Oort cloud
Position on the route: 34/45 · level needed 600 · journey (Mk0 engine) 214.0 h
By the numbers
| Distance | 2,000–100,000 AU |
|---|---|
| Light time | up to a month from the Sun |
| Contents | trillions of icy bodies |
| Temperature | −270 °C |
| Proposed by | Jan Oort, 1950 |
| Status | never directly observed |
The story
The spherical cloud of ice surrounding the solar system, where the long-period comets come from. It has never been seen directly; its existence is inferred from comets arriving from every direction on orbits hundreds of thousands of years long. Its inner edge may reach halfway to the nearest star.
The bodies are millions of kilometres apart; the ‘cloud’ is almost entirely empty. Voyager 1 will be the first artificial object to reach its inner edge, in about 300 years, and will take 30,000 years to cross it.
The game’s Oort stop is the threshold of interstellar travel: beyond it the destinations are planets of other suns, and the cryo-sleep research is needed.
Missions
- Voyager 1 and 2, Pioneer 10 and 11, New Horizons: the first craft heading that way
Colony note
An outpost of the orbital-station kind, harvesting water and carbon from comet nuclei.
What probes bring back
- Comet nuclei: water, CO, CO₂ and organic ices.
- Millions of kilometres between bodies on average.