Project Hail Mary-A Review
📡 Introduction:
Project Hail Mary is a science fiction, alien contact story. It is written by Andy Weir (author of The Martian). I think this book is even better than The Martian. Andy’s understanding of science, especially orbital mechanics, is what makes Project Hail Mary stand out.
---
🦆 Main characters:
🤠 Ryland Grace:
Ryland Grace is a school teacher, formerly a microbiologist. He was a researcher but got frustrated with the state of microbiology research. So he wrote a paper calling out the prominent microbiology scientists in the world. Unsurprisingly, he got kicked out of academia after that. Grace travels to the Tau Ceti star system to find the solution to the astrophage (more on it later) problem.
🕷️ Rocky:
Rocky is the alien that Grace meets at the Tau Ceti star system. Grace names him Rocky because his skin looks rigid like the surface of a rock. Rocky lives in an atmosphere 29 times denser than the Earth’s. Rocky’s species did not know about radiation poisoning. This is because the magnetic field and atmosphere of their home planet block all radiation from reaching the surface (it is always night on Erid). All of his crewmates die due to this and he is the lone survivor on his ship when Grace finds him.
---
☁️ Themes:
🦠 Pandemic of the stars:
Astrophage are unicellular organisms. They somehow travel from the Tau Ceti system (a star system 12 light years away), where they evolved, to the Sun. They absorb or “eat” the energy at Sun’s surface and then migrate to venus to reproduce using the carbon dioxide. At Venus, each astrophage doubles, and both parent and daughter cells migrate back to the Sun to absorb energy and then repeat the process.
As a result of this, the Sun is losing its intensity at an exponential rate. If this continues for several decades, humans will go extinct and the Earth will be a wasteland covered in ice.
👁️ Survival:
The central theme of the story is survival. Astrophage eats star energy as food. It is the greatest extinction-level event. All the stars in the Sun’s vicinity are affected by astrophage except for Tau Ceti. Ryland Grace’s main mission is to travel to the Tau Ceti system and send information about astrophage back to Earth. It is ironic that astrophage is used as the fuel for Hail Mary (space ship used by Grace) due to the absolutely ridiculous energy it can store.
At the Tau Ceti system, Grace meets the alien Rocky. Rocky is from the 40 Eridani star system. He is there to save his species, and other eridian life, from the same fate. There is an unsaid understanding between them that the mission is of utmost importance; the survival of each species is the top priority.
👽 Alien Contact/Friendship:
Most alien contacts in pop culture end up in wars. However, in this book, both humans and eridians are on the brink of extinction which makes working together the top priority for Rocky and Grace. The second act of the book is the two spending time creating a shared vocabulary so they can understand each other. Only when they are comfortable talking to each other and trust has been built, do they talk about the astrophage problem.
Grace and Rocky have different skill sets. Rocky is the sole surviving engineer on his ship and Grace is the sole surviving science specialist aboard Hail Mary. They work together to create experiments to find something that can kill astrophage cells.
🐝 The Goldilocks zone:
The Goldilocks is a region of space from a star in which the temperature and pressure are sufficient enough so that water can exist in liquid form. liquid water is essential for our biochemistry. It acts as a solvent that allows our cells to carry out the functions of life.
It is thought that for life to exist, a planet must be in the Goldilocks zone of its parent star. This book criticizes the Goldilocks zone as water can certainly exist outside it.
Jupiter’s moon Europa has oceans of water under its surface due to the tidal heating from Jupiter and its other moons. It is one of the places in our solar system to look for extraterrestrial life. Jupiter is no way near the Goldilocks zone, but due to tidal heating the temperature might be just right for liquid water.
Pressure is another metric to keep in mind. Imagine a planet really close to its parent star with a really thick atmosphere. Water could exist there. Even if the temperature is more than 100 Celsius the atmospheric pressure could make sure that the water is liquid.
