Cav's Place

I was lying in bed after waking up today, trying to think of something to write, when this old annoyance started creeping up on me again: Why do webmasters insist on making sites more and more complicated all the time? Why do they overload them, and particularly the front page, with all sorts of scripts, slideshows, movies and anything else you could possibly think of, often stuffing content into three columns, giving details that usually only take up space without really helping anyone decide whether they want to read more or not and cramming all sorts of menus everywhere? Why do they force you to have a fast connection and plenty of available processing power and memory if you want to even load that front page? Shouldn’t they want everyone to be able to access at least the main parts of the site? And, if so, wouldn’t that “everyone” also include those who still have slow connections and those who use old computers, somewhat newer netbooks or even newer tablets?

Interestingly, as soon as I tried to get on-line today I noticed that my connection was almost down. By that I mean that during the first roughly ten minutes it just barely managed to partially load a couple of sites. Then it recovered for about 15 minutes, then crashed completely for nearly one hour before once again recovering right now as I’m writing this, but that’s besides the point. What is the point is that it acted as a reminder of how much webmasters automatically assume that everyone has a solid broadband connection when that’s really not the case, plenty of people even still being on dial-up and as a result quite frankly unable to load plenty of sites!
Now I’m obviously not talking about sites specifically made to provide multimedia content, as anyone who visits such a site is assumed to have the connection required to display said content, but about all the others. There is no reason to stuff video content or slideshows on the front page of any site not specifically meant for multimedia content. If people go to a news site, they want to immediately see the headlines, with breaking news at the top and then everything else nicely ordered with the newest first, so they’ll immediately know what was posted since they last checked. If they go to a company’s site, they want to see some basic information about that company and the services it provides. If they go to a site dedicated to a certain issue or cause, they want to see some fast facts and the latest related news. Any videos or slideshows should stay on separate pages, those that people who want more detailed information will go to, and even there webmasters shoud make sure that visitors are able to read all the text while everything else is loading, in case it takes significantly longer for that to happen.

And then there’s Flash… Using Flash when it’s not absolutely required is by far one of the worst things you could do to your site, especially now when you have HTML5 and SVG available to do more or less the same things while preserving your site’s usability and accessibility and likely also using fewer resources. Yet some webmasters insist on using Flash for large sections of their sites, or in some cases even build entire sites in Flash!
What does Flash do to a site? Firstly, it makes it load slowly and often requires every part of it to load before anything is displayed, not allowing people to look through some things while others are still loading. Secondly, it significantly reduces the site’s usability, making it very difficult or often even impossible to do simple things like opening a link in a new tab, using the forward and back buttons, saving plain text in a file or posting links to specific sections. Thirdly, it ruins accessibility, as people who, for example, need to use certain fonts and colors and have their browsers set to override those specified by sites, not to mention those who are completely blind and require the use of text to speech software, pretty much get left out in the cold.

On top of all of that, you have scripts and other active content that tries to run constantly while you’re on a certain page. I’m not talking about malware, but about animations, slideshows that start by default, perhaps not even allowing you to stop them from constantly flipping through images, little boxes that constantly display updates without allowing you to turn them off, or utterly idiotic things like snowflakes falling, music playing by default or mouse trails! Especially since a user can and often does have multiple sites open, or perhaps just multiple pages from one site, all these things quickly add up and end up using a fair amount of processing power and memory, slowing down even decent computers, not to mention old ones, netbooks or tablets.
I have a decent computer and even I had problems with certain sites, particularly while opening multiple tabs or when having something else running at the same time. But others have to make do with far weaker systems, not to mention those who actually want to use simpler devices, such as the ones I mentioned above. As a result, I really don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that browsing a site shouldn’t have system requirements! In fact, I’d recommend this little test for professional webmasters: Get the weakest netbook available on the market, install Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome on it, open your site in all three of them at once and see what happens.

