Long Distance from Sol Attempt

ENCHANTMEN

ENCHANTMEN
It took around an hour to do the rendezvous, mostly due to Larry, who was way off-course. C'mon, Larry.

I took the opportunity to take a group photo. It was hard to get good lighting due to the absence of, well, anything, but I was able to take one silhouetted with the galaxy behind them with the gamma turned all the way up.

sMBtFgJ.png

Due to this stop messing with my fuel amounts I'm really gonna have to eyeball when to do the first pit stop. I think I'll do it whevener EDDiscovery says Curly's at 416T of fuel, which should be in about 2 days from now.
 

ENCHANTMEN

ENCHANTMEN
shaunpond said:
Well there's a story for this week's Hutton Orbital news - we covered your initial declaration of intent in September, so we have to do a follow-up piece ;)
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Oh, thanks! As before, feel free to use any images you like. I can also provide additional screenshots or information if you need it. :)
 

Deluvian

Deluvian
ENCHANTMEN said:
Oh, thanks! As before, feel free to use any images you like. I can also provide additional screenshots or information if you need it. :)
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Careful what you wish for... from now on you're gonna get a reminder on Tuesday that you're gonna get another reminder next day that it is Wednesday and it will be a reminder that the next day is Thursday and your next story episode is due :D
 

ENCHANTMEN

ENCHANTMEN
We're getting close to the first refueling stop. I calculate about 12 hours until Curly's fuel level is at the optimal level for transfer.

I'm currently at 23.5LY out from Ishum's. 12*2001 light-hours comes out to 2.7 light-years, so I should be at 26.2LY when I refuel.

At first I was like "wow, that's about what I predicted to be the optimal distance!", but then I thought about it a little harder. I planned for Curly to burn 140 tons of fuel. At 1.23T/hr and moving at 2001c that comes out to just a tiny bit under 26.0LY

And that's a best-case scenario with no fuel wasted. I wasted about 30-60 minutes of fuel during my earlier rendezvous, so there's no way I should be able to go that far.

Somehow my ship is pulling 0.2LY out of nowhere.

Best case scenario is some sort of rounding error, like maybe it's burning 1.225 T/hr and it rounds up to 1.23 (although that'd only give up to 0.1 extra light-year). Worst case scenario, EDDiscovery's fuel display has desynchronized and is displaying more fuel than it actually has. It does seem to be a bit confused by multiple instances running on one PC; the fuel meter keeps switching between ships.

Unfortunately, there's no other way for me to tell how much fuel I have besides squinting really hard at the bar and guessing, so I'll follow its lead for now. Once I make the refueling stop, I can count the exact number of tons each ship burned by how many limpets it takes to top them off.

I guess I'll find out soon enough!

shaunpond said:
I was thinking of doing a "dear diary, what a day I've had..." kind of thing :)
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Just let me know if you need me to make notes or write anything!
 

ENCHANTMEN

ENCHANTMEN
I've arrived at the first refueling stop!

Unfortunately, the actual refueling process will take around 3-4 hours and it's past midnight, so they'll be idle until after work tomorrow.

They stopped at 26.0LY out from Ishum's. I ended up burning longer than intended due to underestimating the drift, but I have an idea to reduce the impact of drift for the next leg of the trip.

wHDNzmK.png

Yes, that's actual resolution. It's 800x600 with min graphics settings :)

Also, fun fact, the discovery scanner still works 26LY away 🤔
 

ENCHANTMEN

ENCHANTMEN
The refueling was successful. Mostly.

https://imgur.com/w6R7eJV

As it turns out, no, it does not tell you when the target ship's fuel is full. Why would it? After all, it's not like someone would launch 60-70 tons of fuel at an already full ship while attempting something where fuel needs to be optimized! 🙃

So yeah, instead of Moe being nearly full after refueling, it's at about 90% instead. This means that the second leg of the journey will be nearly cut in half, so I'll lose about 16LY or so.

On the plus side, I did find something neat: all the spent limpets clustered together.

rdwVeD2.png

And yes, before you ask, of course I rammed them. Who wouldn't?

https://imgur.com/ODH5PQE

With that all done, it was time for Vivienne Clone #1 (aboard Curly) to leave. The tanker pilots may die, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make :)

mtOjXdM.jpg

She reincarnated aboard Demuynck Memorial, where she'll switch to another ship to fly back to rescue the main ship once it does the final jump. Demuynck Memorial is currently parked near Colonia, so I'll need to fly her back the long way.

