My collected thoughts on the subject matter: (may contain tinfoil)
I have been thinking about the MA CG and as others have already stated it seems to be not be completable.
We know of less than a handful of permanent barnacle sites and it does not seem to be proper gameplay practice to refresh instances through mode switching. Now people say a lot of bad things about FD regarding regarding bugs and gameplay decisions, but I don't think they deliberate mean for us to constantly jump modes to harvest MAs in order to complete this CG. Even if we did that 24/7 reaching Tier 1 seems like a stretch. Looked like it yesterday night at least. I have not logged in since.
Which leads me to the conclusion, that we are either doing it wrong, or that the CG is meant to be uncompletable. Now for a gamemaster (which FD are) posing their players an uncompletable goal is possible, but again not best practice. In my experience its best to pose goals that are 100% completable if players give it all of their effort and capability and maybe a little more than that for added fun.
So lets assume FD are not so mean or incapable as GMs to crush us with a task that is meant to be uncompletable. Even if we get a majority of the players to help, jumping modes to refresh the handful of barnacles can not be the intended solution.
We need to either find out how to find more barnacles, I have seen some great and inspirational work in that direction on this thread.
Or find a way to have the trees around them make more MAs. Because I think they are trees and may not be directly connected to the barnacle. They look different for one thing and remind me a lot the conceptional Dyson Trees:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_tree They seem to be engineered plant structures that are designed to extract and package minerals from the soil. Probably specifically for the use in material synthesis, either by their creators or by us.
Also the morse of the UAs still makes me think theese things might actually be man made. Either that or they are meant to attract and contact us by an alien intelligence that intends for us to use the trees around the barnacles.
Maybe we can find a way to tend them or even replant them elsewhere. They open like flowers. That would imply the MA are not actually ripened fruit yet. The little firefly looking things around them might be a kind of pollen or another organism doing the pollinating.
What if we are supposed to help this process along somehow (and I have not real idea how) to have the trees develop actual seeds.
(According to some people there is a barnacle seed resource in the game files. But I do not know if it is the current MA or something else entirely. If it is the MA we already know that raises a whole new question.)
Also is it just me or has the interior of obsidian orbital become eerily quiet with UA and Barnacle like sounds in the background? Is it like that in all the afflicted stations? And was there ever a station announcer at Obsidian Orbital?
I have been thinking about the MA CG and as others have already stated it seems to be not be completable.
We know of less than a handful of permanent barnacle sites and it does not seem to be proper gameplay practice to refresh instances through mode switching. Now people say a lot of bad things about FD regarding regarding bugs and gameplay decisions, but I don't think they deliberate mean for us to constantly jump modes to harvest MAs in order to complete this CG. Even if we did that 24/7 reaching Tier 1 seems like a stretch. Looked like it yesterday night at least. I have not logged in since.
Which leads me to the conclusion, that we are either doing it wrong, or that the CG is meant to be uncompletable. Now for a gamemaster (which FD are) posing their players an uncompletable goal is possible, but again not best practice. In my experience its best to pose goals that are 100% completable if players give it all of their effort and capability and maybe a little more than that for added fun.
So lets assume FD are not so mean or incapable as GMs to crush us with a task that is meant to be uncompletable. Even if we get a majority of the players to help, jumping modes to refresh the handful of barnacles can not be the intended solution.
We need to either find out how to find more barnacles, I have seen some great and inspirational work in that direction on this thread.
Or find a way to have the trees around them make more MAs. Because I think they are trees and may not be directly connected to the barnacle. They look different for one thing and remind me a lot the conceptional Dyson Trees:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_tree They seem to be engineered plant structures that are designed to extract and package minerals from the soil. Probably specifically for the use in material synthesis, either by their creators or by us.
Also the morse of the UAs still makes me think theese things might actually be man made. Either that or they are meant to attract and contact us by an alien intelligence that intends for us to use the trees around the barnacles.
Maybe we can find a way to tend them or even replant them elsewhere. They open like flowers. That would imply the MA are not actually ripened fruit yet. The little firefly looking things around them might be a kind of pollen or another organism doing the pollinating.
What if we are supposed to help this process along somehow (and I have not real idea how) to have the trees develop actual seeds.
(According to some people there is a barnacle seed resource in the game files. But I do not know if it is the current MA or something else entirely. If it is the MA we already know that raises a whole new question.)
Also is it just me or has the interior of obsidian orbital become eerily quiet with UA and Barnacle like sounds in the background? Is it like that in all the afflicted stations? And was there ever a station announcer at Obsidian Orbital?
Here is a Picture for comparison (the markers on the galaxymap are just put there as examples). 