Some do seem to get the idea, making simple, and possibly even customizable, front pages and sites that are quick to load and easy to use, but most apparently do not. If a site has articles, the front page and/or the main category pages will feature a whole lot of them piled up, usually with a picture and the first 100 or 150 characters of some of them showing up as well, which often tells the user all too little about the article itself and therefore serves only to take up space. If the site has pictures, you’ll have them as a slideshow, possibly not even giving you the option to stop it from constantly flipping through them all. If the site has video or audio content, you’ll have the player thrown there along with everything else, and sometimes even have multiple players on the same page! And let’s not even mention the sites made in Flash or even those that just have Flash intros… This just needs to stop. Now.

Picked this up from Gabi a little while ago. Actually, picked up the things to say from there, as the original asked people to ask for one or more of these things in the comments and the poster would have to answer each time. But it struck me that, since I did that “ten to one” thing a while back and I have five things here, I could do this one like that as well. Especially since the order they were listed in seems to favor such an approach, at least from my point of view. So let’s get to it, shall we?

I. Five things that turn me on.
Let me not go through what I already wrote in the turnons section of the “ten to one” post all over again, instead pointing out some individual turnons, things either less important than anything written there or details not quite covered well enough in that section. Note that I’ll likely get carried away while writing this, going through scenarios in my mind.
5. Chokers, and I don’t recall ever telling anyone this before. Certainly not in a “heavy” BDSM sense, those are serious turnoffs, but anything starting from plain bands of some relatively hard material that cover about half of the girl’s neck and going through all sorts of more delicate designs usually makes for a very arousing look. Note that I go with full nudity during sex and the neck certainly must be accessible, seeing as I like to kiss that area quite a lot, so there’d be no place for any such thing once we’d really get to it, but before that point…
4. Warrior women. Of course, this is pure fantasy, but there you have it. Just to be clear, I certainly don’t mean the “hot chick in plated lingerie” stereotype. What I mean is a woman who of course doesn’t have any physical features that’d really bother me but otherwise looks like she could at least hold her own in a serious fight with medieval weapons and is wearing something that would actually protect her body. No helmet though, because I want to be able to see that she’s a woman… Naturally, being turned on by her ability to fight, preferably with swords and related slashing weapons, means I’d want to see her get out of that armor and anything else she may be wearing underneath it, but that comes afterwards.
3. Long, healthy and straight or slightly curly hair. There is something to be said about color too, but my response to that is related to body type as well. In general, if it reaches at least halfway down the back, isn’t too curly and looks healthy, a certain part of my body will react, at least until I’ll notice any other details. Yes, if not somehow hidden, hair is quite certainly the first thing I notice when I look at a girl from any direction other than the front, and sometimes, depending on the distance and what other features stand out, possibly even from the front. Still, if it goes past the butt it’s too much even for me and can quickly become a turnoff.
2. A woman with large, soft breasts, lying on her back. Obviously naked, or at the very least naked from the waist up, and not having any of the physical features that’d really bother me. Certainly without having them spill on the side or otherwise getting all out of place, but just sort of flattening themselves under their own weight. And then it’d obviously be even better if I’d get past looking and also play with them, feeling the softness. Significant bonus points if her hair would also be as described above and it’d be spread on the bed around her. Saying again, this doesn’t apply if they’re large and hard, which can be achieved either through surgery or perhaps though rigorous exercise of a very specific kind. Yes, this means that they’d hang when she’s not lying down, but I really don’t see that as a problem at all, in fact I quite like it, as long as that doesn’t mean they’d threaten to reach her waist or something like that, of course.
1. Watching my girlfriend have sex with someone else. Yes, that includes another guy. In fact, that could even be recommended, as in that case I’d completely ignore him and focus on her actions and, more importantly, reactions. Would be unpleasant if I’d be in the same room and just watch though, as in not do something with her as well at the end at least. If she’d just get me to orgasm once they’re done, which at that point would most likely require a mere touch, it’d be great. Still, it could perhaps be better if they’d do it without me around but somehow film themselves, in very good quality, so then I could watch the film with her, starting to play while watching and then really going at it once it’s over.

