Squanch
The game's Neptune, thirty times Earth's distance from the star and the farthest planet still inside a direct radio link.
The numbers
These are the figures the map's card shows when you hold your finger on Squanch, 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 Squanch's pull reaches before something bigger takes over.
| Figure | Value |
|---|---|
| TYPE | Planet |
| ORBITS | Sun |
| DISTANCE FROM SUN | 408.95 Gm |
| ORBIT PERIOD | 17580d 10:16:43 |
| ORBIT SHAPE | slightly oval (eccentricity 0.009) |
| RADIUS | 2.32 Mm |
| GRAVITY | 6.20 m/s² |
| DAY | 16:06:36 |
| STATIONARY ORBIT | 11.85 Mm up |
| STATIONARY SPEED | 1,535 m/s |
| LOW ORBIT SPEED | 3,452 m/s |
| ESCAPE SPEED | 5,364 m/s |
| SPHERE OF INFLUENCE | 6.22 Gm |
| ATMOSPHERE | 470.0 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
Squanch is gas most of the way down, and the mix below is the whole world rather than a crust.
| Material | Share |
|---|---|
| Hydrogen | 80 % |
| Helium | 19 % |
| Water ice | 1 % |
The air
Hydrogen, helium and three per cent methane, with the fastest winds in the system driving the cloud decks. No surface under any of it.
| Figure | Value |
|---|---|
| TOP OF THE AIR | 470.0 km |
| PRESSURE AT ZERO ALTITUDE | 1,000 kPa |
| DENSITY AT ZERO ALTITUDE | 18.34 kg/m³ |
| HALVES EVERY | 23,567 m |
| TEMPERATURE AT ZERO ALTITUDE | 190 K (−83 °C) |
| COOLS BY | 1.1 K per km |
| COLDEST IT GETS | 55 K (−218 °C) |
Pressure falls off as you climb: every 23,567 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 — 1.1 K for every kilometre, until the air bottoms out at 55 K (−218 °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 | 110.0 km | 240.0 km |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hydrogen | 78 % | 80 % | 82 % |
| Helium | 19 % | 18.5 % | 17.2 % |
| Methane | 3 % | 1.5 % | 0.8 % |
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. Each deck mixes several kinds of cloud — sheets, lenses, rows of small cloudlets, wisps, hooks and veils — drawn in this world's own colour.
| Deck | From | To |
|---|---|---|
| Stratus | 12,000 m | 44,000 m |
| Cirrus | 80,000 m | 140,000 m |
The cloud bands
There is no surface. What Squanch 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| North Drift | −180° to −90° | — | — | 10 % |
| Great Dark Spot | −90° to 0° | — | — | 10 % |
| Scooter Band | 0° to 90° | — | — | 10 % |
| South Drift | 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 Squanch is drawn from a painted picture, and the four bands are its four quarters, 90° each: the deep indigo of the Great Dark Spot just before 0°, the pale Scooter Band just after, and the cobalt North and South Drifts filling the far side. The colour under you as you skim the clouds is the colour of that quarter.
Its moons
Two moons go round Squanch, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lubbdub | 11.08 Mm | 19.8 km | 0.10 m/s² | none |
| Wubba | 33.41 Mm | 127.5 km | 0.78 m/s² | none |
Getting there
The farthest planet a ship can still reach on a direct radio link. Everything about it is distance. Reaching its sphere of influence pays That's a Long Squanch.
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 | 6,575 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. Squanch 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
One achievement names Squanch: That's a Long Squanch.
The full list, with what each one pays, is on the Achievements reference.