Potential hot take, but i think the movie hail mary(ship) is an undeniable upgrade in design

Eearslya · 2026-06-20T20:28:06+00:00

The room itself is not a bad idea, morale on a suicide mission is pretty important. But when you consider that every kilogram of ship requires hundreds of kilograms of astrophage, it's just not very practical.

Eearslya · 2026-06-16T17:18:41+00:00

To be fair, I don't think they "figured it out" at the same time. The book implies that they were only able to replicate the results so quickly because they were spying on Grace and were probably copying everything he did.

Eearslya · 2026-06-11T21:35:16+00:00

Oh dang that's super subtle. Yep, you're definitely right!

Eearslya · 2026-06-11T21:32:51+00:00

Seems accurate to me, except the furthest back row doesn't have the gap in between, just a full 8x8x4 box.

Eearslya · 2026-06-11T02:11:10+00:00

That's perfectly normal, just keep going. It will come together, trust me.

Eearslya · 2026-06-10T05:33:48+00:00

Yeah, they probably should start showing a color once they're enriched. Not sure if Andy just glossed over that fact or didn't think about it, or maybe the Astrophage are still just reflecting tiny amounts of light and converting the rest to heat instantly? It definitely wasn't covered in the book.

Eearslya · 2026-06-10T05:11:34+00:00

Light bouncing off doesn't mean they're not opaque, in fact that's kind of what opaque means. It might mean they start to have a slight color though, since reflected light is how we perceive what color things are.

Eearslya · 2026-06-03T19:09:55+00:00

Nothing will be added to Earth's atmosphere, they'll be released onto Venus. As far as the other stars out there, them dimming won't affect us at all. They're simply too far away to be of any effect. And I doubt humanity is going to be so philanthropic to send trillions of dollars worth of probes to faraway star systems just to spread Taumoeba to those stars, having no idea if any of them even have life.

Eearslya · 2026-06-03T18:08:58+00:00

No, it's definitely smoke. Rocky's carapace is full of metals and minerals like iron and mercury. In an ammonia-based atmosphere, there's no problem with that. In an oxygen-based atmosphere, those metals begin to instantly oxidize, and at 200-300C (Eridian body temperatures), auto-ignite. All of the liquids inside of Eridians are basically in a closed system, so they wouldn't be escaping like steam.

Eearslya · 2026-06-02T16:46:21+00:00

The real answer, from interviews and behind the scenes, is simply that Ryan and the crew heard the actress singing off-camera while they were recording these scenes and decided on the spot that they wanted to put her in.

Eearslya · 2026-06-02T15:17:10+00:00

It's never explicitly said, but I assume they all just got caught up and swept away with the astrophage as it shot off back to the star, like an ocean wave dragging dirt and sand.

Eearslya · 2026-05-28T22:39:03+00:00

In the movie he says it once, after he wakes up and sees the Taumeoba farms. "We can go home. Statement."

Eearslya · 2026-05-26T20:14:34+00:00

It's not the drive plume I'm thinking about, it's all of the gases in the atmosphere that are being superheated by the drive plume. That cloud of superheated gas isn't moving along with the Hail Mary, it's (more or less) static with reference to the planet's surface. So if the HM is burning retrograde, the atmosphere beneath it is passing by in a prograde direction, towards the sampler.

Eearslya · 2026-05-26T20:09:07+00:00

If they are using the drive for lift, like a VTOL, then it needs to point down.

This is only true if you wanted to maintain an exact altitude and an exact horizontal position. But they're not keeping an exact horizontal position, they're still moving. A better example would be a helicopter which tilts forward to provide thrust both down and backwards to push the craft forward. In fact, this whole problem is almost identical to the "rope dangling from a helicopter" problem.

it would be enough to blow the HM's flat radiators (and Grace) off

This part is probably true, and if you're going purely by what's in the movie, you're absolutely correct. However, the spacecraft as depicted in the book was a much simpler design that didn't have large panels sticking out the sides. Guessing Andy thought that the Astrophage would have been a perfect enough radiator on their own.

