Project Hail Mary with Andy Weir

Andy Weir in the house. Yes, he is. Author of the novel, Project Hail Mary. That's correct. We're gonna talk to him, but there's gonna be spoilers. Yeah, lots of spoilers, but you know why? Because you didn't read the damn book. That's right. That's the problem. Coming up on Star Talk. Welcome to Star Talk. Your place in the universe where science and Right. Star Talk begins with. This is Star Talk. Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist.

And right next to me I got Lord Chuck Knight. What's up, Chuck? Chuck how you doing? How you feeling? Man, I'm feeling great. Yeah. Yeah. You look good. Well, thank you, sir. You know, looking healthy. Well, that that may not be the case, but you know, it's good to look that way. Who cares if I'm actually healthy or not? As long as I look good.

We got a good show today. Certainly. Oh my god. We have a repeat guest. That's cor many times. Many times. I've looked at the numbers. Hasn't boy been on this show that many times? Yeah. And I said, no, yeah.

We have the one, the only, Andy Weir. Andy. Hello. Welcome back to Star Talk. Thanks for having me. Six times. You think you guys would learn by now. Did you say? You keep writing books and we keep bringing you back. I like it. You are b birthed into this world as a Was it a software engineer? Well it took me a while.

between birth and becoming a software engineer. But yes. I was gonna say that is uh that was one precociously developmental room. Yeah. There wasn't a lot of software engineering in nineteen seventy two. Uh I mean there was some though, I mean the polar program. Uh turned n sci-fi novelist. Yes, sir. Extraordinaire man from uh the Martian.

Uh a a best selling book. Yeah. Which became a best no a very popular movie. A hit hit movie. Hit movie with all kinds of marquee actors in it. Right. Uh uh Jessica Chastain and Matt Damon. Matt Damon was. What knee. What oh is it Watney? It is Watney. Okay, says the guy who wrote it. Whatever. At the time at the time I lived in Boston when I first started writing it and I lived alone because I was a loser. And um

I was like I w at the time I was really into Red Sox games and they had a sideline reporter named Heidi Watney. Oh really? And so that I'm like that name. I like that name. I'm taking it. Okay. Cool. Heidi Watney if you're out there Mark's named after you. Actually, Heidi, no no no no he's not because we don't want to owe you any money. Okay. And he doesn't know what he's saying.

He's been drinking since noon. Star Talk personally takes responsibility for any uh monetary compensation. There you go. So uh what year did the Martian come out? Uh well it took me years to write the book. I I started writing it in two thousand nine, finished around two thousand twelve. The book came out I think twenty three. thirteen or early teens. Yeah. And so the movie comes out in twenty twenty fifteen. Twenty fifteen, the movie. So that's a quick turnaround.

Yes, it was very fast. So congratulations. Like was the book that popular that m it was like a meteoric rise through the rankings and then they were like let's make a movie. I see what you did in meteoric rate. Meteors usually go down, not up. That's not true. They also just go around. No, no. No, that's asteroids. Right. No. Correct. A meteor. A meteor is doomed. Right. Uh see, because inaccurate fun is not

You understand. So anyway. You have been hanging out with the wrong people. Okay. Uh so the Martian, you also uh bagged a a marquee director for that. Yes. Blade Runner? I think the guy Right. So congratulations on that. Thank you, thank you. Yeah, yeah. And so then they that was followed by by Artemis. Artemis.

the only one of my books not to be made into a movie. So I will be able to do that. Mark my words, I will make it a It is now a space program though. So Yes, that's true. That's true. What more do you want? Jeez. I want a movie. Thank you. Well, wait, so how many total books do you have? Just three in the sentence.

It's the only one of my books not to be made into a movie. You only wrote three damn books, dude. Plural is the plural is correct in this case. I have had books made into movies. True.

So we brought you here because you have your latest project. I see what you did there. See what I did there? Project Hail Mary. Yeah. Another best selling book. It's still on the shelves. I see it wherever I go. And that's now a film starring Ken. That's right. Right. I didn't even realize that. Yeah. Also known as Ryan Gaza. Oh, is that his name? He was such a good ken, I can hard for me to shake that. We're not worried about spoilers in this'cause

The book predates the movie. Right. So the the storyline is out there. Yeah. There's not some secret. Right. But spare the viewer, listener, the ending. The finale. The finale. Right. But uh catch us up on just the the most important plot development of that story. You know, for the people who don't read. Well the idea is that um an alien microbe that they later name Astrophage. Astro Star. Yeah. Phage is eat. Yeah.

Well that's what they named it. It's more like they. They not like he had anything to do with it. No, I uh the characters just went on their own and named it. Okay. Yeah. Um and uh they they they called it astrophage. Uh what it does is it lives on the surface of the sun. And it absorbs energy and turns it into mass. It uses that mass to create light as propulsion so that it can migrate to a nearby planet with carbon dioxide, so that it can get the uh heavier elements it needs to reproduce.

and then that and its sister cell or sorry, daughter the two daughter cells return back to the star. And the cycle. Continues. Oh. And so and it spores out away from stars. to go infect other stars. It's just basically like mold or alcohol. Mold, yeah. Yeah. The problem is that there's it it grows exponentially and there's now so much astrophage on our sun that it's gonna dim it.

