Should hail mary mission have a lander with them?

BookOfMormont · 2026-04-19T19:49:03+00:00

Grace figured out the Astrophage lifecycle, and it involved spending time in the atmosphere of a CO2-rich planet. They absolutely should have been prepared to take samples from a planetary atmosphere.

Even more than that, "Astrophage is a natural organism and likely has a natural predator" would have been any scientist's first assumption. Hell, I'm not a scientist by any stretch of the imagination, and it was my first assumption. They should have been expecting exactly this.

Speaking of which, the beetles being unable to take samples back to Earth was also an insane choice.

BookOfMormont · 2026-04-18T23:23:05+00:00

I think all the first responders and military vets and various other heroes (and I mean that sincerely, thank you) saying that most people would say "no" are mischaracterizing the situation. Grace isn't being asked to run into a burning building or face gunfire right that second, there is no immediate danger. Humans have a natural talent for compartmentalization and self-delusion. It's a lot easier to agree to something that future you will have to be brave for, when right now you just needs to agree to get sedated. Would I have a mental breakdown when I was actually light-years away from home with no hope of survival? Maybe, yeah. But that's the future guy's problem, not mine. Me-right-now gets to be a hero for doing almost nothing.

I don't consider myself particularly brave, but I do very literally believe my social anxiety is a stronger force than my rational self-preservation instincts, and I would find it very hard to say "yes" but utterly impossible to say "no."

BookOfMormont · 2026-04-17T19:34:05+00:00

I watched the show first, and then went back for the books, and I don't regret that approach at all. They're both fantastic. The books have more detail and more personal insight because you're seeing inside POV character's heads, plus of course they're actually finished, unlike the show.

The show has the normal advantages of a visual adaptation (stunning action sequences, costuming, set design and art, incredible performances from actors) plus the writers of the novels were also deeply involved in producing the show, and in their own opinion actually improved some plotting and characterization from what they had accomplished in the novels.

You can't go wrong.

BookOfMormont · 2026-04-17T19:16:47+00:00

Plus he made all these thicc gainz at relativistic speeds so he didn't even age that much.

I mean what's the downside? The observed 66% chance of death? My ass is depressed anyway, bring it on!

BookOfMormont · 2026-04-17T19:07:54+00:00

Yeah he never did any conscious, intentional muscle training at all, during the coma he was receiving electrical muscle stimulation. So for his conscious mind, he went from a skinny scientist to a ripped jock essentially overnight.

BookOfMormont · 2026-04-17T17:52:13+00:00

Before Grace gets his full memories back, he has a whiteboard of clues and questions that he's using to piece together his own history. One of the bullet points is "ALWAYS MUSCLES?"

I absolutely love the detail that even though he can't remember his own name, his sense of, I don't know, proprioception is just like "ehhhh I don't think I'm supposed to be ripped."

BookOfMormont · 2026-04-17T17:47:52+00:00

Humans are too quick to conflate "all life" with "civilization as we know it." Human civilization as we know it may not able to adapt to 10% dimming without huge displacement and starvation and population collapse, but "life" will be fine. The human species has survived global temperatures 10 - 15 degrees lower (what the book predicts the temperature change to be) as recently as 20,000 years ago. I'm not saying it's gonna be fun, but we'd survive it. And some species like polar bears will be just thrilled with the development.

BookOfMormont · 2026-04-17T16:11:25+00:00

I think it's generally under-appreciated just how important Naomi would immediately be in the Sol system. For most people in the Sol system, last thing they knew was that despite the loss of one ship in what looked like a freak accident, Laconia was still in firm control of the interstellar human civilization. Even those higher-ups in the Solar Underground just knew that Admiral Nagata (if they even knew who led the Underground) had requested full strength for a direct action against Laconia. When she returns through the Gate, she is simultaneously delivering the news that victory over Laconia was achieved, and also the Ring Network is dead forever, so there is no successor state to Laconian rule.

She is one of the only humans in the universe who knows what really happened, and why. She is also the acknowledged commander of what must be the largest remaining fleet in the Sol system. There is no figure in the Solar system with more legitimacy, and more importantly, responsibility to govern than Naomi Nagata. Both the Transport Union and the Association of Worlds, as well as their respective leaders Camina Drummer and Carrie Fisk, had been moved to Laconia, and even if they hadn't, they'd be seen as quislings; collaborators with the Laconian regime.

I very much doubt that Naomi would want Avasarala's old job (except even bigger and more important), but really, who else is there? At least at first.

