Elite Dangerous’s recreation of our galaxy makes it one of the most uniquely fascinating games ever made. What’s more, it’s been around for a decade, and games simply don’t exist that long without plenty of remarkable things occurring. We challenged our community of expert Elite Dangerous players to share their most interesting Elite Dangerous trivia. We’ve chosen the 30 winning entries, and divided them below into easter eggs, interesting quirks, lesser-known features, lore tidbits, and development trivia. Enjoy!
Easter eggs and secrets
Elite Dangerous fact #1: something borrowed, something blue
Submitted by Commander Cordulisk
“The music played during Elite’s auto-docking and take-off sequence is from The Blue Danube by Johann Strauss II. It’s an homage to the rather lengthy docking sequence in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, during which the song was played.”
Elite Dangerous fact #2: a touching tribute to NASA
“Did you know that as part of the game’s tribute to the real-life spacecraft, you can find Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 in Elite Dangerous? Both spacecraft are located in the Sol system, where they’re orbiting far from the main star. Here’s how you can find them:
“Unlock the Sol System: You must be allied with the Federation to visit the Sol system, as it’s permit-locked. You can achieve this by completing Federation missions and earning the rank of Petty Officer with the Federation.
“Enter the Sol System: Once you have the permit, jump into the Sol system. This is where both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are located.
“The FSS Scanner allows both Voyager probes to be quickly and easily discovered. They’re treated as signal sources and can be detected when focusing the FSS Scanner on low-frequency signals, or you can scan the nav beacon. Voyager 1 is located approximately 2,087,725 light seconds from the Sol star, in the direction of the system's outer edge. Voyager 2 is located approximately 1,617,299 Light Seconds from the Sol star, also towards the system's outer edge. They’ll show as ‘Ancient Probes’ on the navigation panel.
“Tips:
Keep an eye on your fuel level, as travelling to the far reaches of the Sol system requires long Supercruise travel.
Patience is key; flying in Supercruise for such long distances takes time, so make sure you’re prepared for the journey.”
Elite Dangerous fact #3: alien ant farm
“There are experimental habitats around Colonia in which experiments are performed on alien organisms. They’re in low orbits of gas giants. You can check Passenger Mission Boards to get there, where you’ll discover cool scenes like this one:
Elite Dangerous fact #4: it’s a trappist!
“Because the Stellar Forge - Elite’s galaxy-generation engine - uses real space data, it coincidentally ‘predicted’ real-life star system Trappist-1. Frontier subsequently updated the in-game system to become ‘Trappist’ once the discovery was made public.”
You can read more about the discovery on the Elite wiki, but we’ll give a bit of extra context on this neat semi-coincidence. The star belonging to the real-life Trappist-1 system is faint; so was not included in star catalogues. Elite’s Stellar Forge filled in the gaps using ‘unaccounted mass’, creating a Brown Dwarf system with planets, location, and mass that turned out to be remarkably similar to the system that was eventually discovered to be there in real life.
Elite Dangerous fact #5: brand recognition
“There are a lot of recognisable brands within Elite, though you may not know that quite a few are based on real-life brands, albeit with slightly changed names (probably for copyright reasons). Take the original manufacturer of the Python - Whatt and Pritney - which is based on Pratt & Whitney, a real manufacturer known for their aircraft engines and auxiliary power units. Or there’s the manufacturer of Federal ships - Core Dynamics - and their similarly federally aligned real-life counterpart General Dynamics, known for their Aerospace and Defense contracting with the U.S. Department of Defense. While these are only two examples, there are many more easter eggs like them within Elite's universe!"
Elite Dangerous fact #6: this one’s on us
Submitted by the JustAbout team
Discounting the effects of stellar bodies, maximum Supercruise speed is 2001c, which is another tribute to 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Lesser-known features and abilities
Elite Dangerous fact #7: what lies within
“Commanders pass in and out through the mail slots of Coriolis stations hundreds of times every day. And yet many don’t realise that if you fly close to the corners of these massive cuboctahedral starports, it’s actually possible to fly in and around the superstructure itself. In the video below, I take you on a flight-assist-off tour of one such station: Artemis Lodge in the Celaeno System.”
Elite Dangerous fact #8: too hot to handle?