II. Four weird things.
I’m going to assume that this is asking for weird things about me… Once again, I’ll avoid repeating what I already wrote in the section that asked for things about myself in that other post.
4. I started working out shortly after cutting contact with Andra the first time, after she had pretty much stopped telling me anything and then announced that she was going to stay on until her visa would expire. One could believe that it was in some sort of misguided attempt to end up looking better and become more attractive for her later on, but it had nothing to do with that. Had nothing to do with any good reasons for starting something like this either. I simply did it because I can’t stand working out and it was another way to punish myself for the mistakes I made that caused her to be open to the possibility of leaving me in the first place. Now I keep going mostly out of habit, but that original reason is still a significant part of the motivation even after all this time. It’s not like it’s enough for any real health benefits, so it can at least be just another part of the punishment…
3. Bondage has always been present in a significant portion of my sexual fantasies. And I’m not talking about me being tied up, nor about anything light! I’m talking about tying her hands above her head and her legs spread wide, and perhaps also gagging her, and “torturing” her until she just can’t take it anymore and then some. Sometimes said fantasies briefly include a little spanking or pulling her hair, but nothing else that could be associated with this. Instead, the basic idea is that I’d either arouse her until she’d just go crazy before even thinking of giving her any release or, quite the contrary, giving her way more than she can handle in every way that I can, quite often including all sorts of toys as well. Or perhaps first doing one and then the other. Why’s this weird? Because it’s coming from a guy who, in reality, would run away at the mere thought of anything but the lightest forms of bondage and prefers her to take the lead most of the time.
2. When I say my brain always works with numbers, I sure mean it. And it strongly prefers certain numbers, namely one, three, seven, twelve and any that can be divided by five. This is quite loose, as it may be that only the last two digits count, so 103 or 6512 would look “nice” to me, and sometimes it may even be just the last digit, so anything that doesn’t end in four, six, eight or nine can be all right, but I really try to avoid creating or keeping things in amounts that would be expressed by those numbers. This is most frequently noticed when I create music playlists, slice bread or grab certain small edible things, such as cookies.
1. I can’t cry when I’m alone. This is common knowledge for anyone who knows me, but it’s certainly weird enough. I need to have a person that I feel close to next to me, even if that person is just why I’m crying, otherwise I just can’t. Or, all right, it is sometimes possible, with difficulty, if triggered by something like a song or a massive battle scene in a movie, but that happens extremely rarely. It’s been years since I last cried… And seeing as I’d need such a release so much, it’s quite a problem… Among many others.

III. Three things about people I care about, without any names.
I’ll take this to mean saying something about three different people… Nothing confidential in any way, but could perhaps make for a little guessing game.
3. Though many perhaps didn’t realize it, seeing as she almost always kept it in a tight bun, her hair was at least waist-length almost constantly since her early teens, if not even longer than that.
2. She said a guy gave her flowers on the street on her birthday once, after apparently overhearing her talk about it on the phone. He simply wished her happy birthday, told her she was beautiful and then continued on his way, leaving her quite stunned.
1. For some reason, she seems to be extremely proud of her toes.

IV. Two things I dislike about myself.
2. Cowardice. No other explanation needed.
1. Being unable to properly express what I’m thinking in a way that others are likely to understand. The fact that my command of words proves completely inadequate when it comes to using them to express my thoughts, so what comes out, if anything comes out at all, is often quite different from what I actually meant to say, though I have no idea how I could possibly say it any differently. But even worse is the fact that all too often I don’t even start saying what I should be saying because I just can’t figure out how, or because I know it’ll come out too different and there’s no point in even trying. There’s so much that’s waiting to get out and can’t because, apparently, I’m not even good enough for my own mind…

V. One thing I like about myself.
1. I always think for myself and don’t bow down to what others say I should do, no matter who those others may be. I don’t care for what the current norms say I should do. If I can’t or am not allowed to do anything else, I simply do nothing at all, but I won’t give in if I disagree.

