For my previous entry, I forgot to give some background on this particular system that I think would be pretty important to share. Turns out this system is on the verge of its collapse.

To be more precise, according to Space Engine, the star in question, Deneb Kaitos or Diphda (the latter sounds cooler), is a K0 III star (orange giant) halfway through its lifetime. On the same matter, according to Space Engine, the lifespan of Deneb Kaitos is 52.5 million years. Its already through 27.7 million. That is incredibly short.

According to Wikipedia, and probably detailed in parameters in Space Engine I have yet to understand, Deneb Kaitos has shifted to fusing helium and shall do so until it moves on to carbon.

As I mentioned in my previous post, the Space Engine version of Deneb Kaitos hosts five full size planets and one dwarf planet. A pretty manageable and concise number if I say so. But the system is mostly gas giants and moon-like airless worlds though. Not much atmosphere to actually do some flight in.

Gas giants are not particularly favorable when I want some flying due to this weird layer of extreme atmospheric density that messes with low mass ships. This layer hangs a couple hundred kilometers off the "surface" of most gas giants I have come across, meaning to fly through with a ship only in the thousands of tonnes requires a buildup of speed many hundreds of kilometers per second beforehand. Otherwise the layer will stop me dead in the air by drag and I'll be forced to use the miniscule amount of velocity created by raw thrust to slowly make my way, kilometer by kilometer, through the layer to the atmospheric gradient. To save the trouble I'll have to create a spaceplane or assaultfighter directly in the tens of atm pressure range, then again only a small margin above the crushing depths and devoid heavens. Dreadful.