“Heat sink launchers not only cool your ship down, but they also restore some power to your weapon capacitor - about 2 MW/second to be exact. This allows you to fire your weapons more often, and helps commanders to fight Thargoid interceptors more efficiently."
Elite Dangerous fact #9: finders weepers
“If you've picked up a Thargoid sensor or any other Thargoid part, you’re more likely to get hyperdicted by the ‘goids.”
Elite Dangerous fact #10: hot scoop
“Did you know that you don’t need your SRV to get most surface materials or Thargoid/Guardian relics? If you’ve got a sharp eye, you can equip a ship with a normal beam laser to break off pieces before collecting them with your cargo scoop. It works best in small ships such as the Dolphin or Imperial Courier.”
Elite Dangerous fact #11: port of call
“I recently discovered this, and it was new to my squadron too. While you can’t enter ground ports on foot, you can enter them with your SRV. Once you’re in range of the port with your SRV, select the port from your contacts and ‘request to board’. Once granted, you will be directed to drive into a small garage. From there, you can board your ship and either disembark in the port hangar or launch from the landing pad.”
It works the other way around too. Kenomica adds: “In planetary ports - the older ones from Horizons that look like circular cities - you can disembark to your SRV while docked. Use the bottom panel to deploy your SRV and drive out from the garage.”
Elite Dangerous fact #12: ocular patdown
Submitted by CMDR_OptimusKoala
“It’s possible to see a representation of your ship when approaching a Thargoid sensor. Indeed, the sensors emit a sound that, once decoded, can reveal a geometric depiction of the ship you’re in at the time of the scan. I’ve included one of these depictions of an ASP below. You can read about it in more detail here.”
Fans of the original 1984 Elite might also notice some visual similarities.
Elite Dangerous fact #13: who’s a good ship?
“While on foot, Odyssey players can wave at their ship to dismiss it. They can also applaud it to make the lights go on and off!”
Interesting quirks
Elite Dangerous fact #14: lunar lunacy
“Mitterand Hollow is a tourist destination that’s hard to catch. In the early days of Elite Dangerous, an error in the game's code caused a system's moon to orbit its parent planet at ridiculous speeds: 876 km/s. That means a total solar eclipse is visible from the moon's surface every local day for ten seconds. Frontier once patched the moon's orbit speed, but the community demanded their funny moon bug returned, and in response Frontier reversed the patch, and the moon can still be found in-game today.”
It might sound dangerous, but as long as you mass lock, you can make the tourist pilgrimage without the moon smashing your ship to smithereens. Kenomica adds: “It’s blazingly fast and only takes around a minute and a half to fully orbit its parent planet New Africa.”
Elite Dangerous fact #15: hover, craft
“If you recall your ship to a planet, but it’s too hilly for the ship to land - usually due to a ship’s size - it will instead hover close to the ground, where you’re still able to board it with your SRV.”
Elite Dangerous fact #16: high-def deaths
“Unlike in the Private Group and Solo modes, you can’t take a high-resolution screenshot using ‘Alt’ + ‘F10’ while playing in Open Play. In Open Play, you can only take a standard resolution screenshot using F10. Many are aware of this, though few know the reason why. It’s because the 16 mini captures required for the high-resolution image have a time-slowing effect that Commanders were taking advantage of in PvP battles in the early days of Elite Dangerous. The option has been removed from Open Play mode ever since.”
Elite Dangerous fact #17: a leap of faith
“Elite Dangerous's in-game universe is set exactly 1,286 years in the future, paired to the current date. However, this means that leap years occur at the wrong times; they’re offset by two years. This discrepancy was lampshaded with a one-day in-game event on the 29th of February, 3302. Ricardo Bentonio, a conspiracy theorist, issued an appeal for aid in proving that the day was an anomaly that signalled the imminent destruction of reality. He met his targets, but as noted in the resulting article, ‘as of the time of writing, the universe continues to exist’.”
Elite Dangerous fact #18: you’re barred
“It's impossible to start a fight in any of the stations’ bars. Every great sci-fi has a bar fight scene, so I say there really should be bar fight mechanics in Elite Dangerous too. But, alas, you can’t punch while walking around a station even though you can punch everywhere else. I wonder what stops you from throwing a punch in stations? We have magnetic boots, but perhaps our gloves have really strong magnets in them too?”