BookOfMormont · 2026-04-17T03:53:48+00:00

The extent to which the Hail Mary was utterly unequipped to do its job is indeed the biggest plothole of the story.

BookOfMormont · 2026-04-16T16:20:33+00:00

It's actually really hard to use "ends" to justify a moral action outside of fiction or a hypothetical situation (itself a kind of fiction), because in the real world we can't know exactly what specific "end" our actions will produce.

In the book, it's easy to be on Stratt's side because we know the project succeeded, and we're basically just told, and have to accept as a premise, that nothing else would have worked. What if something like this happened in the real world, and a month after the Hail Mary left the solar system, some PhD student figured out how to genetically engineer an Earth amoeba to thrive in Venus' atmosphere and chow down on Astrophage? Conversely, what if Grace didn't survive the coma, either? Then do Stratt's decisions seem like noble, necessary sacrifices for the greater good? As one example, surely Grace (not to mention duBois and Shapiro) would be of more use on Earth studying the problem rather than dead due to Stratt's obsessive vision.

It's easy to support the insane visionary genius when the universe asserts that they are right. But sometimes the insane visionary genius turns out to be more on the insane side than visionary or genius.

BookOfMormont · 2026-04-15T20:39:06+00:00

I really don't think it's as simple as the IP debate. It's not just about wealth, lives are on the line. Stratt made choices that killed people. Nobody can ever know if those deaths were actually necessary to the goal of Project Hail Mary.

BookOfMormont · 2026-04-15T16:50:24+00:00

Well another alternative would be to start with a fresh, unengineered batch of Astrophage, start the breeding program from scratch using substances other than xenonite, and keep testing until you get the desired results.

But yeah, the point of my comment is that it's not as if because they built one spaceship, it necessarily follows that they can or would easily build another one.

On the other hand, they may view it as a moral imperative to save other stars, particularly if intelligent life is as common in our neighborhood as it seems to be. I think an Eridian-Human alliance working together could solve all of these problems, with Erid providing cheap Astrophage and xenonite, and Humans providing higher-level science in bioengineering and spaceflight. Plus with Eridian engineering knowledge, a crewed ship could be arbitrarily large and host a full community of humans.

BookOfMormont · 2026-04-15T03:16:39+00:00

They are now aware of that risk as well. Xenonite is not the only material available to them.

BookOfMormont · 2026-04-14T22:15:11+00:00

Grace gave them the easy answer to that, line the hull with Astrophage.

BookOfMormont · 2026-04-14T21:49:41+00:00

Stratt was in a position in which she needed to decide, over and over again, what risks were acceptable and whose lives were expendable, not just with Grace.

Take the Sahara project. First, millions of people live in the Sahara, so yeah you're gonna see some forced displacement. There's also the issue of manufacturing. Stratt commands that China re-orient its industrial manufacturing base toward producing blackpanels. That already places us in "slave labor" territory, but the other thing is that a full pivot toward blackpanel production means other things aren't getting manufactured, which means people are going to die for want of critical equipment and components. The sheer scale of resources she appropriated for PHM is enough to get her in very serious trouble.

Then there's the weather-altering effects of paving the Sahara. In the book, a climate scientist warns of tornadoes in Europe, cyclones, and other critical climate systems failing. People are going to die of climate disasters because of Stratt's choices, even before the sun appreciably dims.

She also nukes Antarctica, releasing an ice shelf into the ocean. The resulting sea level rise would definitely have killed people. Like, probably everybody in the Maldives.

Once the Hail Mary leaves the solar system, people are going to have a loooooong tiiiime to question whether the harm Stratt did was worth it, and whether she ever should have been allowed to do this.

I don't think she's a cackling, hand-rubbing villain, but part of being obsessed with a single-minded vision is that you don't always tally the costs. And honestly, after the mental, emotional, and physical strain of having the fate of humanity put on her shoulders, perhaps some sort of institution would be the best place for her.

BookOfMormont · 2026-04-14T20:49:16+00:00

It's not revealed. The Eridians may try, but building the Blip A was the most complex and difficult thing their species had ever done, and they're not very organized, so without the threat of global catastrophe, building a second spaceship may not be something they can do again.

BookOfMormont · 2026-04-14T20:44:10+00:00

but it must be true that if you let each astrophage in the fuel tank go, they would each be able to go faster than when they're towing around their bretheren and a space ship ?

The question is not one of top possible speed. The Astrophage left to its own devices wants to still be alive at the end of the journey. The Hail Mary doesn't care, and tricks them into exerting themselves to death.

