Building & launching the Hail Mary was no doubt a huge undertaking. And one thing that happened in the book that wasn’t mentioned at all in the movie - breeding enough astrophage to fuel the mission was an enormous undertaking, that IIRC required manufacturing thousands of square miles of solar panel equivalents and essentially covering large portions of equatorial regions with them.
All of which infrastructure still existed after the launch, and which was available to make huge profits on. I think that’s key to how the international consortium worked: They cornered the market on 'phage early on, before it was obvious how valuable it was, and then told everyone that they wouldn’t be able to get in on the game unless they played nice.
Sure, afterwards it would be useful (if terrifyingly dangerous), but that’s trillions of dollars of investment with no return for years, at a time when lots of people were likely trying to figure out how to extend their own survival for another year or two.
The people who were making the decisions were never at risk of not surviving. They were, however, in a position to make those trillions of dollars worth of investment. Probably even managed to finagle it so their nations’ tax dollars would cover the investment, while they personally reaped the profits.
What’s-her-name who ran the project made it quite clear that she had no problem at all with corruption, graft, and profiteering, as long as it led to the mission still being launched.
Yes, that enormous amount of solar panels could be exploited. Plus the astrophage itself could be a useful fuel both on Earth and for future space missions. I actually also wondered what might happen after Ryland Grace returned to Earth (assuming, of course, that he did). Did some Eridians come with him? What technology or science did we learn from them? (For example, how did they make the solid xenonite?)
Only because they were old & rich enough to be on the tail end of the death curve. Their children & grandchildren are at best looking at slowly freezing to death in a deep bunker.
It wasn’t that bad. The astrophage wasn’t going to completely extinguish the Sun. The worst case they were looking at was a 10% reduction in light output. Life, including human life, would still survive on Earth.
But, then, if they were worried about their children and grandchildren, then they’d also be motivated to support the project that would prevent that happening.
Wait, so was Grace just wrong, then?
(Kiddo is making me reread the book so I guess I’ll find out sooner or later…)
Well, in the book they’re predicting half the Earth’s population will die in 19 years basically due to crop failure. And things won’t get better after that unless the mission is successful. So sure, some small population of humans may survive long term, in the middle of an ice age that never ever ends.
BTW, I’m paging through the book a bit, and honestly the most unbelievable thing is how willing the governments of the Earth were to essentially make Stratt the Supreme Ruler of Earth. She had a pre-emptive pardon from POTUS (and presumably all other country’s leaders) in her pocket in case anyone tried to take her to court for anything. She had the legal power to dragoon any scientist into servitude on the project. She had China and other countries dedicate their entire industrial output to building the astrophage breeding panels and covered the Sahara desert with them. All this based on measurements of the sun’s output that took special equipment to detect - in the book it was years before there were observable effects, like blizzards in Vietnam and tornadoes in Germany.
Exactly. In the real world, the politicians would be accusing the scientists of exaggerating the threat, or saying it was a hoax. And when the blizzards in Vietnam and tornadoes in Germany happened, the deniers would blame it on “normal weather cycles.”
I prefer Andy Weir’s optimism but know that the reality is far more likely to resemble the movie “Don’t Look Up”
I think there’s some reason to hope that faced with a crisis that allows them to profit (by building a lot of infrastructure, ships, etc) instead of a crisis that forces them to reduce profits (like Climate Change) the Powers that Be would be more interested in fighting it.
In those sweet innocent days prior to and for a while after Randy Quaid saved the world, we all thought something like an alien invasion would force the whole world to work together to defeat a common threat. Climate change has put the lie to that conviction.
I mean, Andy Weir is clearly most comfortable writing about wisecracking but somewhat socially awkward geniuses performing crazy engineering feats. Even his alien is in that mold. Everything else he writes is just there to serve that goal.
It’s also somewhat untrue - or at least skewed. The Huller character intentionally kept Will Grace nearby as an ace in the hole, but he was not originally planned to go on the mission; he was sent when one of the planned astronauts died in an accident. And Grace was shanghaied - she asked him, he said HELL NO, and she had him knocked out and put ojn the ship anyway.
I haven’t yet seen the movie (this weekend maybe) but the trailer made it look like she asked him well in advance and he refused.
To be fair, like the main character in The Martian, he was uber-competent. He was the one who figured out how the astrophages reproduced, which was kind of essential.
And even so, the essential premise (a storm threatening to knock over their ascent vehicle) is impossible - it’s been said that a massive storm on Mars would be like a gentle breeze to us, given the thinner atmosphere. I guess that’s the allowed impossibility.
Rule 34.
To the best of my knowledge, they have NOT, but I wouldn’t put it past some enterprising fanfic writers. Though in the context of Grace and Rocky, it would need to involve teledildonics.
In the book, only 1 in 7000 people have the gene that allows the induced coma for years technology to work, which obviously severely restricted the candidate pool. Grace had the gene, so Stratt also kept him around as an extra backup. But not as a sexual partner (which the rest of the crews & scientists theorized was the reason she kept him around). The movie skips right over that.
He was actually the second [unofficial] backup after the selected scientist and his backup were both killed in an accident. (Which was an oversight allowing them to work together on a potentially dangerous experiment—although it was apparently a freak accident.)
And I thought the book and especially the movie portrayed Stratt’s dilemma quite well. With only a few days to go before the launch, she really had no choice but to go with Grace, whether he wanted to go or not. She correctly surmised that he would rise to the challenge once he found himself at Tau Ceti, especially when hit with temporary amnesia.
That might be your mental image but it’s not canon. The only physical description of him from the book comes from when he’s just emerged from the coma:
why was I in a coma? Physical injury?
I feel around my head. No lumps or scars or bandages. The rest of my body seems pretty solid too. Better than solid. I’m ripped.