Finally, it came to my attention on the last leg that my stopwatch rolled over at 24 hours. Fortunately, I know of an alternate solution.

OUQ99zR.png

So, see you in 4 days or so!
 
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Deluvian

Deluvian
ENCHANTMEN said:
The refueling was successful. Mostly.

As it turns out, no, it does not tell you when the target ship's fuel is full. Why would it? After all, it's not like someone would launch 60-70 tons of fuel at an already full ship while attempting something where fuel needs to be optimized! 🙃

So yeah, instead of Moe being nearly full after refueling, it's at about 90% instead. This means that the second leg of the journey will be nearly cut in half, so I'll lose about 16LY or so.
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Don't you dare to give up :)

o7
 

ENCHANTMEN

ENCHANTMEN
Unfortunately my game got disconnected overnight, so I will be unable to finish the next leg before the 20th. I'm going to be travelling to visit relatives over the holidays, so there won't be any progress until late December/early January. Sorry!
 

ENCHANTMEN

ENCHANTMEN
Back home and back underway! Sadly Phil didn't get me anything for christmas. To be fair, he is a cactus and I didn't get him anything either, but still.

I did notice the paint job is noticeably worn down by all this supercruising, though. I don't do a whole lot of exploration (mostly just neutron-assisted jaunts here and there), so it's a bit odd to see...

bnyp4G5.png

Currently at about 26.8LY. My calculations show the next refueling will be in a little under 4 days at about 48LY out, which it almost certainly won't be since I'll probably have some sort of unforeseen issue in the meantime. Maybe a connection issue, maybe one of the tankers is going backwards, maybe I'll be eaten by space cucumbers. Who knows?
 

varonica

varonica
ENCHANTMEN said:
Back home and back underway! Sadly Phil didn't get me anything for christmas. To be fair, he is a cactus and I didn't get him anything either, but still.

I did notice the paint job is noticeably worn down by all this supercruising, though. I don't do a whole lot of exploration (mostly just neutron-assisted jaunts here and there), so it's a bit odd to see...
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Time in SC is directly correlated to paint wear!
 

ENCHANTMEN

ENCHANTMEN
I'm about 14 hours out from the second refueling stop, so it's time to implement my plan to cut down on drift: have Moe go on ahead while the rest wait.

My last measurement of drift was about 0.7ly and the refueling stop is about 3.1ly away, so that's a deflection of just 13°, which gives a negligible loss of distance. I have produced this highly scientific and professional graphic to demonstrate the concept:

abQa37d.png


The downside is that it will take an extra 14 hours to arrive at the refueling point. Additionally, it will use a bit more fuel due to needing to leave Moe drifting with only life support and keeping the sensors on for the other two.

I chose to have the tanker go ahead since the target will use more fuel than the other two, and fuel is less valuable for each successive tanker since it takes more limpets per ton of fuel transferred to the main ship. For instance, only a third of the fuel transferred by Curly went straight to the main ship, the rest needs to "human centipede" its way through Moe and Larry first.

I'll see how this strategy goes soon enough... Current distance is 45.6LY.

VPt3Ukl.png

Just ignore that ship in the top right. (It's a surprise tool that will help us later)
 

ENCHANTMEN

ENCHANTMEN
Moe reached the proper fuel level at 48.6ly out. It dropped out of supercruise and went cold, then set up a wing beacon.

Turning on the sensors of the other two showed a fairly minor deflection to reach the rendezvous point. My precise angular distance measuring tool (guessing) says it's about 15°. The cosine of 15° is basically 1, so I call that a success!

4c2ol49.png

You can see that Curly is just a bit off center from their paths, whereas last time it was more like 90°.

I got Larry and the Border underway in the right direction, then disabled their sensors and had Mirabelle (Moe's pilot) log out, since leaving them on would burn 1.5 tons. I only need to check their orientation every few hours anyway.

The calculations gave 62.4ly for the second rendezvous, so the fueling debacle and the wasted distance from the drift from the last one costed 13.8ly. Fortunately, now I know what not to do :)
 
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