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.
I made it a third(?) of the way through. From the off it’s unserious, but that was OK (at first). But then came the tedious pantomimes with the rock, the needless flashbacks to often explain what was already clear, followed by shlocky reminiscing about girlfriends or some such drivel. When the project leader started singing out of the blue, I noped out.
After rereading the book a few weeks ago, I finally got around to watching the movie. While mostly enjoyable, I think that it would have made for a better 6-8 episode mini-series.
Spoiler warning for those who wish to read the book!
The following story lines were left out of the movie:
How they charged up the astophage by paving the Sahara Desert.
How they worked out mass, time, and counting differences between the two species (this definitely works better in a book)
The Hail Mary being disabled after collecting the sample from the planet.
The Taumoeba getting loose in the ship and destroying all of Grace’s astrophage. This showed how aggressive the Taumoeba is.
What they had to do to get the Taumoeba to be able to survive in high nitrogen environments. In the movie it was done in 2 minutes while Rocky was recovering from his injuries.
They sort of showed it, but without reading the book I would have had no idea what was going on. To find Rocky’s disabled ship, Grace turned on the spin drive and looked for the reflection using his equipment.
What they had to do on Earth to delay the effects of global cooling. They nuked the icecaps to release methane into the atmosphere to temporarily increase the greenhouse effect.
Things changed/added:
The scene at the end on Earth after receiving the Beatle packages. In the book, since it is all from Grace’s perspective, we only learn that the Sun has returned to its full luminosity.
Grace’s enclosure on Rocky’s planet. I pictured a much smaller space. Grace is also in much worse shape at the end of the book.
The Astrophage solves nearly all of the problems with very high speed rocket travel between the stars. It is a fantastically powerful energy strorage medium, a fantastically efficient way to cool the spacecraft drive, and a fantastically safe way to protect against the interstellar medium.
All in all much too good to be true. I haven’t read the book yet (I will) but surely the most likely theory must be that this fantastically useful organism must be artificial - something made by fantastically advanced aliens as a tool, or as a weapon.
No hint of that in the book. And the same things that make it useful to us make it useful to the astrophage itself, putting it within reach of evolution (to the dubious extent to which it’s even physically possible, at least).
Me, too. But it’s not surprising the Eridians would go to great lengths for him. By going back for Rocky, Grace “saved the world” for them at great personal sacrifice.
And, of course, he’s an actual alien, that they can learn so much from: Both directly from his own biology, and as an intelligent filter for the huge data dump they got from the computer he gifted them.
Is there any reason to think that Eridians don’t have a history that is also full of wars and crimes against Eridianity? I think we have a very rosy view of Eridians because we meet Rocky, who is a hero. Undoubtedly one of the finest his species has to offer.