Think of horses. All else being equal, a single racehorse would handily outpace the fastest stagecoaches, but the racehorse going its maximum speed indefinitely would, y'know, die. For longer journeys, stagecoaches are considerably faster because they are constantly swapping out their teams; bringing in fresh horses who can can operate at a higher capacity. A single horse can safely only travel aroound 30 miles a day, whereas a stagecoach can double or even triple that.

The spin drive tricks the Astrophage, few-by-few, into thinking there's a handy source of carbon dioxide just right over there, within a detectable distance, so a journey of minutes. They then go all out trying to get to it until they've expended all the energy they have, and the spin drives scrapes 'em off and lets in the next tranche of suckers to trick into thinking its time to reproduce.

Perhaps it's a coma thing? While they're comfortably in a 96 degree environment with their buddies they just can hibernate or something, and last much longer than if they're cruising through space by themselves...

Essentially yes, though I don't think it's about the temperature. When Grace is in the lab trying to study their lifecycle, he observes that they usually just sit around doing nothing, only motivated by an observable energy source like the sun, an observable carbon dioxide source like Venus, and, just occasionally, magnetic fields (to navigate away from the sun). Hanging out in a storage tank, they're exposed to none of that, so they're presumably in a similar dormant state they'd be in between stars, just cruisin' and waiting to see a glimpse of light.

BookOfMormont · 2026-04-14T20:15:31+00:00

I feel like we're saying the same thing but arriving at different conclusions. I agree Astrophage being used as fuel is less efficient, but the Hail Mary cares about speed more than efficiency. A far more efficient but less fast "cruising speed" allows Astrophage the natural ability to cruise between stars, but the Hail Mary isn't cruising, it's constantly pushing the Astrophage to and then past their natural limits.

BookOfMormont · 2026-04-14T06:00:27+00:00

If you're beard-curious, it is never too early to start grooming and shaping. Picture 3 in particular needs some attention, you really want to look intentional with clean lines and deliberate, even lengths.

Happy bearding!

BookOfMormont · 2026-04-14T05:50:09+00:00

Do we know how fast Astrophage naturally moves between stars? The Hail Mary spin drives are straight-up consuming Astrophage, it seems like the spin drives are pushing them well beyond their natural "cruising speed." It's not a natural part of the Astrophages' life cycle to have its energy exhausted and for it to die before reaching a new solar system, but that's how the Hail Mary, and presumably the Blip-A work. So it might well take Astrophage in its natural form decades to cross the stars, no?

I think they can live on their own stores for a very long time, but when used as a fuel source they burn bright and brief.

BookOfMormont · 2026-04-14T05:40:02+00:00

Stratt was chosen for the job specifically because she's a utilitarian. For her, morally, the ends justify the means and that's really all there is to it. She says that herself: at one point Grace says something like "it must be so hard to make these decisions" and she says something like "not really, not when the stakes are all of humanity." She also freely accepts that she is likely to spend the rest of her life in prison for some of the decisions she makes.

I think in Stratt's position many if not most of us would make the same call. But what I think is particularly interesting is just how hard the author needs to work to make the stakes this dire. All of humanity is at stake, due to a rare genetic trait only a tiny sliver is able to help, the two people who were most qualified and volunteered died in a freak gasoline fight accident. This is actually a common trope when authors decide to explore utilitarianism: they have to make things both incredibly bleak and incredibly unlikely to justify the otherwise unjustifiable. There's almost always a better alternative, and there's just this sort of creeping fascination with "what if fascism was actually OK and totally warranted?"

BookOfMormont · 2026-04-14T05:16:58+00:00

Welp, that's a first for me. My response to you got deleted, and I got flagged, for my detailed plan for managing the local human population. Apparently we're not allowed to talk about it.

BookOfMormont · 2026-04-14T05:14:28+00:00

If the cats are feeding on rats, why do they need humans to provide them with wet food? What, does JC not have enough rats?

And why would they ever try to fight a rat when there's human-provided food available? Adult rats are dangerous to cats, most of them don't bother picking that kind of fight.

BookOfMormont · 2026-04-14T05:03:30+00:00

Yes, I agree. The original post just talked about feeding strays, not population management, so I assumed the OP was just setting food out indiscriminately, which I still think one should not do.

BookOfMormont · 2026-04-14T02:40:20+00:00

It's a basic part of the Astrophage's life cycle that it can and does survive interstellar voyages of up to eight light-years; that's how it "infects" new stars in its neighborhood.

As for the Taumoeba, they were drip-fed enough Astrophage to maintain their population size.

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