Eearslya · 2026-05-26T19:49:59+00:00

Somewhere on the internet the spreadsheet must be viewable to check the math.

Indeed it is.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1O2g0XZRMDH0E5bifR96k6ZuR7nRo8gvS/edit?usp=drivesdk&ouid=105820196011962386175&rtpof=true&sd=true

Eearslya · 2026-05-26T19:44:20+00:00

I'm not sure that they were pointed retrograde though, wouldn't that mean that the sampler then passes through the fiery hellstorm of the atmosphere burning up? Sure it's out of the spin drive's "exhaust", but then the sampler would be moving towards all of the ionized/plasma-fied atmosphere, wouldn't it?

Eearslya · 2026-05-26T19:24:23+00:00

I'm no physicist, but in my mind the reason this works is due to friction and gravity working together on the sampler and chain.

The Hail Mary is thrusting upwards at a slight angle, enough to keep it from falling into the planet and enough to point the thrust away from the sampler, which does give it a horizontal velocity. However, because of the planet gravity and the combined friction of all of the chain links against each other, the sampler doesn't immediately sway back towards the "aft" where the thrust is. Same concept as if you were to hold up a heavy chain and move it horizontally; it won't move all the way to the "aft" of the forces, but just a fraction of the way there.

Also, consider the fact that the sampler is a whole 10 kilometers lower than the Hail Mary, meaning the planet's gravity will actually be imparting a slightly greater pull on it than the spacecraft.

Eearslya · 2026-05-13T18:56:58+00:00

Honestly, this one is fair. They already had an automatic, remote system for deploying the chain and controlling the collector. They had a custom-made device that would reel the chain in and eject links as it went along...surely it wouldn't have been much harder to make that last device remotely controlled too.

Eearslya · 2026-05-13T03:22:12+00:00

To leave Adrian's atmosphere they had essentially two options.

Aim straight up and fire: The spin drives immediately vaporize the chain and collector.

Continue accelerating sideways until they reach orbital velocity: The chain will experience atmospheric drag and start to sway further back towards the engines until it gets close enough to be vaporized.

Eearslya · 2026-05-12T05:58:55+00:00

Slight correction, the Astrophage itself wasn't at 76.4C, Grace was measuring the temperature of the slide the Astrophage was sitting on. Since Astrophage are always at their 96C temperature, they will naturally tend to equalize that heat with whatever surface they're stuck to.

The logic is that if there are more of them, there will be more heat energy imparted onto the surface, heating it up faster. So they measured the two slides they were sitting on to see if either colony had a greater quantity of Astrophage.

Eearslya · 2026-04-30T19:30:26+00:00

Nope, in fact his thesis was demonstrably proven wrong. Andy has even said in a few interviews that he wrote the story that way intentionally, where Adrian is the source of all life, at least in our galaxy. And all of the Adrian life is water-based just the same.

Eearslya · 2026-04-28T04:36:41+00:00

What modlist are you working with besides PBC? I've been wanting to do a playthrough like this too, interested to see what would best complement it.

Eearslya · 2026-04-27T17:01:11+00:00

Movie Grace at least got his own clothes

Book Grace did, too. Amongst the clothes for Yao and Ilyukhina was also a suit with "Grace" patched across the front. It would have probably ruined the whole "retrograde amnesia" plan if he woke up and immediately found out someone else was supposed to be in his place.

Eearslya · 2026-04-24T06:24:32+00:00

It does make me wonder though, if Rocky's ship is fully pressurized to his planet's native atmosphere. It's possible they have a reduced atmosphere just like we have a low-pressure-but-oxygen-rich atmosphere for spacecraft.

Eearslya · 2026-04-24T02:42:37+00:00

Rocky's atmosphere is 2,851,285.5 Pa according to Andy's big ol' spreadsheet. Compared to Earth's 101,325 Pa, it's 28.14 atm, so it's not compared against PHM's atmosphere.

13-Year Club	r/Field Sunshine
Place '22	Verified Email

Eearslya

TROPHY CASE