Well, I managed to stuff up my visit to the Biological POI on the 10.66G Phroi Bluae IR-W f1-1530 AB 1.

I first landed, carefully of course, with just a small boop that dropped my shields to 87%.

I used the camera to look around, and grabbed a photo of the glowing Prasinum Bioluminescent Anemones.

And then I left. As soon as I hit supercruise I realised my stuff-up - I'd forgotten to scan the site! So I simply had to turn around and do it all again. This time I landed without dropping the shields even 1%.

I stopped for the night at Undine Haven, a neutron star system where one of the stars has six Water Worlds and an HMC all terraformable!

High-G Techniques

High-gravity worlds can be scary if you're not sure how to fly there. Any ship can land on a high-G world. All thrusters are magically capable of handling any G. My Beluga is configured with the usual explorer technique of using the smallest D-class thrusters that will fit, 6D in my case.

Landing

The landing technique is simple, but do a trial run on a low-G world first! Configure a button for Flight Assist in Hold mode NOT Toggle. Do the usual supercruise and glide in. Don't glide too steep or you might take too long to level out. About 20° down is good. As soon as the glide ends, pull up, level out, zero the throttle, and deploy landing gear. From now on, keep your ship level at all times. Turn by yawing only, don't roll or pitch up or down.

Land by tapping the Flight Assist button. Keep the taps as short as possible. Each tap will increase your vertical speed down. Try to keep it to 10-20 to start, slowing down as you get closer to the surface. Eventually you'll reach the altitude where the radar indicates a good landing spot. Use the throttle to go backwards and forwards and yaw to turn to find a spot. Stay level! When you've found a spot, tap Flight Assist until you land.

Take-Off

Taking off is a bit more simple. Just use the vertical thrust up control. You will continue holding the thrust up full up until just before you activate supercruise. If the gravity is high it might take a while to actually lift off - you will get there eventually. Once you're clear of the surface, go full forward throttle while keeping vertical up thrust full on. Stay level! Once you reach maximum velocity, pull the ship up to vertical 80-90° then release the vertical up thrust. On a high-G world your ship will slow right down, maybe even start going backwards! Don't panic - stay vertical, hit boost if you like. Your ship will start going forwards and up again. Wait until you reach maximum velocity, by which time you will have left mass lock and then supercruise away.

First thing I set off for WP9 - Cerulean Tranquility. By this time I was 3 days late. This system is a neutron star inside a blue nebula. WP9 was on 3 a.

As I approached the planet I started seeing motion in front of me. At the same time I realised it was the rings of planet 3, I collided with them and emergency dropped - another couple of percent off things...

WP 9 is at Geological 4, Sulphur Dioxide Fumaroles. It was nicely lit, the brown of the surface looked very nice against the blue of the nebula. The gas giant on the horizon was a bonus.

After all the hyperjumping I've been doing, I couldn't resist a drive down that canyon. It was wide and flat - a very nice drive. I ended up in a bit of a basin about 24km north of the fumaroles.

Last thing for the evening was to travel to Phroi Bluae IR-W f1-1530. The planet AB 1 has, at the time of writing this, the highest known gravity for a landable planet - 10.66G. I'll try landing first thing tomorrow when I'll be a bit more awake. The sole POI on the surface, a Biological one, seems a likely spot, assuming it will be lit.

Day 78 I climbed the peak next to where I logged off the night before.

The peak location is about -67.3/36.1. The top is probably just a little higher than 2km - I couldn't quite get to where it levelled off without worrying about if my Beluga would take off without me. I didn't want it doing that so close to the mountain. The slope was about 20° where I stopped, so I have no problem claiming a successful climb!

I returned to my Beluga and flew it up to see how far I got. It's a bit difficult to see, but I got quite close to the very top!

Day 79 I flew to Dances with Giants. This system has two pairs of gas giants orbiting close to each other. I was lucky to get the first pair A1/A2 in an alignment for a 'double sunrise'.

A4/A5 were not quite as close.

First off I tried looking for some lava spouts. The first site was more gas vents, but the second site I tried (#9), was Iron Magma Lava Spouts.

About 10 jumps towards the Forgotten Twins Nebula I found today's untagged Earth-like world.

Does that look a bit like a screaming face in the nebula?

Once in the nebula the sky became a beautiful blue-purple. I landed on the only landable body in the system and found a crater with a central peak that practically demands climbing in the SRV.

I don't know about that, I still have a long way to go.

As planned, the first thing was jumping to the The Remnants Trio. I glad I didn't jump in while tired, because it slammed me straight into the black hole for an emergency drop!

There's only one landable body in the system, so I decided to land on that for some sightseeing.

It's a 2.4G planet - I realised as I was approaching that it was really quite large, so if you're not used to slightly higher gravities, be careful.

I tootled around for a bit in my SRV and found some Arsenic and Zirconium, which I am a little low on. I couldn't spend too much time, the Distant Worlds 2 schedule demands you keep moving!

Next POI was Gaesous Twins. These are twin Earth-like worlds co-orbiting, but they are so far apart (nearly 10Ls) you can't see one from the other.

Another 30 or so jumps got me to Arach Nebula. It's not actually in the nebula, but as close to it as you can get.

I few jumps on from there I found a system with an Earth-like world, an Ammonia world, a Water world and four High Metal Content worlds - all untagged.

I had no trouble on arrival at Iris' Missive. It did take a bit of time to line up the nebula behind the black hole for one of those classic screenshots.

I called it a day when I got to the Blue Rhapsody Nebula. I landed on 1 a hoping to find some nice magma spouts, but found just some gas vents.

I might try visiting the other geological POIs tomorrow.

I stopped 1 jump short of The Remnants Trio. I was getting tired and decided to jump in first thing tomorrow when I was more awake.

On the way, I found an (as yet) untagged Earth-like.

It's always nice to bump into these every couple of days.

Just time tonight to visit Hot Temptation.

It's a black hole about 4Ls away from a K-class neighbour - things can get quite warm!

Next stop, The Remnants Trio.

Turns out I didn't get to Hot Temptation tonight, either. I did find an untagged Earth-like, though!

It was paired up with a Water World.

Two days late, I made my way up to WP8, Goliath’s Rest. No real problems, only one boosted jump required. I was quite happy to find the landing zone at 59.5882/-55.9190 to be brightly lit.

While there I decided to drive the SRV around for a bit and pick up whatever materials this planet had until their bins filled up. It didn't take long, at most I was missing 10 nickel and 10 iron and 1 or 2 other materials.

Then I bookmarked all the POIs on the way to WP9 to see how they all fit together and decided to head to Hot Temptation first. It's over 70 jumps away - I won't get there tonight.

I logged off last night just 16 jumps from Breakthrough Echoes. This system has what is probably the holy grail for explorers - an Earth-Like World orbiting a gas giant. Except there's not just one - there's three of them! And one of them has a ring!

I stopped for the night at Lower Hades Edge (alternate WP8, Geological (2)) shortly before local sunset, one day late for the alternate meetup.

Tomorrow night I'll try to get to the proper WP8 Goliath's Rest.