon world, I decided to go there to hunt Bacterium Acies in the cold twilight. Even though it can be very hard to find, and not worth many credits, I like to sometimes spend an entire session searching for colonies of this elusive lifeform. The landscapes are so desolate and lonely, and sometimes I crave that.
Eventually, one morning after having sent the Esmerelda Weatherwax on the previous evening, I awoke to the realisation that she was now waiting patiently at a system only a few lightyears away from SKAUDE AA-A h294. It was very early. I flipped on the computer and logged into another session, my heart skipping a beat every few seconds. Now it was time to launch another ship.
And this would be her maiden exploration voyage.
Time for my sidewinder, the Palomino, to do what she was destined to do!
I launched the Palomino. Targetted to system. Charged the FSD. My heart was in my mouth. I could barely breath. My hands were shaking. I have dreamed of visiting this place for a very long time. The FSD charged. The countdown began. I was about to immerse myself in one of the most incomparable systems in the galaxy.
Approaching a black hole system in hyperspace is strange. There is no light at the end of the tunnnel. Just an all consuming nothingness. I emerged, slowed my supercruise speed and cautiously approched the main star.
SKAUDE AA-A h294 A
Of course, this black hole is much like most other black holes. Eerie, unsettling, yet mesmerising. I hung there for quite a while, entranced by the way it plays with the light, like I always am. Then it was time to investigate the next Wonder.
SKAUDE AA-A h294 AB1
The ringed M class red giant I had seen in both screenshots and videos before. As usual, however, nothing is quite the same as going to see it for yourself. Its series of rings are almost black, as the star, though huge, only gives out a small amount of light. This gives the asteroids a scorched look, as if the star had once comsumed them and spat them all out, all black and burned. Flying through the rings provides the stunnning effect of the dull, red light seeping through the gaps, like molten lava glimpsed through fog.
SKAUDE AA-A h294 AB2
The ringed white dwarf. For a white dwarf it’s on the smaller end of the scale. Its ring is also very hard to see. I’m still unsure how far it extends beyond the exclusion zone. Flying to the ring was risky. Firstly, you can barely see it, so you never know when it’s going to pull you out of supercruise once you get too close. Secondly, it’s really hard to see where the exclusion zone is, so when trying to get as close to the star as possible to get the best shots from the rings, you risk hitting it. Still, the light coming through those rocks is as mesmerising as the M class.
Also worth a mention is SKAUDE AA-A h294 AB 2i, a methane class T brown dwarf with a wide ring system which can give great views of the white dwarf.
SKAUDE AA-A h294 AB3
The ring system surrounding the neutron star is vast! Even though you may have seen pictures of it before it still comes as quite a shock when you approach close enough. They seem to expand out to all eternity like a giant, infinte roulette wheel. Yet the specactle doesn’t stop there! Once I’d dropped into the ring system itself the views were dumbfounding!
The star is dazzlingly bright, shining like an intense explosion, frozen in time at the point of detonation. Its powerful jet cones fire off into the emptiness whilst the rocks orbit in reverance to their guardian beacon. In fact, the rings spin around the neutron at quite a speed and, if you look, once you are instanced with them you notice the galaxy slowly spinning around you.
Travelling through the rings, the neutron flickers off and on as the asteroids briefly obsure its radiance. The beams of frozen light glare through the cosmic dust, and those ever present jet cones pin the star like a bright celestial axle. I flew though the asteroids, around them, between them, amongst them, joining them in worship of their great, powerful and blinding deity, completely hypnotised by its glory.
SKAUDE AA-A h294 B
The second and much smaller of the black hole binary pair. Unlike the main black hole I approached with the galactic center directly behind the event horizon. Again I spent ages just flying around and marvelling at the way the light of the galaxy and surrounding stars bends around the singularity. Finally, I risked flying right into the exclusion zone.
When I was younger, the family had holidays in Mid Wales and we visited the water dams holding back the reservoirs around the Elan Valley. I was really struck by them and not long after I passed my driving test I went up there a few times. The biggest dam, the Claerwen Dam, you could actually walk along. I remember leaning over the wall to watch the water cascading down the dam to the river far, far below. It was a terrifying feeling. Every instinct in my body was screaming at me to pull away, even though I was quite safe. But I forced myself to stay there.
That is the feeling I get when breaking into the exclusion zone of a black hole.
I had been exploring here for nearly three hours. And they had gone by in what felt like three minutes. It was time to return to the Weatherwax.
This system has far surpassed my wildest expecations. it really shows off what Elite Dangerous can do, a feeling I have never had from any other game. I will be staying and playing here over the festive season and in the new year it will be time to visit another black hole. A much, much bigger one. And this one could kill me.
I’ll be travelling to the very center of the galaxy!
And seeing as Yuletide is just around the corner, I have prepared a pressie! My video making skills are rudimentary at best, and my camera work can get a bit jittery, but…
Ladies, Gentlemen and all those wonderful people around the sides and in between, I present to you – The Colection of Wonders!
Elite Dangerous RUSH FLEET 