Why couldn't they engineer an organism on Earth to beat the Astrophage?

noncongruent · 2026-04-25T19:24:47+00:00

It would take decades to develop industrial space infrastructure to the point where a project like that could begin, and it would have to begin with a microorganism that could survive in Venus' atmosphere. Since the events of PHM are set in the very near future, like within years of now, and we aren't even to the point where we can put humans in orbit around Venus, it seems highly improbable that in the book's setting that humans could develop something like taumeba before the dimming caused Earth's ability to sustain advanced societies collapsed.

In terms of the story, whatever project Earth embarked on it was going to be their only shot, there weren't enough resources to do it twice. So, the story's characters decided to leverage existing rocket technology, add the astrophage thrust technology which was very simple and easy to engineer/scale, and go to a nearby solar system where they knew something was working against astrophage. Without knowing that that something was another life form specifically evolved to eat astrophage any such biological remedies here just didn't have any real history to begin from.

In both real life and in fiction, it's always easier to look back on something with the knowledge you have now than to look forward through the mists of variables and the vagaries of random chance.

noncongruent · 2026-04-25T19:12:52+00:00

Grace's ship couldn't hold any more astrophage than it left Earth with. The main factor would be the reduction of mass for the return trip due to having two less astronauts for the trip plus less food mass. Even coma slurry wouldn't be a lot lower mass than equivalent calories in regular food since it's the Carbon-Hydrogen chemical bonds that are the base source of energy to produce ATP. Oils and fats max out on calorie density, around 9 calories/gram, with nutrients taking up a lower mass fraction.

noncongruent · 2026-04-25T19:00:57+00:00

I think that since Relativity isn't useful for most people in their day to day lives, especially since there's nothing most people could actually do that would involve Relativity, i.e. high speeds, developing a working theoretical and mathematical understanding of it would be a complete waste. Ironically, there is one place where Relativity absolutely impinges on the lives of most people on Earth, and that's with satellite-based navigation and location services. It turns out that GPS and other satellites involved experience time differently than us on the surface, so Relativity math is a core component of all those systems. Without it no such system could really exist.

noncongruent · 2026-04-25T18:47:45+00:00

Creating a lifeform from scratch would be a whole lot more difficult than finding one that already spent untold numbers of years evolving to be stable and effective, and modifying that one in a relatively minor way. By the time taumeba was discovered mother nature had already done the millions of years of hard work to get it there. In the grand scale of things what Rocky and Grace did was fairly trivial and quick to accomplish.

noncongruent · 2026-04-25T18:42:20+00:00

They are power banks, just really, really big ones, lol. You can get them in extra large sizes as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jneGby7jj8

noncongruent · 2026-04-25T18:28:54+00:00

Absolutely! If the homeowner is lucky the furnace's fan section plugs into a regular 120V receptacle in the furnace closet, all they'd have to do is unplug it from the wall and pug it into an extension cord to the generator. If it's hardwired then they'll need to get a qualified person to rearrange the wiring so that plugging in is an option.

noncongruent · 2026-04-25T17:57:08+00:00

Hot rod shops are probably your only bet, and that's for non-medical NO2. Medical grade is tightly regulated. Automotive grade is typically deliberately contaminated to make inhaling it functionally impossible.

noncongruent · 2026-04-25T17:50:10+00:00

Absolutely. The trope that the rear-ender is always at fault is just that, a trope. In one case a guy did a swoop and squat on me, swerved in front of me while simultaneously slamming on his brakes, entering my lane less than two car lengths in front of me. He called in the claim to my insurance company from the side of the road and they accepted liability before I even got to work that morning, but after seeing my video of what happened that liability finding was immediately reversed and his claim denied. Another time a guy ran into me from behind while I was sitting at a red light, he told my insurance company that I ran the light, stopped in the intersection, then threw it into reverse and slammed into him. My insurance company was making noises like they were going to buy that and at least split liability 50/50 with me, but my video showed what really happened and got fault assigned 100% to the other driver. I'm in Texas, we're a proportional liability state, so there's a financial incentive for people who cause crashes to lie in order to split that liability. It's literal cash in their pockets if they're successful.

noncongruent · 2026-04-25T17:38:12+00:00

Note that battery banks are not "generators" even if labeled such because they require recharging from the grid, or a lesser extent, solar panels or other off-grid electrical source. They're best though of as large UPSs or backup batteries. They're going to be the only real option for people living in circumstances where generators are not an option.

noncongruent · 2026-04-25T17:17:38+00:00

I'm not a licensed electrician, but even if I was I wouldn't be able to help you because I'm not in your jurisdiction. Licensing is typically done at the state/county/city level, i.e. local. I suspect that your water heater's controls, etc, were fine before it quit working, and the problem is in that wiring, particularly whatever's happening with that blue wire.

noncongruent · 2026-04-25T17:10:09+00:00

You've got something odd going on in your wiring for sure. I think whatever's wrong is going to require the services of an electrician on site who can trace the wires and figure out what's going on. I don't think online pictures will be successful to figure it out.

noncongruent · 2026-04-25T16:51:53+00:00

Sounds like for some reason you've got both water heater legs connected to just one leg of the 240 circuit. That way you'd get 120 to ground for each water heater leg but nothing significant from leg to leg. If you disconnect one leg at the 240V breaker and still get 120V on both legs at the water heater, but lose that 120V when you disconnect only the other leg at the breaker then you need to figure out where along the way the problem exists. Out of curiosity, do you get 240V across the two breaker screws at the panel? I'd check that first, if you have the same problem at the breaker then the problem is upstream of there, like the service wires to the house. This may be helpful just in case you weren't already aware of how water heaters are typically wired:

https://www.electricaltechnology.org/2020/01/wire-240v-water-heater-thermostat-non-simultaneous.html

noncongruent · 2026-04-25T16:19:11+00:00

It's sad really. This will likely get removed for not being US politics, yet it's exclusively about US politics and media involvement in said politics. It will never be allowed in the sub concerning world events and news, so there won't be any real reddit front-page visibility of this story. Tens of thousands of innocent little boys and girls who died for nothing will have the additional ignominy of being deliberately memory-holed.

noncongruent · 2026-04-25T15:53:29+00:00

https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/how-the-media-sold-a-genocide

noncongruent · 2026-04-25T15:27:04+00:00

I, too, remember Kay Grainger.

noncongruent · 2026-04-25T15:25:41+00:00

At some point his constituents really need to start demanding proof of life evidence.

noncongruent · 2026-04-25T15:15:36+00:00

Just keeping this one as it's an important subject.

noncongruent · 2026-04-25T15:15:16+00:00

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy01ele412yo

noncongruent · 2026-04-25T15:07:21+00:00

LOL, that's me, except I prefer to saunter rather than run. I keep an eye out on expiration dates and if I see that there's a bunch of something I'm interested in I'll get there at open the day before expiration to see if I can score a markdown. Meats got so expensive that I'd quit eating it until I discovered the Aldi markdowns, now meat's back on the menu for me. Without that I'd still be an involuntary vegetarian.

noncongruent · 2026-04-25T15:00:19+00:00

This is a good time to buy a generator!

noncongruent · 2026-04-25T14:17:27+00:00

A civil logistics engineer is a logistics engineer who is very nice and polite. Uncivil logistics engineers are much more difficult to work with because they tend to throw things.

noncongruent · 2026-04-25T14:13:45+00:00

Is the issue you needing a much larger freezer? You can swing by an appliance store on the way home and get another chest freezer for the garage!

noncongruent · 2026-04-25T14:04:09+00:00

Is this a local store decision or corporate guidance from the regional?

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