That’s it… Now I’ll go back to feeling like shit and panicking…

Let me make my Sunday post actually useful to someone and try to answer some of the questions that people who reach this place after searching for Forsaken World information seem to be having. It’s not like you couldn’t get much better answers quite easily in plenty of other places, but since you’re somehow ending up here and I need to write something today anyway…
Still, I will start by listing the places where you should go if you want more information. The first is, obviously, the forum, where a little searching really goes a long way. Not to mention that even the brief guides posted on the official site can help you get started, though they don’t really answer any of the important questions. But if you’re looking for other sources, sites that have some detailed information organized in a way that’s much easier to go through than a forum, I could point you to Forsaken World HQ and The Eyrdaian. (Just learned of the latter today, actually. It obviously should be named The Eyrdan if it’s supposed to mean “inhabitant of Eyrda”, but there you have it.) There really isn’t that much there at the moment, and what is there is written poorly, but these are the sites I know of and they can get you started in the game, so they may be worth a look.
Right. Enough with the free advertising and rants that you wouldn’t be ending up here if you cared for; let’s move on to actually answering those questions I see, and then giving a little more information that I think could be useful as well. That said, do keep in mind that at the moment I just have a level 32 vampire and a level 31 human mage, the only other class I played being marksman, up to level 20 during closed beta, so I had no reason to look into things that start happening at later levels yet, not to mention issues specific to other classes. Also keep in mind that I’m not a social creature, only doing what few instances I find myself needing to do and just wanting to get it over with as soon as possible, so don’t expect me to be of much help when it comes to that.

Seeing as the approach is uncommon, I should start by explaining how one obtains gear in Forsaken World: Don’t expect to be able to purchase it from regular merchants, because those only carry the most basic gear for levels 10 to 19, and don’t expect to be able to craft it or purchase it from crafters either, because artisan becomes available at level 30 and all other crafting jobs only at level 40. In Forsaken World, the regular way of obtaining gear is by purchasing it in exchange for gem shards, and some soul coins, from the Fleet of Myth merchants, which are located on the pier in Freedom Harbor, right in front of Charlie’s Tavern and next to Matthew the teleporter. While all the gear you get from doing parts of the main quest is of green quality, everything these merchants sell is of blue quality. However, their wares are of lower quality than what you can get from running gear instances, though having multiple pieces of the standard set will grant you bonuses. As for those gear instances, you’ll see them clearly labeled as such on the party screen and can apply to them in order to hopefully obtain blue quality gear that has additional attributes on top of what the standard blue gear has. However, the gear that drops while fighting in these instances seems completely random, so you can never know whether anything for your class will drop, not to mention exactly what gear slot could be filled if anything useful would indeed drop. Under those circumstances, it seems to be a good idea to just rely on gem shards to gear up at the lower levels, though you’ll still want to try to get a weapon from a gear instance, seeing as the Fleet of Myth merchants only sell armor.
Which gets me to what seems to be by far the most common question: What are these gem shards, particularly ruby shards and sapphire shards, and how do I obtain them? The answer to that is very simple: As stated above, they are used as a sort of “currency” to buy standard armor from the Fleet of Myth merchants. There are five pieces of armor available for levels 10 to 19, six for levels 20 to 29 and seven for each level group afterwards. The number and type of shards required for each single piece of armor is as follows: Four obsidian shards for level 10 to 19 gear, six ruby shards for 20 to 29, eight sapphire shards for 30 to 39, ten turquoise shards for 40 to 49, 12 amethyst shards for 50 to 59, 14 topaz shards for 60 to 64 and 16 aquamarine shards for 65 and over. You will get 12 obsidian shards and six ruby shards for free from your memento boxes once you reach the required level, but for the rest you’re on your own. Which, unless you want to buy the shards from others, means farming elite monsters, as each elite monster will drop a gem shard of the type required to get gear for the same level range it’s in, so for example an elite pale hunter will drop an obsidian shard and an elite hyena mage will drop a ruby shard. Yes, it’s a very tedious process, but you can speed it up by switching realm after each kill, hoping that the same elite monster would still be alive at that location on the new realm, so you won’t have to keep either looking for more or wait out the pretty significant amount of time between respawns. Personally, I’d recommend completely skipping over the types of gear you can get for obsidian and ruby shards, making do with what you get from quests, and only starting to bother with it at level 30, but that’s your choice.

