10,522,860.9 meters (6,538.6 miles) into Space

After an exhausting 6,538 mile flight into space I've returned home and have some interesting details of my trip to share. Some of these findings have already been noted and discovered by previous adventurers but it never hurts to have another eye witness account.

First of all, the last recorded distance of the trip was 10,522,860.9 meters above ground over Kissling. I have some photos I can upload if anyone is interested. But more interesting than photos is the landmark I was able to capture at this height. If you'd like a copy of it please contact me in game. The cost of using this landmark is aprox. $576,500. I'm not sure if it is even useable, but may be of significant interest to future explorers and useful as a booster rocket for even farther travels into the great beyond.

Nothing really interesting about the beginning hour of my flight but as I started to break free of our atmosphere I was able to witness and record several strange chronological color phases of the moon. It seemed to shift from blue, to red, to yellow in the span of about 5 minutes. I was able to witness this cycle again much later in my trip. I took photos of each color and can provided as requested.

Shortly after witnessing the colored moon phases, which have been recorded from ground viewers accounts as well, I was able to record a very blue corner shot of the universe. The universe appeared cubed in origin and the sun was slowly drifting down one side filling the rest with blackness.

I continued upward and things slowly became more and more empty. Isolation set in and I began to wonder if I would lose my mind when suddenly everything turned a strange green color. I can only describe this as space sickness, for that is how it made me feel, but my accounts of it seem noticiably similiar to that of Darwin Appleby who witnessed what he described as a strange green atmospheric layer. I was able to record the exact height at which this layer appears but it was aprox. about 1.5 hours into my flight.

Things only got stranger after that point. Darkness set in, the vast blueness replaced with blackness and stars. The corner of the universe no longer visible by the avatar eye. Space seemed to continue on forever at this point, the stars far beyond my reach.

I cannot recall what happened after this point for a short period of time, the last thing I remember is flying at extreme speed towards the stars still seemingly infinitly away and the next thing I rememeber was the total absence of stars. Everything was gone, no stars, no blueness, no sun, no moon, just me and total blackness. I began to lose consciousness after this point, emptiness lead to loneliness, loneliness lead to boredom, boredom lead to madness.

It must have been madness, because my next account of any activity other than hurling upwards is the strangest of them all. At aprox. 1,600,000 meters I experienced what I can only describe as a time warp. Instantly my jet black hair was turned to platinum white. I found myself instantly the resemblance of an aged me, all the color in my youthful hair gone. My body shaking from the g-forces, my limbs starting to seperate before my very eyes. I felt more sadness than I can ever express at the thought that persued. What if I have gone into the future? Will I be able to return? When I return will my friends still be there? Will the world be version 1.1? 2.0? Will I have been taxed into debt? It had to be madness. I seek comfort in the thought that it was madness and try to disregard the photographic evidence.

Beyond that I accended to heights I never thought I would reach. The journey grew longer and longer and the affects of gravity began to take their toll on my body. I passed out for about 5 hours and 38 minutes to awake to my distorted body, I estimate that at aprox. 8,000,000 meters gravity had begun to disfigure my body, flattening my legs and bending my knees and elbows backwards, my limbs became knots and I felt nothing but pain for the rest of my accent. The pictures of this are horrific and I do not recommend the weak of heart ask to see them.

After much pain and suffering for another 2,000,000 meters my energy source suffered technical difficulties, communication was lost for over 30 minutes leading ground control to make an executive decission to pull the plug. Manual control was disconnected and my decent homeward automatically begun.

I'm happy to report that my safe return landing on Kissling Isle has found me to be in good health, my hair color restored just as mysteriously as it had changed. Gravity no longer disfiguring my body or warping light to make them appear disconnected. The world still version 1.0, my friends still here, and taxes don't hit until tonight! My second life restored back to the norm, just how it should be, just how I like it! But my journey into into deep space never far from my mind.

Hah, cool, great job! Pretty much same experience here, but it sure is fun to see for yourself

So... I went to 1,000,000m today... I was bored out of my mind by the time I got there too... oh well... I only made it to the green layer... and my eyes really started to hurt from the shaking and body disintegration.

So post the pictures already!

I hope you people know that you can probably keep going up to around 100000000000000000000000000000000000000 miles height before you either reach a ceiling, make the sim or the client crash, or even come out through the ground...
And unless someone comes up with a much faster way of traveling you and your great grandchildren would die of old age before getting there.

Meybe that's where EZ Money went.... back to his planet...

Well I don't know about how far the lindens programmed the thing to go but I don't imagine it goes any farther than the maximum float variable. I forget just how much that is.

Thats what i was talking about.
A vector is a set of three floats and floats only go up to 10^38

So create a robot like the hubble space telescope, program it to take pics and to move upwards, and set Z float variable at .999999999999999999999999999999 x 10^37.

Or just sit there pressing eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee... you get the picture.

I'd love to see your pics, Rathe. Is it true about your av changing?

Just be glad you didn't land in the damage-enabled area of Kissling!

Geez floats are a lot bigger these days than back when I started programming LOL

Uh pippin, objects cant take screenshots or go above 512 meters... unless they are attached to an avatar.
Relee when did you start programming, back in the days of core memory and punch cards?
Floats have been an international standard since I can remember... the old spectrum's floats only went up to 10^38 and that was over 20 years ago.

Well that's strange. I remember floats being a lot smaller.

Aren't they just two byte variables?



I started programming 17 years ago. And considering I'm 22 now, I think that's pretty good.

Relee, I think you are thinking of a long integer, which was 2 bytes (a word), but is usually now 4 bytes.

BTW, when I started programming, it was on a refrigerator-sized computer with 8-kb of core memory, used teletypes, punchcards, and paper tape, and had those retro flashing lights on the front.

Congratulations, Rathe, on a truly stirring account.

It fills me with pride that I'm alive at a time when avatars are filled with such bravery, that they do such things for the pursuit of Science and Exploration. A fine display of what they used to call the Right Stuff.

How much time did your trip take, total? And let me second Devlin and ask you to post pictures here...even the gross ones!


-Jay

I took a space flight yesterday and have a few pics. Ask me in world if you would like to see them, I have no place to host them to the forums.

It was indeed a rather bizarre experience. My AV went through wild convulsions and at one point my eyes bugged completely out of their sockets!

I dont know if it is coincidence or not, but when I reached a certain point, where the moon had gone black, I had to log out. I tried to log back in and got a notice that my account had been suspended! I had to wait about 20 minutes before I could get back on.

Where can I get an altimeter?

I just used the debug menu to tell my height...

Debug>Camera Or something like that

I was sent to outer space
To find another happy place
Now I'm left here all alone
Million miles away from home

Dune rocks

Sorry I haven't posted the pictures, they're rather large unfortunately (saved to disk rather than snapshot). I'll upload them to a website and post some links tomorrow.

Ive been to space- Oh, yes. I have been there.

I went up to two million- but my client was bordering on that "crash" line. I have pics as well- when i get in-game contact me and ill send you one. White hair is funny =) Mine kind of glowed... Also, there were giant gaps between different parts of my av- my arms were in two peices and about a half a meter from my torso (which had split in three).