Elite Dangerous fact #19: outnumbered and outgunned
“A long time ago, when people were just starting out in Elite, there were times in which PvP and player groups ran wild. Many of those groups developed a new way to PvP, known as Anchor Wings. Four people in Anacondas would drop into a system with those they’d interdicted in an instance of space. Once interdicted, these Anaconda pilots would leave their wing, only to re-invite three other three-pilot wings ready in Supercruise. Once this had happened, instead of four Anacondas, a single wing of players faced off against 16 ships. This technique was used a tonne by the pirate groups Smiling Dog Crew and The Code.”
Lore and player groups
Elite Dangerous fact #20: Inside Out 3: Hyperspace Hijinks
“Hyperspace travel is something we do repeatedly in Elite, but did you know that testing the first modern frame shift drives resulted in human subjects dying in hyperspace and even being turned inside out?”
Yeesh. Find the source material in the video below, which leads nicely onto the next fact.
Elite Dangerous fact #21: ‘I’m sure I left it around here somewhere’
“My favourite Elite Dangerous fact is that humanity first had a proprietary fuel for faster-than-light travel, but the formula was lost, setting humanity back hundreds of years. Then we stole Thargoid research and regained the ability for hyperspace jumping. That’s what set off the latest rapid expansion of humanity.”
Elite Dangerous fact #22: Atlas scrubbed
“Another early project of the Space Age was the Generation Ship Project. These huge prototype mega-ships were equipped with artificial ecosystems. They were designed to travel long distances to find new homes for humanity. They weren’t equipped with FTL (Faster Than Light) travel technology, which meant it would have taken thousands of years for them to reach their destinations. The first generation ship was launched at the end of the 21st century (so perhaps some of us will live to see it!).
“You can download data logs to read about these megaships’ histories. Unfortunately, most of them met tragic ends due to space piracy, strange viruses, crew revolts, or even unexplained supernatural signals. And yet, there’s one exception: the Atlas. This ship successfully reached its destination, yet discovered that they could not stop due a manufacturing issue; they were going to miss their long-sought destination. The chief engineer decided to launch all the escape pods so that the crew could land on the planet. To ensure all pods were launched successfully, he stayed on the Atlas and sacrificed himself. It proved to be a great success, with almost every escape pod landing without a hitch.
“The chief engineer’s wife was pregnant at the time, and in his final log he wrote: ‘My kid's not going to grow up in some tin can, floating aimlessly in space. They're going to grow with dirt between their toes and sky above their head.’ Those words touched me, since as a Chinese person, we attach great importance to the word ‘home’, and only the space under the clear blue sky can be regarded as such. If you’ve watched the Chinese sci-fi movie The Wandering Earth, you’ll understand why people in that movie will try their best to drive the whole Earth as a spacecraft. The movie has a very famous caption that makes me think of that engineer’s plight: ‘我相信，会再次看到蓝天，鲜花挂满枝头’ - ‘I firmly believe, we will see the blue sky, the flowers hanging on the branches again.’
“If you have the chance, try to visit the Atlas. Trust me, the story is worth listening to.”
Elite Dangerous fact #23: Thargoid x Thargoid
“Thargoids are split into two separate factions, and - to our knowledge - one is very timid and exploratory like us, whereas the other is very aggressive.”
Viper is referring to the Oresrians and the Klaxians. While little is known about these two Thargoid dynasties, you can read more about them here.
Elite Dangerous fact #24: long live the queen
“Thargoids are a hierarchical species divided into multiple subgroups. All Thargoids encountered by humanity are drones, which don't appear to have any form of free-will and are instead linked to a hive mind controlled by a single Thargoid Queen.
“Thargoid Queens - as well as Princesses (Queens that have not yet formed their own colony) - are thought to be extremely intelligent, and are telepathically intertwined with their drones in such a way that they can effectively experience all that every drone in its hive is experiencing. Despite this, Thargoid Queens consider their drones expendable and are little, if at all, bothered by the loss of one.”
Elite Dangerous fact #25: Who let the ‘goids out?
