Earth got samples of xenonite, I think as well as a sample of the resin used to make it. Throw all of the best chemists on Earth at that, with as much laboratory resources as they can muster, and yeah, we can probably reverse-engineer it. And that’s a pretty big deal. But that’s the only Eridian tech Earth got. We don’t know, from the book, what else they have that we don’t, but there’s surely some other things. Erid, meanwhile, got the complete sum total of all Earth knowledge, or the closest we could get to that. That’s definitely a good trade for them.
If Earth gets more, it’s because Erid sends a mission to Earth for that purpose. Which they might do. But as of the end of the book, they haven’t yet. Which is probably prudent on their part, because while I’d like to think the two species go on to cooperate, both I and the Eridians can see Earth’s history of war.
In the book (I still need to watch the movie) Grace is able to genetically engineer the taumoeba to withstand the atmosphere of Venus and the planet in Rocky’s solar system in a few short months. It was also able to adapt to being able to hide in the Xenonite. Precautions would have to be made to ensure that it doesn’t wipe out the astrophage on Earth.
There are a lot of other uses for astophage that are not directly linked to energy storage. It could be used as a coolant (98°C is low enough to keep an engine from melting) or radiation shielding.
True, but if there is any practical alternative, you would NOT want to use astrophage for these purposes. It is many, many orders of magnitude worse than using high explosives (as in ten trillion times the energy density). Recall the damage caused by 1 milligram of astrophage when it destroyed the Russian research facility.
The only reason you would is if there is no alternative (like the radiation shielding needed when the Hail Mary was traveling at a significant fraction of the speed of light), or if you are carrying it anyway (like for a spaceship being propelled by it).
It only contains as much energy as you put in, though. Breeding the astrophage and “fattening” it up are two different steps. You can safely do whatever you want with “empty” astrophage. If you leave it in a high-energy environment for long enough, eventually it’ll become as energetic as high explosives or nuclear weapons or whatever, but it’ll take a while. Especially if the environment is only high-energy part of the time, and it spends the off time releasing heat.
Take something like a car engine. A car engine can release all of the heat it produces, as fast as it’s produced, but it does so by being very hot. And it also spends a lot more time not producing heat than producing it. If you packed empty astrophage around a car engine, it could release that heat in a slow, steady way, instead of only when it’s running.
It’s actually pretty hard to get astrophage to release it’s energy, you’ve got to hit it with light with the spectral signature of carbon dioxide, 4.26 & 18.31 microns wavelength. And those have to be the primary wavelengths it sees - you can’t just hit it with a broad range of IR - in the book, Grace used a light bulb and filters to get only those wavelengths the first time he got astrophage to react (and breed). That’s exactly how the spin-drive works, hitting the astrophage with those wavelengths.
In the absence of that, astrophage is pretty inert. Grace punctured one with a needle and all it did was die. Even when it’s full, it’s not like gunpowder or gasoline and easy to trigger. So using it as a coolant would be perfectly safe, as long as it’s completely separated from your propulsion system if any.
It didn’t blow up a building because someone dropped the 1 milligram of astrophage or put it in the microwave, it blew up the building because someone intentionally triggered it thinking it was 1 nanogram, not 1 milligram.
Come to think of it, the book states that they store the energy in neutrinos. Which suggests that energy release not mediated by the phage’s unique biology would probably also be in the form of neutrinos. Even nuke-level energy releases are safe, if it’s all in neutrino form.
I hadn’t read the book, went in with very low expectations, and really enjoyed it. I also like Milana, but she was too attractive to be a good fit for this particular role IMO. I think they tried to downplay her looks a bit but it didn’t really work.
She’s really only in 2 or 3 scenes in the book anyway, and is so stereotypically Russian (all the Russians are) there’s no way Weir could have gotten away with it with any other ethnic group.