The next common issue seems to have to do with updates. The idea is simple: Whenever you load the launcher, it will check for updates. If there are none, it will let you start the game. If there are some, it will start updating the game and only allow you to start it once it’s done updating. However, update issues seem rather common, so instead of complaining about them all the time only to be told to verify, know that it is very strongly advised to verify the installation every single time after a patch. Yes, it takes quite a bit of time, but it prevents a whole lot of problems later on. Currently, patches seem to come once per week, with patch day apparently being Wednesday, but that may vary in time, not to mention possibly according to your time zone as well.
If you’re asking about the manual patching, there are always two patches available for manual download on the download page. The first one listed is the actual last patch, taking the game from the previous stable version number to the current one, while the second takes the game from the client version, as in the version you’ll get when you actually download the client, since that’s only updated on major releases, to the current one. To install a patch manually, download the file somewhere, then open the launcher, click “Patches” and select the file you downloaded. Can’t get any simpler than that. Just make sure you have the correct patch, according to your current version number, as listed by the launcher.

Gear and patching were the actual common questions that people seemed to have when they arrived here, but there were also a few who asked about other things, so let me briefly go through those I know how to answer here as well: As far as I know, currently the European English server is PvE only and there are no known plans to change that. Personally, I’m very happy with that, but you probably aren’t since you’re searching for European PvP servers. (If you know either language, try the German or French ones, as those have PvP as well.) Mercury statuettes can only be bought from the World Tree, so with real money. Or, of course, from other players who have bought them with real money, but I mean there’s no way to obtain one by playing the game. And yes, that NPC who buys them for three gold coins each utterly destroys the game’s economy. And if you want to get to the Sea of Oblivion, or basically any other map area that you can’t walk to, you use the teleporters that show up in green on your map. Matthew is the name of the one in Freedom Harbor and he is on the pier, next to Charlie’s Tavern and the Fleet of Myth merchants.
As for classes, no I have no idea what the best build for a certain class is. I doubt anybody could answer that question because it depends on what you want to use your character for and what your playing style is. Different skill paths, different equipment and different pets are best suited for different things. Just know that there are expectations for each class, and I’m not just talking about priests healing, protectors tanking, bards providing support and mages, assassins and marksmen dealing damage. If you play a warrior and find no protector in your group, or your protector seems really bad at it, you’ll be expected to tank instead of just dealing damage. Also, bards are expected to help whenever they can with healing, and even take the place of the healer if no priest or vampire is in the group, and at the same time priests are expected to help with support as much as possible if they can get a break from healing.
As for vampires… Well, these deserve a special mention because they can do everything except provide support. Jacks of all trades, masters of none. They can heal well, though not as well as priests; they can tank, though far less well than protectors and even warriors; they can deal damage, but are somewhat less reliable than pretty much every class except the priest when it comes to that. Their ability to heal means that they’re always seen as secondary healers, and can quickly become primary healers if the group doesn’t have a priest or the priest is doing a bad job. That applies even if the group also has bards. Quite simply, a blood vampire played well can be a very good healer, especially after a certain level. Also keep in mind that, thanks to their healing abilities, vampires are usually thought to be able to look after themselves, so if you play a vampire and are not the tank, keep yourself alive, don’t expect the healer to look after you! But you can be the tank, if a group doesn’t have or has poor protectors and warriors, so be ready to take up that role as well if needed, keeping in mind that you need to stay very close to the enemy and attack it as much as possible, because you’ll need to do everything you can to keep it from moving on to others who deal more damage. Bottom line, if you play a vampire and end up in a group, look carefully at what the group is missing and, unless what’s missing is a bard, know that you’re expected to immediately fill that role to the best of your abilities, so do just that.

