I like maths 
The universe is 400,000,000,000 systems. Some are empty sure, Some have 50+ objects in them. Say that your an explorer going out and *on average* it takes you 20 minutes to scan a system. To scan every system (assuming you figured out how to jump from new system to new system without ever repeating)
Working 24/7/365 it would take you :
400,000,000,000 * 20 minutes = 8 Trillion minutes or 15.2 Million years to scan every system.
Say there's 50,000 explorers out there on average putting in 2.5 hours a day : 150 minutes * 50,000 = 7.5 Million million exploration minutes per day. Then we could explore the whole galaxy in only... 1,066,666 days or 2,922 years. (assuming nobody repeats any systems).
But wait!
There's planets now. Lets say we want to explore the planets as well. Say that a great explorer can explore 200km/sq of a planet per hour. I looked at a bunch of airless planets, lets say their radius is on average 600km, then that gives each one a surface area of 4,520,000 sq km. That would take the explorer 22,600 hours to thoroughly scan a planet. Lets say he has some new tech that allows him to scan ooh 20,000 sq/km/hour. Thats 226 hours per planet.
At a guess maybe 1/4 systems have planets and on average lets say there's 2 airless explorable planets per system with planets. So that's 200,000,000,000 planets to explore.
So to explore them with our funky new exploring tech would take... 5.1 Billion years. If there were a million explorers searching 24/7 then we could scan every planet in the game in only 5151 years.
Does that give you any idea of how huge this universe is?
Not really, it's just numbers.
Frontier could plonk down 100,000 settlements on planets around the galaxy and even if they showed up on the ADS the chances of finding them in our lifetime would be less than the chance of winning the lottery.
I'm constantly amazed by how huge this is. Take a trip to Sag A* sometime, especially if you have never been out of the bubble. What's out there? Well nothing that you will ever find, but it's an achievement, it's like making a billion credits. Beware.. it will take you a long time! Just dont expect to find anything.
Back in the day, 8 galaxies with 256 systems each was huge on my spectrum 48k. This is just another scale completely. It's an incredible achievement.
The universe is 400,000,000,000 systems. Some are empty sure, Some have 50+ objects in them. Say that your an explorer going out and *on average* it takes you 20 minutes to scan a system. To scan every system (assuming you figured out how to jump from new system to new system without ever repeating)
Working 24/7/365 it would take you :
400,000,000,000 * 20 minutes = 8 Trillion minutes or 15.2 Million years to scan every system.
Say there's 50,000 explorers out there on average putting in 2.5 hours a day : 150 minutes * 50,000 = 7.5 Million million exploration minutes per day. Then we could explore the whole galaxy in only... 1,066,666 days or 2,922 years. (assuming nobody repeats any systems).
But wait!
There's planets now. Lets say we want to explore the planets as well. Say that a great explorer can explore 200km/sq of a planet per hour. I looked at a bunch of airless planets, lets say their radius is on average 600km, then that gives each one a surface area of 4,520,000 sq km. That would take the explorer 22,600 hours to thoroughly scan a planet. Lets say he has some new tech that allows him to scan ooh 20,000 sq/km/hour. Thats 226 hours per planet.
At a guess maybe 1/4 systems have planets and on average lets say there's 2 airless explorable planets per system with planets. So that's 200,000,000,000 planets to explore.
So to explore them with our funky new exploring tech would take... 5.1 Billion years. If there were a million explorers searching 24/7 then we could scan every planet in the game in only 5151 years.
Does that give you any idea of how huge this universe is?
Not really, it's just numbers.
Frontier could plonk down 100,000 settlements on planets around the galaxy and even if they showed up on the ADS the chances of finding them in our lifetime would be less than the chance of winning the lottery.
I'm constantly amazed by how huge this is. Take a trip to Sag A* sometime, especially if you have never been out of the bubble. What's out there? Well nothing that you will ever find, but it's an achievement, it's like making a billion credits. Beware.. it will take you a long time! Just dont expect to find anything.
Back in the day, 8 galaxies with 256 systems each was huge on my spectrum 48k. This is just another scale completely. It's an incredible achievement.
