Earth
Position on the route: 1/45 · level needed 1 · journey (Mk0 engine) 0.0 h
By the numbers
| Diameter | 12,742 km |
|---|---|
| Gravity | 9.81 m/s² (1 g) |
| Day | 23 h 56 min |
| Year | 365.25 days |
| Mean temperature | 15 °C |
| Atmosphere | 78 % N₂, 21 % O₂, 1 bar |
| Moon | the Moon |
The story
The only habitable planet we know. Liquid water, a protective magnetic field, an ozone layer and plate tectonics exist together only here. Your company’s space centre is here too: the closer a launch pad is to the equator, the more speed it borrows from Earth’s spin (Kourou 5°, Cape Canaveral 28°).
Reaching orbit takes 7.8 km per second; carrying a kilogram to low orbit fell to a few thousand dollars in the 2020s with reusable rockets. Every piece of a space programme leaves from here, which is why the first investment is always the Earth base.
Thousands of satellites orbit Earth: positioning (GPS, Galileo, BeiDou, GLONASS), communication, weather and observation. The satellite kinds in the game are taken from their real counterparts.
Missions
- Sputnik 1 (1957): the first artificial satellite
- Vostok 1 (1961): Yuri Gagarin, the first human
- ISS (1998–): the permanently crewed orbital station
- Starlink, Galileo, Copernicus: today’s big constellations
Colony note
The starting point. The more the base here grows (refinery, factory, lab), the easier everything beyond.
What probes bring back
- The ozone layer and the magnetic field: life’s two shields.