Cronenberg
The green one nobody meant to make, the game's Uranus: hydrogen, helium and enough methane to colour the sky.
The numbers
These are the figures the map's card shows when you hold your finger on Cronenberg, plus the two speeds that decide what a flight there costs. Low orbit speed is how fast you must be going, sideways, to stay up just above the bottom of the air. Escape speed is how fast you must be going to leave altogether. Sphere of influence is how far Cronenberg's pull reaches before something bigger takes over.
| Figure | Value |
|---|---|
| TYPE | Planet |
| ORBITS | Sun |
| DISTANCE FROM SUN | 261.37 Gm |
| ORBIT PERIOD | 8982d 17:38:08 |
| ORBIT SHAPE | slightly oval (eccentricity 0.046) |
| RADIUS | 2.40 Mm |
| GRAVITY | 5.50 m/s² |
| DAY | 17:14:24 |
| STATIONARY ORBIT | 12.17 Mm up |
| STATIONARY SPEED | 1,475 m/s |
| LOW ORBIT SPEED | 3,305 m/s |
| ESCAPE SPEED | 5,138 m/s |
| SPHERE OF INFLUENCE | 3.89 Gm |
| ATMOSPHERE | 490.0 km tall |
Stationary orbit is the height where one trip round takes exactly one of the world’s days, so a ship there hangs over the same spot on the ground. See Stationary orbits.
What it is made of
Cronenberg is gas most of the way down, and the mix below is the whole world rather than a crust.
| Material | Share |
|---|---|
| Hydrogen | 83 % |
| Helium | 15 % |
| Water ice | 2 % |
The air
Four per cent methane at the datum is what makes the sky the colour it is; it thins to one per cent by 260 km. There is no surface under it.
| Figure | Value |
|---|---|
| TOP OF THE AIR | 490.0 km |
| PRESSURE AT ZERO ALTITUDE | 900 kPa |
| DENSITY AT ZERO ALTITUDE | 15.68 kg/m³ |
| HALVES EVERY | 24,953 m |
| TEMPERATURE AT ZERO ALTITUDE | 200 K (−73 °C) |
| COOLS BY | 1.2 K per km |
| COLDEST IT GETS | 60 K (−213 °C) |
Pressure falls off as you climb: every 24,953 m of height, there is half as much air around you. A Barometer reads that fall directly, and a Thermometer reads the cooling beside it — 1.2 K for every kilometre, until the air bottoms out at 60 K (−213 °C) and stops getting colder. There is no surface here, so both figures are quoted at zero altitude — the level the map measures height from, deep inside the gas.
What the air is made of
The mix changes with height. Each column is a measured level; between two of them the game blends one into the other, and above the top one there is nothing left to breathe. A Mass Spectrometer reads this table itself: its figure is the mean molar mass of the mix where the reading is taken, and beside it the line names the biggest gases it found. See the Mass Spectrometer.
| Gas | Surface | 120.0 km | 260.0 km |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hydrogen | 80 % | 83 % | 85 % |
| Helium | 16 % | 15 % | 14 % |
| Methane | 4 % | 2 % | 1 % |
Clouds
Cloud decks stand at fixed heights and are drawn wherever you fly. You climb through them on the way up and see them from above afterwards. A cloud is drawn in front of your ship: inside a thick one you lose sight of it until you fly out, so pick your way round the big ones. The deck mixes several kinds of cloud — smooth lenses, rows of small cloudlets, grey sheets and dark rain cloud — drawn in this world's own colour.
| Deck | From | To |
|---|---|---|
| Stratus | 14,000 m | 46,000 m |
The cloud bands
There is no surface. What Cronenberg has instead of biomes is bands of cloud, named and drawn round the world, and a ship low enough to be inside one is over that band as far as a reading is concerned. Nothing can land, so no band is ever surveyed from the ground.
| Band | Where | Typical height | Roughness | Damp |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bland North | −180° to −90° | — | — | 10 % |
| Methane Haze | −90° to 0° | — | — | 10 % |
| Polar Collar | 0° to 90° | — | — | 10 % |
| Bland South | 90° to 180° | — | — | 10 % |
Where is the band's place round the world, in degrees from the world's own 0°, running out to ±180° on the far side. There is no ground under any of them, so neither height column means anything here.
On the map Cronenberg is drawn from a painted picture, and the four bands are its four quarters of cloud: the darkest mint of the Polar Collar just past 0°, the pale Methane Haze just before it, and the two Blands filling the far side, with thin streams of cloud drifting across all four. The colour under you as you sink into the clouds is the colour of that quarter.
Its moons
Three moons go round Cronenberg, all of them inside its sphere of influence. Each has a sphere of its own, so the trip from one to another is a small transfer inside the big one.
| Moon | Distance out | Radius | Gravity | Air |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blips | 12.19 Mm | 22.2 km | 0.08 m/s² | none |
| Purge | 41.05 Mm | 74.2 km | 0.38 m/s² | none |
| Zigerion | 54.95 Mm | 71.7 km | 0.35 m/s² | none |
Getting there
Air over nothing solid, like the other giants, and far enough out that the burn that throws you there is most of the trip's cost. Its three moons are the reason to come. Reaching its sphere of influence pays Cronenberged.
What a ship leaving Earth's pad needs, in total change of speed, to do each of these:
| Trip | Δv from Earth's pad |
|---|---|
| Orbit | 6,625 m/s |
What it pays
Every place nobody has measured before pays discovery the first time an instrument reads it, and how much depends on how far from home the world is. Cronenberg counts as 6.00 against Earth's 1.00, so every place on it pays that many times what the same place at home would.
| Figure | Value |
|---|---|
| PLACES TO SURVEY | 16 |
| WORTH IN ALL | 92 discovery |
| CREDITS BESIDE IT | 1,840 |
A place is a world, a band of altitude and — on the ground — the biome you are standing in, and each instrument surveys each place separately. Science and readings explains the whole of it.
What it pays out for
Two achievements name Cronenberg: Cronenberged, Two Grams to the Mole.
The full list, with what each one pays, is on the Achievements reference.