For quite some time now I've been kicking around the idea of a group planetary circumnavigation (think one of the organised galactic space expeditions, but in SRVs exploring the surface of just one planet).
The idea has been raised time and again in discussions around the Planetary Circumnavigation Club's members lounge and I've also been contacted by other commanders and groups from time to time who are considering a similar thing.
Finally I really feel like it's time to make this happen. I appreciate that a lot of people are off on Distant Worlds 2 but I really can't wait the better part of year before doing this (so advance apologies to those of you on your way across the galaxy who won't be able to take part).
The basic idea is to find a truly wonderful landable planet/moon, carefully plan a route (a vague circumnavigation but deviating to take in some of the more notable landmarks), gather together a group of players interested in doing this and then head on out to explore what Frontier and the Stellar Forge have created in a brand new way.
So, the first thing is to find our planet.
I have in mind a circumference of somewhere between 3000 km and 4000 km (with a total journey length of maybe 6000 or 7000 km), looking to spend somewhere between 2 weeks and a month making the journey (although I'm happy to adjust this to maximise people's willingness to take part). So we're looking at a planet/moon with a radius around 550km.
I'd like it to be a fairly low gravity planet because I really enjoy this mode of travel ..
That one was Pleione 3A which has a gravity of 0.05g. Again tho' - I'm willing to be persuaded otherwise about this aspect of the journey.
I think the main thing is that the planet should be really spectacular. That means it needs to have nice lighting, perhaps a nice view of a nearby twin moon, parent ringed gas giant or nebula? It also needs to have loads of really interesting terrain and plenty of tough (but far from impossible challenges) - things we can pick out as waypoints, places to meet (should it even have some planetary bases perhaps?), things to see (maybe some geological/biological POIs?), obstacles to be overcome.
Here's a small selection of images (a "mood board" if you like) to illustrate the sort of things I have in mind.
So - please let me know in the thread if you're interested. Let me know your thoughts and, most important of all, start scouting for candidate worlds to explore. I've created a google sheet here where we can enter our suggestions and also keep track of any worlds we've ruled out for whatever reason (in order to avoid multiple people scouting the same location). For starters you can use EDDB to search for landable bodies within 50ly of named reference systems, adding "Radius" as an extra column which you can then sort on to narrow the list down to something around 550km (assuming we all vaguely agree on that size). There's also a list of smaller bodies at the end of the OP in the Planetary Circumnavigation Club's main forum thread although I think these are probably too small for our purposes.
Let's do this thing!
Prelminary rosta:
List of Planetary circumnavigation candidate worlds
The idea has been raised time and again in discussions around the Planetary Circumnavigation Club's members lounge and I've also been contacted by other commanders and groups from time to time who are considering a similar thing.
Finally I really feel like it's time to make this happen. I appreciate that a lot of people are off on Distant Worlds 2 but I really can't wait the better part of year before doing this (so advance apologies to those of you on your way across the galaxy who won't be able to take part).
The basic idea is to find a truly wonderful landable planet/moon, carefully plan a route (a vague circumnavigation but deviating to take in some of the more notable landmarks), gather together a group of players interested in doing this and then head on out to explore what Frontier and the Stellar Forge have created in a brand new way.
So, the first thing is to find our planet.
I have in mind a circumference of somewhere between 3000 km and 4000 km (with a total journey length of maybe 6000 or 7000 km), looking to spend somewhere between 2 weeks and a month making the journey (although I'm happy to adjust this to maximise people's willingness to take part). So we're looking at a planet/moon with a radius around 550km.
I'd like it to be a fairly low gravity planet because I really enjoy this mode of travel ..
[video=youtube_share;7E7wxMIUuOQ]https://youtu.be/7E7wxMIUuOQ[/video]
I think the main thing is that the planet should be really spectacular. That means it needs to have nice lighting, perhaps a nice view of a nearby twin moon, parent ringed gas giant or nebula? It also needs to have loads of really interesting terrain and plenty of tough (but far from impossible challenges) - things we can pick out as waypoints, places to meet (should it even have some planetary bases perhaps?), things to see (maybe some geological/biological POIs?), obstacles to be overcome.
Here's a small selection of images (a "mood board" if you like) to illustrate the sort of things I have in mind.
So - please let me know in the thread if you're interested. Let me know your thoughts and, most important of all, start scouting for candidate worlds to explore. I've created a google sheet here where we can enter our suggestions and also keep track of any worlds we've ruled out for whatever reason (in order to avoid multiple people scouting the same location). For starters you can use EDDB to search for landable bodies within 50ly of named reference systems, adding "Radius" as an extra column which you can then sort on to narrow the list down to something around 550km (assuming we all vaguely agree on that size). There's also a list of smaller bodies at the end of the OP in the Planetary Circumnavigation Club's main forum thread although I think these are probably too small for our purposes.
Let's do this thing!
Prelminary rosta:
- Alec Turner
- Jonas Treesong
- Nick Sticks
- Ian Phillips
- SushiCW
- tazbert
- AkenBosch
- rootsrat + various members of the Winged Hussars
- Kaa Mchorror
- Stasis Wolf
- Florenus
- Macedonica
- Jyn Young
- Caliber_az
- Walter2
- subhouse07
- Taronas
- Termite Altair
- The first great planetary expedition
- Scarab Trek 3305
- 4 Wheel Drive Circumnavigation Expedition
- Wrong Way Round
- Distant Wheels
- Magellan Project
- Once Around The Rock
- Rock Around The Clock (or Clock Around the Rock?)
- The Cannonball Rally
- There and Back Again - an SRVs' Tale
- Road to Ridges
- The One World expedition
List of Planetary circumnavigation candidate worlds
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