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Elite Dangerous pays tribute to Stephen Hawking

Elite Dangerous pays tribute to Stephen Hawking

Elite Dangerous has paid tribute to the legendary scientist Stephen Hawking by naming 19 stations in the game after him.

Professor Stephen Hawking died aged 76 on March 14th and the Elite community celebrated his life by touring the 19 stations in the game for five hours last week.

Dubbed the ‘Hawking Tea Run’, the tour started at 17:00 UTC and ran until 22:00 UTC on Saturday March 17th. When the tour ended at the Black Hole of HIP 34707, the voyagers dumped tea into it in honour of Hawking.

The run took place in private groups, with the details being available on Discord. It began at Hawking Station in Gaoh, and the full route that took place can be seen on the Polygon article here.

Hawking was known for his groundbreaking theories and book A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes, which sold over 10 million copies world-wide. He suffered from motor neuron disease, which gradually paralysed him over the decades and sadly caused his eventual death.

In the forum organising the tribute, player Allcrowsareblack said: “Prof. Hawking’s car number plate allegedly once was T4 SWH, so as well as naming the event in this way, we ask also that everyone who has them change their ID plates to T4 SWH in his honour.”

Frontier Developments is based in Hawking’s hometown of Cambridge, so it’s no surprise that they paid tribute to the famous scientist. The company had a very successful 2017, with both Elite Dangerous and Planet Coaster hitting over one million copies in sales.


Staff Writer