Finally, though nobody ended up here from a search about that, I do need to mention that the game, and apparently all of Perfect World Entertainment‘s games, have been under a constant and very strong DDoS attack for the past several days. The US east coast servers are the primary targets, so Eyrda and Storm for Forsaken World, but the problems can occasionally affect other servers as well. Yes, this means you’ll have a lot of lag, you’ll be frequently disconnected and can have the server crash and cause you to lose things. The official recommendation is, quite simply, not to start anything important until this issue is somehow resolved. They are promising some sort of compensation for those affected, once the problem itself will be solved, but currently you’ll just have to wait it out, since nobody knows when it will end and you need to keep in mind that, being a free-to-play game, they understandably don’t have best technology available to defend themselves against this sort of thing.

The 2011 Formula One season has finally started, with the first official practice sessions taking place earlier today, but this year this unfortunately means yet another reason for me to be unhappy. That’s because a certain TV station from here, the one that’s buying just about any sports event that anybody might be interested in except those few that are required by law to be made available to all, got the rights to broadcast this too. As a result, for the first time since 1993, which was a season that wasn’t broadcast here, I will be missing an entire Formula One season. In fact, the last race I missed was, I believe, the 2004 United States Grand Prix, because it was before getting the TV tuner and, being in the evening for us, Andra and her mom wanted to watch a TV series that was on at the same time, so I had to give in and just follow the timing and commentary on-line, only asking them to switch to it for a couple of minutes to see what happened to Ralf Schumacher.
What this all means is that, due to the awful laws of capitalism, I’ll be stuck just following the live timing and what little commentary is available on-line for the entire season now. Of course, if I’ll find a trustworthy site live streaming the races, whether legally or, most likely, “pirating” the broadcast, regardless of the country that broadcast would be meant for, I’ll watch it all there. But sites that “pirate” TV broadcasts never seemed trustworthy to me, or at least all those I found required you to install things that immediately raised red flags for me. Then again, I never particularly searched for something like this, so it may just be the time to do so.

Speaking of “piracy”, I just want to add here that a piece of shit I stumbled upon a few days ago means I’m planning yet another rant on the topic soon. Then again, considering how my planned posts have been faring recently, you shouldn’t hold your breath for it.
Thing is that it is very relevant now because just this sports channel proves my point when it comes to the “losses” claimed due to “piracy”. I was following pretty much every match in the Romanian football championship when they were broadcast on channels that were available to all. When channels offered by just one cable provider, which isn’t the one I’m on, started offering them, I simply stopped watching. And you can’t say that the decision was entirely out of my hands because dad was considering switching back then, if at all possible, and I was firmly against it. Granted that there were other reasons for avoiding the switch as well, mainly the fact that it’d mean a switch to digital and needing to get a separate control set for each TV, since over here they don’t even give you the option to only get the smart card, if you have TVs or TV tuners that can use them to decode a digital signal, but my first argument was simply that I won’t give in.
The rule is simple: If they require me to do something I don’t care to do in order to gain access to some content I want, I’ll simply look for other options and, if none are available, instead of giving in I’ll just learn to do without it. As a result, if I “pirate” something you can be pretty sure that I wouldn’t buy it even if that’d be the only way to obtain it. I’ll simply learn to do without, so my “piracy” doesn’t cause them any losses whatsoever. But I’ll leave it at that for now, because this rant is not the purpose of this post.

To move on, the final versions of both Internet Explorer 9 and Firefox 4 have been released, so I should make those minor changes to this site that I had planned to make right after these releases. Nothing to do with the blog, which still uses this very old theme and would be too much trouble to change right now, but just with the games played list and fantasy art gallery. Speaking of which, I really should make some additions to those sections as well, because they’ve been neglected pretty much ever since I created them. But good luck with that, seeing as I’m hardly even writing here anymore, much less coding…
Keep in mind that these changes, whenever they’ll be made, are meant to take advantage of some very basic but useful HTML5 tags and will not have any noticeable effects whatsoever for anyone using a browser that supports HTML5, only making it simpler for me to set some things up. As a result, they are likely to cause those sections of the site to display oddly for those who use older or different browsers. As usual, my only advice to you if you have problems viewing this site is to upgrade or change your browser.

