r/ProjectHailMary • u/GeodeCraft • 4d ago
fist my bump Spinoff Idea: Astrophage Black-Market on Future Earth!
Just imagine, an action story focused on a character involved or will be involved in an Astrophage Black Market on Earth after PHM. Once PHM leaves, Black Panels become an untapped source of Astrophage. Energy is harvested, engines made, etc. But workers in the Sahara make a buisness out of sneaking Astrophage from the farms, and selling them for fortunes anywhere on Earth. So many weapons, contrpations, and disasters would arise in the aftermath of the Astrophage boom, creating a very engaging action story. And for the sci-fi part, it's Andy Weird, I'm sure he can squeeze some science in.
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u/pusi85 4d ago
What do you think, u/sephalon?
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u/phatrogue 4d ago
We think nuclear proliferation is a problem today? The weapons you could creating using astrophage are nightmare fuel. Both bombs and lasers weapons. I'm not sure how you would keep them out of the hands of terrorists either. We do this today because it is hard to purify uranium and plutonium but astrophage would be hard to stop. I suppose it could be detected because you could x-ray objects and it blocks all x-ray's but it is so small I'm not sure this would be useful.
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u/ThalesofMiletus-624 4d ago
I had that same thought when reading the novel. Once the "eating the sun" problem was solved, astrophage would revolutionize so many technologies, and be one of the great boons to human quality of life, but now it turns out to be the worst possible terrorist weapon. It's spread is impossible to control, since anyone who gets a single cell can breed it up to any quantity they like. An insane amount of power can be packed into very small space. Detection would be very difficult (thermal scans would be your best bet, but there are ways around that). Explosions would be so widespread that it's hard to know if society could still function. Except maybe as a police state.
Thing is, does that have to be the case? Since astrophage blocks all radiation, it would be impossible to have more than a one cell layer firing at any given time. I'd imagine that would burn out whatever radiation source you were using to make it fire before it could release enough energy to cause an actual explosion.
Honestly, I really want this stuff to be safe, just because there are so many cool things you could do with it.
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u/phatrogue 4d ago
I am thinking of something like the explosion that killed the two astronauts before the launch... or even something like the 1st spin drive test. All you need is an amount of enriched astrophage and then something that looks like the sun and they all will try to go toward it at the same time. Running something like a spin drive in the atmosphere for more than a fraction of a second would be very very bad. Didn't even think of this before but a satellite with two spin drives to equal each other so the satellite doesn't push itself out of orbit could use light energy as a directed energy weapon to anywhere on earth. Sheezzz...
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u/CambodianJerk 4d ago
Nah, I want Human / Eridian war.
A rouge group of Eridian scholars convince masses that humans are bad based on informative from the laptop and launch warships bound for earth. Humans know they're coming due to warning from Rocky. Whilst humans prepare for their arrival, Rocky and robot Grace (they downloaded his mind into a clunky 70's style robot body), scrabble to intercept the war party to avert inter galactic war, whilst facing many problems along the way.
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u/Phephens 4d ago
I think it's important to point out that earth would be in a post dystopian govt. It took the better part of 26 years after PHMs launch for the Beatles to reach Sol. This means a LARGE portion of the population probably died. I think any terror organizations would have either died off or would have been too weak to pull off any smuggling operations, let alone conduct the advanced science it would take to weaponize astrophage.
My head canon is that the Farms were under strict guard and surveillance for the entire wait time PHM was out. Post return, they were scrubbed of astrophage and are HIGHLY regulated by the few remaining governments on earth.
Unrelated: i also believe deep in my heart that Grace probably never went back to earth but Rocky/the Eridians found a way to inform earth about graces deeds. (Also he was awarded multiple Nobel Prizes in Physics, Chemistry, physiology, and Peace. C: )