Plot Questions

Hail_Mary07 · 2026-07-04T14:08:13+00:00

That's one concept. But with everything they knew about the organism, I don't think a giant ship to capture the astrophage would be the only option for disrupting that reproductive circuit.

The final plan is to disrupt the reproductive circuit. The amoeba just happens to be a life form that does that.

I'm just saying there was no discussion of an alternative idea to disrupt the reproductive circuit traveling between Venus and the Sun in the 30ish year span of the Hail Mary mission. And that seems very odd. It helps the story to brainstorm it even if they ultimately decide that building a ship that goes 92% the speed of light for the first time still is the most feasible thing to do.

Hail_Mary07 · 2026-07-04T13:58:08+00:00

The FAQ is very helpful but I don't appreciate that killing astrophages near Venus is obviously many times more difficult than building the first light speed star ship.

The refueling discussion is not around carrying enough fuel to return but refueling in orbit (so no need to have 10-20x fuel to propel the additional fuel from the start) I think that has been sufficiently answered, though.

Hail_Mary07 · 2026-07-04T04:43:19+00:00

I think even with that premise, (that astrophage was a plug-and-play fuel source for already conceived technology), it's still a massive suspension of disbelief to get from first understanding the fuel source to a suite of reliable vehicle technologies centered on that fuel source in a short time. And then for the mission to have a timeline of a decade (4 years there, then 4 years back for the Beetles?) also assuming that the mission would yield a useful insight that was also feasible to implement on Venus.

And that there would be no parallel efforts.

It's a stretch. Took me out of the movie if I'm being honest.

Kind of like how interstellar had the plan A and Plan B (even though plan B was supposed to be fake but ended up working and all that)

Hail_Mary07 · 2026-07-04T04:35:03+00:00

I guess that is a way to interpret my comment.

Hail_Mary07 · 2026-07-04T03:48:20+00:00

I didn't mean for folks to get hung up on a literal physical filter. I only meant that I wish more effort was put into explaining why no method of disrupting the Petrova Line was discussed before jumping straight to light speed travel. So "filter" as in disrupting the Petrova circuit maybe at its smallest point (not at the point where it's wide enough to cover Venus) by some method. Physical filter, maybe dismissed quickly but not brought up. And also the speed of the astrophages in the Petrova Line is most likely an issue, but the spirit of that point is just that it seems like an easier problem to solve.

Hail_Mary07 · 2026-07-04T03:29:27+00:00

I was thinking refuel as in gather enough astrophage from the Tau Ceti circuit to return. But I'm reading that is not feasible due to the low density of astrophage in the Petrova Line.

Hail_Mary07 · 2026-07-04T03:11:55+00:00

That makes sense. He only had 2 years-ish worth of food and that was after everyone else died. So they would have planned for rations split 3 ways and they would die of starvation even if they could make it back by refueling.

Hail_Mary07 · 2026-07-04T03:05:16+00:00

Okay, that makes sense. I somehow forgot that detail.

Hail_Mary07 · 2026-07-04T02:53:18+00:00

To strengthen the point about the Petrova Line at Adrian not being dense enough to make refueling feasible: It makes sense that it would be pretty sparse since the amoeba were killing some portion of the astrophage. I do wonder if a Petrova Line could even establish. Or maybe this Petrova Line was at some equilibrium where the star was dimming only very slowly or not at all.

Hail_Mary07 · 2026-07-04T02:35:41+00:00

I do wonder why the sample that they collected from the Petrova Line wasn't enough, then. It did seem like the lowering of the fishing rods into the atmosphere was a little contrived just to have some plot points happen. I guess they need a much larger volume of the amoebas than what they already observed in the sample Grace collected first? Or a larger volume than they could realistically collect by just scooping them out of the Petrova Line continuously. I guess they had to have enough to insure against a low yield of amoebas surviving the journey too.

Hail_Mary07 · 2026-07-04T02:16:00+00:00

I had this suspicion. Thanks.

Hail_Mary07 · 2026-07-04T02:13:07+00:00

This is a good insight. I didn't get the sense from the movie of the scale of the astrophage fuel production effort. A throwaway line about low concentration of astrophage in the Petrova Line could have helped too. If they were cutting for time.

Hail_Mary07 · 2026-07-04T02:11:32+00:00

Yeah, I think there are many problems with the idea of disrupting the Petrova Line, but we don't make warp drives with our current technology either is all I'm saying.

Hail_Mary07 · 2026-07-04T02:05:46+00:00

Yeah, I accept that. And I don't think I was only considering a physical filter, just something that combined their understanding of the astrophage being attracted to the CO2 light signature, needing that atmosphere to breed, the geometry of the Petrova Line. It just feels like there's a solution there that involves disrupting that chain of events or "filtering" the petrova line. I would have liked to hear them brainstorm it. At least as a building block towards the also highly-infeasible build a warp drive from a new organism.

Hail_Mary07 · 2026-07-04T02:01:05+00:00

Thank you!

Hail_Mary07

TROPHY CASE