 This is Witchspace news for Friday the 3rd of May 2019 I'm CMDR Buur In this weeks news the first interstellar initiative kicks off Distant Worlds 2 comes to an end and distant cake is a thing If you enjoy our content then please remember to hit like and subscribe and click the little bell icon to get a notification next time we upload a new video You can also find us on Twitter, Discord and Instagram and if you want to help support the work of this channel you'll also find us on Patreon Links to all those avenues are in the description below Frontier launched the first of their community goal the next generation interstellar initiatives this week with a forum poll as it turns out a very hard to find forum poll In case you're unaware the plan is that a company the in-game Zenday partners is going to establish a mega ship transport service that will travel to and from the bubble every week to a guardian system outside the bubble that has been chosen by the community The poll for this system, one of five choices started on Monday this week via a forum post on the official forums There is also a post on the in-game Galnet news service that you can access from your ship It mentions that the poll is happening but doesn't tell you where it is The interstellar initiative is also mentioned on two posts on the web version of Galnet and on the game launcher Neither of those stories mention the forum poll and one of the stories just mentions interstellar initiatives as a thing If you click on the story to read it, it opens to a blank page with no text within it whatsoever If you do manage to find the poll then there is some information about the target systems but not only is that in another post and not in the post that contains the poll it also just gives very general information about the systems and is not really anything that might help you make an actual informed decision Fortunately player organisations like the AXI and Canon have stepped into the fray and two prime candidate systems have floated to the top with the other three being quickly disregarded I've included information in the description below taken from the AXI Discord server that details the two prime candidate systems Suffice to say that after the fanfare of the excellent launch video that accompanied the announcement of the interstellar initiative program the actual launch of the initiative itself has been met with a collective sigh from the community The main problems being, it's not in the game, it's very hard to find When you do find it, it doesn't really give any guidance on what you're voting for or why The vote ends on the 6th of May You can find a link to the vote itself in the description below This week the Distant Worlds 2 expedition reached its conclusion at Beagle Point The star widely regarded as being the furthest out easily accessible star on the opposite side of the galaxy to Seoul The expedition left the Polini system on the 13th of January this year with well in excess of 10,000 commander names on its register So huge was the participation from the community that in those early weeks the Sunday night's release of the next waypoint the expedition was hitting was often met with server outages as thousands of commanders all jumped all at the same time, all from the same place, all going to the same place and the frontier servers creaked and groaned under the volume of data being flung about Later though as the expedition spread out things calmed down and they completed a couple of nice community goals that saw the completion of Explorer's Anchorage Give shock at the center of the galaxy Now that the expedition has ended most of the remaining commanders will be winding their way back home via whatever suits them best Most of them More on that in a moment The expedition has seen a massive amount of video and screenshots generated of the things people have found along the way I was about to say I'll miss that element of it but to be honest that has always been a huge part of the elite dangerous experience and I can't see that changing now It'll be nice to see the population of the bubble increase again What's left of the bubble anyway At least the direction of home is now nicely lit for returning commanders with a host of burning stations And finally, as I mentioned previously not all the commanders on the distant Worlds 2 expedition are turning around and heading home just yet It seems that space madness might have infected at least four souls Serial circumnavigator and generally difficult German burpit regular Commander Primetime Casual who you might remember from such efforts as the circumnavigation of Mieter and Hollow which he did on his own and the Quantum World circumnavigation which he did with Commander Greytest has now embarked on what is possibly his most ambitious and difficult challenge to date Primetime Casual has banded together with fellow burpit regulars Commander Sabic Commander Lord Tyvin and Commander Soundo to embark on what the team is calling Operation Distant Cake Setting off as a team this coming Sunday May the 5th the Mad Quartet plans to drive around the equator of the furthest landable moon from Sol in the system known as Sematus Beacon or Body B9F in Ovesi SGY D0 to give it its less than snappy in game name The journey will take a number of stages to complete and after a group drive on Sunday the team will complete the rest of their individual drives at their own pace In total they'll be travelling 4239km in an SRV for some reason each leaving behind a perfectly serviceable spaceship in order to complete the ordeal They did ask me if I wanted to go No, no I don't We wish you Godspeed, gentle goats and rest assured that should you survive there will be a steaming pot of tea some battenberg and a fresh set of tyres waiting for you back at the bubble That's it for now Thank you so much for making it this far We'll be back later this week with more videos Until then, 07 Commanders Follow the Greens on the way out and do keep clear of the toast rack We very much look forward to seeing you next time