The Box
The ringed giant, the game's Saturn: nothing solid under its air, and four moons including the only one in the system with weather.
The numbers
These are the figures the map's card shows when you hold your finger on The Box, 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 The Box's pull reaches before something bigger takes over.
| Figure | Value |
|---|---|
| TYPE | Planet |
| ORBITS | Sun |
| DISTANCE FROM SUN | 130.32 Gm |
| ORBIT PERIOD | 3162d 15:59:23 |
| ORBIT SHAPE | slightly oval (eccentricity 0.057) |
| RADIUS | 5.50 Mm |
| GRAVITY | 6.20 m/s² |
| DAY | 10:39:22 |
| STATIONARY ORBIT | 13.62 Mm up |
| STATIONARY SPEED | 3,132 m/s |
| LOW ORBIT SPEED | 5,482 m/s |
| ESCAPE SPEED | 8,258 m/s |
| SPHERE OF INFLUENCE | 3.95 Gm |
| ATMOSPHERE | 730.0 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
The Box is gas most of the way down, and the mix below is the whole world rather than a crust.
| Material | Share |
|---|---|
| Hydrogen | 96 % |
| Helium | 4 % |
The air
The purest hydrogen of the four giants — ninety-three per cent at the datum and rising with height. As on every giant, the datum is a level in the gas and not a floor.
| Figure | Value |
|---|---|
| TOP OF THE AIR | 730.0 km |
| PRESSURE AT ZERO ALTITUDE | 1,200 kPa |
| DENSITY AT ZERO ALTITUDE | 15.48 kg/m³ |
| HALVES EVERY | 38,123 m |
| TEMPERATURE AT ZERO ALTITUDE | 270 K (−3 °C) |
| COOLS BY | 1.8 K per km |
| COLDEST IT GETS | 95 K (−178 °C) |
Pressure falls off as you climb: every 38,123 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 — 1.8 K for every kilometre, until the air bottoms out at 95 K (−178 °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 | 140.0 km | 380.0 km |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hydrogen | 93 % | 95.5 % | 96.5 % |
| Helium | 6.5 % | 4.2 % | 3.4 % |
| Methane | 0.5 % | 0.3 % | 0.1 % |
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. 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 | 18,000 m | 60,000 m |
| Cirrus | 100,000 m | 170,000 m |
The cloud bands
There is no surface. What The Box 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 Hexagon | −180° to −108° | — | — | 10 % |
| Pale Zone | −108° to −36° | — | — | 10 % |
| Ring Shadow | −36° to 36° | — | — | 10 % |
| Equatorial Zone | 36° to 108° | — | — | 10 % |
| South Belt | 108° 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 The Box is drawn from a painted picture, and the five bands are its five sectors, 72° each: the dark Ring Shadow faces 0°, the pale Equatorial Zone and the South Belt run round one side, and the Pale Zone and the North Hexagon, with its six-sided storm, round the other. The colour under you as you skim the clouds is the colour of that sector.
Its moons
Four moons go round The Box, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chitz | 22.41 Mm | 23.7 km | 0.11 m/s² | none |
| Shleem | 49.64 Mm | 71.9 km | 0.26 m/s² | none |
| Gazorpazorp | 115.07 Mm | 242.5 km | 1.35 m/s² | 150 kPa |
| Froopyland | 335.34 Mm | 69.2 km | 0.22 m/s² | none |
Getting there
Another world with nothing solid under its air. It is worth the crossing for its moons, one of which is the only place out there with air enough to land on a canopy. Reaching its sphere of influence pays Press the Button.
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 | 6,571 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. The Box 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 | 18 |
| WORTH IN ALL | 104 discovery |
| CREDITS BESIDE IT | 2,080 |
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 The Box: Press the Button.
The full list, with what each one pays, is on the Achievements reference.