As for the personal updates part mentioned in the title… Nothing I haven’t said countless times before. As worried, sad, frightened and frustrated as usual. Still dreading to wake up; still starting to whimper whenever I go to the kitchen to eat… Still missing her just as much; still needing a best friend, or at least a very close friend, just as much; still not finding anyone even remotely close to what could really make a close friend… People keep living in the “real world”, which has nothing to do with me and I want nothing to do with it, so a gap between me and them automatically appears and then keeps widening, seeing as our paths can have next to nothing in common.
Otherwise, the usual health concerns keep piling up, as expected. For example, since I woke up today I keep experiencing some pain that’s worrying due to its location and troubling due to its intensity. In this case, I may know the cause and, if I’m right, it’s nothing to worry about, but otherwise it’s not like any such issues are going to go away on their own if they’re not somehow fixed, or at least checked out. Such things either stay the same or, much more commonly, only get worse if left alone, so that’s just what happens. And since nobody’s picking me up, dragging me to where I’d need to go and doing all the talking for me when all I’ll be able to do will be kick and scream, I’ll only end up there when it’ll really feel like an emergency, as always.

Saw this line in a comment someone posted when it was first announced that MESSENGER has been successfully inserted into orbit around Mercury and couldn’t help but use it as the title of this post. Indeed it seems like an achievement worthy of such a title, mainly because of the way in which it was achieved. You probably couldn’t make a trip from Earth to Mercury more complicated if you tried, so it’s that much more amazing to see that such an apparently insane plan worked out in the end.

But let’s take a moment to go through this mission’s timeline… After the planning, preparations and actual construction took over five years, on August 3, 2004, the MESSENGER probe was launching, with the aim of becoming the first to orbit around Mercury. It then flew by Earth on August 2, 2005, and by Venus on October 24, 2006 and June 5, 2007, before finally encountering Mercury on January 14, 2008. However, at that time it was traveling much too fast, so this was only a flyby meant to slow it down even more, just like the three before it and the two others, also of Mercury, that came after it, on October 6, 2008 and September 29, 2009. Only then was it slow enough for its thrusters to be able to complete the final braking maneuver, during the next encounter.

Prior to this mission, such a feat appeared prohibitively expensive at best, if not even highly unlikely to even be possible with our current technology, because of the huge amount of fuel necessary to slow down the probe enough to be caught in the gravitational field of such a small planet this close to the Sun. However, this utterly insane trajectory, apparently designed in 1985, proved to be the solution. Even so, nearly a third of the total amount of fuel was used for this final maneuver, which required firing the thrusters for 15 minutes in order to slow the probe down by just over 3100 km/h and insert it on a highly elliptical orbit around Mercury.
Fuel is necessary for the actual mission as well, as adjustment maneuvers are planned at least once per Mercury year, which lasts just about 88 Earth days. These maneuvers are necessary because otherwise the minimum distance from Mercury would increase past 500 km, which is the maximum permitted by the mission plan. However, each such maneuver, meant to reduce the minimum distance back to 200 km, has the undesired but unavoidable side effect of reducing the orbital period by about 15 minutes, which means that some more fuel needs to be burned soon after, at the other end of the orbit, in order to get the orbital period back to the planned 12 hours.

Though the distance between the semi-major axes of Earth and Mercury is just under 91.7 million kilometers, MESSENGER traveled nearly 7.9 billion kilometers over more than six and a half years in order to get and stay there, orbital insertion being achieved at around 1 AM GMT on March 18, 2011. It will now remain in history as the first man-made satellite of Mercury and only the second probe to directly observe the planet. And it already imaged the planet almost completely and shocked everyone by discovering significant amounts of water in Mercury’s exosphere during the previous flybys. As a result, anything it will discover during its primary mission, which is scheduled to properly start on April 4, can at this point be considered a bonus.