EXPEDITION 001 / VIRGO A
THE POINTNO RETURN.
A one-way journey into a supermassive black hole.
BEGIN DESCENT ↗
4½ MINUTE FLIGHT • DRAG TO LOOK AROUND
FLIGHT TELEMETRY COAST
RADIUS / EVENT HORIZON 100.00 rₕ
SPEED VS RIVER 0.020 c
RIVER SPEED 0.100 c
FELT ACCELERATION 0.00 g
TIME DILATION 1.01 ×
TIDAL GRADIENT 0.00 g/m
550 nm BEACON / FORWARD · AFT · DISK*
MORE INSTRUMENTS +
LOCAL RIVER FRAME / ZERO THRUST
THE VIEW FROM HOME
HOME CLOCK
SHIP CLOCK RECEIVED
SHIP CLOCK RATE
550 nm BEACON RECEIVED Radial signal to an observer overhead. Schematic, not a second camera.
Home never saw you cross.
END OF TRANSMISSION
Felt acceleration, start to finish:
REPLAY ↺ SANDBOX ↗ REWIND ◀
× ABOUT THE FLIGHT
One horizon. This flight uses a non-spinning Schwarzschild black hole with M87's estimated mass. The thin, visible disk and blue-white polar jets are artistic choices inspired by M87. Real M87 has spin and a different accretion flow. The jets have a bright spine, luminous knots and a softer sheath; their light follows the same curved paths as the disk. Their color, scale and plasma Doppler brightness are illustrative, not a measured reconstruction or a magnetic plasma simulation.
You coast without thrust. Free fall produces zero felt acceleration, even as your speed and the separation between clocks grow. Tidal forces are a separate readout.
Cinema / Physics changes the spectral shifts and visible brightness. The ray tracer follows Schwarzschild light paths down to its validated limit. The deepest view uses the approximation described below. The flight ends at a small radius before the singularity, where the classical model diverges.
*The disk beacon is a proxy at the peak-temperature radius with zero axial impact parameter. It is not a tracked disk feature. Automatic exposure measures average visible luminance and adapts within fixed limits.
Controls: Space to pause, R to restart, drag to look, D to cycle labeled debug views. Sandbox thrust: W/S, A/D, Q/E. Reduced-motion preferences are respected.
Optional audio depicts the cabin and controls; it is artistic sound design, not a recording or sonification of the black hole. Cabin vibration is a camera effect representing machinery, with stronger vibration under sandbox thrust. It adds no gravitational waves to the model. Reduced motion is respected unless you turn cabin vibration on.
Cabin sounds generated locally with Sony AI Woosh-DFlow , edited by David Veksler with ffmpeg. Model weights: CC BY-NC 4.0 .
Jet reference: NASA, M87’s two jets (reviewed October 6, 2026). Model references: Hamilton & Lisle · Bruneton . Built by David Veksler.
Below r = 0.05, the view holds ray geometry at the last validated radius. Aberration and brightness evolve analytically with the ship's Lorentz factor. This deepest view is approximate; all clocks and tidal readouts follow the full trajectory.