“In spite of the current Thargoid invasion, it was in fact us that kicked things off by bombing a Thargoid hive. They may have gotten a little angry at us humans after that. The reason for the bombing is still mysterious; we don't know why the conflict was started but we know who pulled the trigger: John Jameson - a skilled pilot who was not exactly rewarded for his ‘delivery’ mission.
“Jameson thought he was only disabling the Thargoid’s hyperspace travel and was shocked to see the damage he’d wrought. Furthermore, INRA - who gave Jameson the mission - had sabotaged his ship so that he couldn’t blow the whistle on them. Jameson didn't survive and a station was renamed to honour this great pilot, who was manipulated into starting a galactic war. The station has been designed to help great pilots by providing all ships and [almost all] modules available in-game, and for also providing a Guardian tech broker, which allows players to unlock anti-Thargoid weaponry.
“Maybe one day, peace will be found, but we don't know if it will last. The Thargoids seem all the more determined to kill or harvest us all this time.”
You can read more about John Jameson, his mycoid payload, and the repercussions of his unwitting actions here.
Elite Dangerous fact #26: Superweapon supernova
“The Barnard Loop is the biggest nebula in the galaxy, but it’s hard to navigate for players due to the high Thargoid presence in the area. In real life, this zone is known as the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex, and originated from a Supernova that exploded two million years ago.
“When it comes to the lore, the interesting part is that the Guardians lived nearby, around the Gamma Velorum star, and that the Guardian-Thargoid war happened in that same ancient timeframe.
“We don't know how the Guardians won the Thargoid war, except that they used their own robots: the Constructs. However, if the Thargoids have a foothold in the nebula, the supernova could have been the weapon that destroyed their headquarters or homeworld. It could even explain why the Constructs, after developing consciousness, saw their Guardian masters as a menace to life in the galaxy.
“If such a supernova-creating superweapon exists, pray that no Guardian survivors return or that some other wanna-be-saviour scientist doesn’t discover it.”
Elite Dangerous fact #27: your friendly neighbourhood Fuel Rats
“In Elite Dangerous, there’s a group called The Fuel Rats, a collective of players with a singular purpose: to prevent players who run out of fuel from being blown up. These are players who make it their mission to rescue those who find themselves stranded in the dark. They were founded in 2015, but in the years since they’ve grown to more than 20,000 members who’ve collectively made over 150,000 rescues. They all volunteer with the will to help others, and they don’t ask for anything in return.”
HakunaYourTatas adds: “The Fuel Rats have fuel. You don't. Any questions?”
Development history
Elite Dangerous fact #28: what came before
“Elite Dangerous is actually the fourth game in the series, which dates back to 1984 with the original Elite - written by David Braben and Ian Bell - for the BBC Microcomputer. That original game fitted within the available 32 kilobytes of RAM in that early 8-bit machine. It featured vector graphics with hidden line removal and a procedurally generated universe that were both revolutionary at the time.
“The first sequel - Frontier Elite 2 - was written in 1993 for 16-bit machines such as the Commodore Amiga, Atari ST, and early PCs. It attempted to simulate the entire galaxy on a single floppy disk. 1995 saw the introduction of Frontier First Encounters, which was released only for 32-bit PCs.
“Much of the lore of those original games is referenced in Elite Dangerous, not least many of the famous ship types, notably the Cobra Mk3. The origins of the Federation, the Empire and Alliance can be traced back to those early games as well. Of course, dive deeper and you'll find the legends as well such as the Dark Wheel and Raxxla... but that's a story for another day.”
Elite Dangerous fact #29: ‘back in my day…’
“In the early years of Elite Dangerous, we didn’t have any kind of tutorials. You just started in your Sidewinder and flew into the dark. That’s what made Elite really dangerous!”
Elite Dangerous fact #30: ruby anniversary
“20 September 2024 will be the Elite series’ 40th anniversary!”
And yes, we will be celebrating! Which facts didn’t you know? Do you have another to add or one to expand on? Let us know in the comments! If you enjoyed this article, check out these gorgeous Elite Dangerous planet screenshots or our community writeup of the assault on Titan Thor. Some text has been edited for brevity, clarity, or spelling, punctuation, and grammar. You can find the original wording here. Image credit: Frontier Developments
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