On his way back home from Beagle Point, commander Felix Macedonica miscalculated his jump route and got himself stranded in a system just out of reach of his ship's jump drive…

Since the system had no landable planets with Germanium available (material needed for FSD boost), he called out for help on the official forums. At that point, one brave commander by the name of Chiggy Vonrictofen fitted his Asp for mining with the idea of helping Commander Felix get the much needed Germanium out of a nearby asteroid belt.

I've messed up.

I am less than a thousand light years out from Beagle Point beginning a slow-boat journey home. Using the new feature in the galaxy map which highlights previous systems you have visited, I was retracing my jumps back and made a 50% boost into a system. It has one landable planet with a rich source of materials.

Without thinking, I did a normal jump to the next 'blue' system (which has no planetary bodies) knowing that the NEXT system on is a mere 48 light years from my current one. No problem, I thought. I have 29 ly range on this old Lakon Type 6E.

So you can imagine my horror when I jump into the first system (with no planets) only to see that the NEXT one is 30.3 light years away. I can't make it without boosting and in my stupidity I didn't realise that on the 50% boost I used up all my Germanium.

No problem, I thought, calming myself with a cup of earl grey tea. I will jump BACK to the system behind me with that one landable planet. So I do. Only it has plenty of Vanadium listed but no Germanium at all.

So now I am in a dead end bouncing between two systems, unable to boost, and with one planet I can land on that lacks Germanium - the one material I am missing.

There are no other systems in jump range at all. I have reached the end of the road.

It's my own fault - I was so excited to see my route in to Beagle Point marked out as blue systems that I failed to check the distances correctly.

Not sure what to do now . . .

And so started one of the greatest Fuel Rats rescue missions in Elite to date! After hours of jumping towards the edge of the galaxy, Commander Chiggy arrived and started crunching rocks which finally, after a long mining session, payed off!

A long awaited chunk of Germanium popped out of the asteroid which enabled commander Felix 3 boosted jumps and set him back on his original course.

The whole endeavour was recorded and you can witness the happy moment in the video below around 2:04h mark.

Edit: As mentioned in the comments - Cmdr Chiggy is not a fuel rat, but was made an honorary fuel rat for the occasion. Thanks for clearing it up boys!