Openai/6966dc77-ed58-8011-baae-ea32a8500057

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gpt-5-2

User: How long would a player need to explore every system in Elite Dangerous?

How long would a player need to explore every system in Elite Dangerous? At the current rate of new discoveries.

Assistant: In Elite Dangerous, the virtual Milky Way contains a 1:1 recreation of our real galaxy with roughly 400 billion star sy…

In Elite Dangerous, the virtual Milky Way contains a **1:1 recreation of our real galaxy with roughly 400 billion star systems to explore (the exact figure comes from game lore and developer descriptions of the Stellar Forge simulation). elitedangerous.com

🪐 Current Exploration Progress

• As of late 2025, about 0.0653% of those systems had been logged as explored by players and third-party trackers like EDSM — that’s roughly 261 million systems discovered so far. elite-dangerous.fandom.com

⏳ How Long to “Explore Every System” at Current Rates

People have tried to estimate how long it would take to chart all systems based on discovery rates and published data:

📌 If the current rate stays roughly constant:

• One analysis estimated it could take around ~150,000 years for players to collectively map the entire galaxy at about 17,500 new systems per day. TweakTown
• Older estimates put similar numbers — e.g., ~56,000 years based on earlier exploration rates — although these vary with how many systems are actually logged. PC Gamer

⚠️ Caveats

• Rates aren’t constant — as more of the nearby galaxy is explored, new discoveries become rarer and harder to find, meaning the rate could slow further with time.
• Many players don’t upload discoveries to public databases, so real exploration might be somewhat higher than reported — but not drastically so.
• “Exploration” in this sense refers to first discoveries (i.e., being the first to scan a system). Many players still visit systems already discovered by others.

🛰 Why It’s Such a Vast Task

Even at the current pace of thousands of discoveries per day, 400 billion systems is such a huge number that:

• The percentage explored is still tiny (<0.1%). elite-dangerous.fandom.com
• Significant exploration milestones (e.g., 10%, 50%) would likely take thousands to tens of thousands of years of sustained effort by the playerbase.
• Some rough player-made models suggest millennia to fully explore even half the galaxy if the discovery rate remains tied to the fraction already explored. Reddit

🧭 Summary

| Milestone | Estimated Time (at current rate) | | ---------------- | -------------------------------- | | 100% exploration | ~50,000–150,000+ years | | 10% explored | Likely many thousands of years | | 1% explored | Several centuries |

👉 In short: Players will be exploring Elite: Dangerous’s galaxy for tens of thousands of years at the current rate if every system is ever to be discovered. The real “exploration” in the game for most players is the journey and personal discoveries, not completing an entire galactic census — and that will likely stay true for a very long time.