And it and it is dimming it already, and it'll dim it to the point where Earth is no longer no longer habitable by anything. And so, um, but they notice all of the stars in our local cluster have the same problem. They've all dimmed. And except Tau Ceti. So they're like, why didn't Tau Seti have any dimming? So they're like, we're gonna make an interstellar spacecraft to find out how.

And you know, it's like, how do we make an interstellar spacecraft with modern day technology? You use astrophage as the fuel. Of course. Because it does mass conversion propulsion. Right. And that is the the Now do you want me to Talk more about it.

Were you high when you thought of this? No. No? Like Because he just rolled off his tongue, right? I mean, yeah, you see how I mean and by the way, it's actually it's completely feasible. It's circular and feasible all at once. Like, I mean that's pretty like yeah, of course this is how that would've r r gone down. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Very cool. Yeah. So Andy, what we love and deeply respect about you is how much attention you give to the scientific detail.

infused within your storytelling. Because I uh most stories don't get that level of attention. I always imagine you looking over my shoulder and you're like No, I have that quote. Yeah. I have the exact quote. I would quote it now. Here it is. Go ahead. Okay. That was from like ten ten years ago or so. Ten years ago. Here it was. Okay. And this is my second Highest compliment I've ever gotten. Okay? Whenever I was tempted to use hand wavy physics or take a shortcut and not be accurate.

I honestly thought to myself What if Neil deGrasse Tyson reads this? Wow. That's true. Man. That's uh yeah. That would creep me out. That's not what he means by that. Oh, oh, okay. Don't worry, man. He doesn't have to be like be over your shoulder. He's got cameras in your house. So the astrophase, we spent a little bit of time on your last visit talking about that fascinating organism. Right. And Uh and this one it's one of the few

sci-fi films where there's more than one kind of alien in it. And so let's spend some time on the other alien who the lead character befriends. And this this other alien It it's kind of looks like a pile of rocks.

Yep. But but it moves like a crab. A little bit? Yeah. So what what's your thinking behind that life form? Well, um I started off with the exoplanet that he's from, which was at the time believed to be a real exoplanet, and has since been

proven to be nothing more than like solar flare activity from Forty Eridani. Which is a bummer. But within the context of when I wrote it, I started with what was known about that exoplanet. For those who were never amateur astronomers. Okay. Okay. Because they're the ones who know know the sky everything. They know everything about the night sky. Okay. The way we label

stars and constellations that are sort of visible easily. We sequence them by Greek letter and it's followed by the genitive form of the constellation name. So the brightest star in the constellation Cetus Which means the whale. Cetus is the whale. Okay. The bright will be Alpha Ceti.

Okay. Okay. The second brightest would be Betaseti. Beta Seti third. Whatever comes after that. Gamma Seti. Yeah. Gamma Seti. Right. Okay. So you m move on your way down. So Tausetti is not one of the brighter stars in the constellation Cetus. Okay. Okay. Right. And the genitive name for Cetus would be Seti. Then there's certain people who catalogue stars going much deeper than naked eye and binoculars. And then they just they just number the stars. And it's it's not as romantic.

But it's very precise in cataloging. Okay. Yeah. So what star system is this? Um well this would be in Forty Eridani. So that would be Eridonis. Which is the river. The river. Okay. So there's a non living thing in the sky. And I've always disappointed with the river. Okay. Because I think it's just leftover stars that didn't fit into other costumes.'Cause it's just kinda there, you know. Let me grab a couple of these stars, a couple of those, and now call me something.

Eridanus. So we so this other life form. Which is rock. Rocky. Rocky like the biggest. Yeah. Well, Iridian is what they is what she ends up getting called. Um yeah. So Forty Eridani uh had it was believed at the time an exoplanet. um around Forty Iridani A. If you'd like to describe the details of the trinary star system, you can now, or we can just skip over it. Skip over it, skip over it. Okay. So Forty Eridani A is the primary star.

And Forty Aridani A B is the planet closest to that star. Okay. And that was an exoplanet that was eight Earth masses, took about forty-six Earth days to orbit the star. Very, very close to the star. Turns out doesn't exist at all. It was a mistake made and our more accurately our more accurate uh methods of exoplanet detection.

have disproven it. But he's not describing the plot of the film. Right. He's describing the actual science behind the thing. Which misled him initially to believing that it was there. Anyway, so starting from that planet, I said, well

It's gonna be really hot'cause it's very close to its star. It's closer to its star than Mercury is. Wow. And then I said, But um because all life in the story was caused by a panspermia event that radiated out from Tau City, including all life on Earth, including all life on Erid. which is the nickname of the planet, um, everything has to be water based.

So how do we have liquid water on a planet that's really, really hot? And the answer is have a really, really high atmospheric pressure. Right.'Cause water won't boil and you know, so like their oceans are over two hundred degrees Celsius. Water boils at one hundred degrees Celsius at

CO atmospheric pressure. At at our atmospheric pressure, yeah. Uh increase is so they have twenty-nine atmospheres at their surface. And so water even two hundred degrees Celsius water won't boil. Wait a minute. So you backed into these alien properties. From What would have to be the properties of a planet that we would later show doesn't exist. Yes, that's right.

Unfortunate. Anyway, yeah, I mean if I was gonna make up a fake plant if I if it was gonna be an imaginary planet in the first place, I didn't have to constrain myself. Anyway. Well, constraints are uh is the is the s is the soul of creativity to all engineers. Yes. So anyway, I decided it would have to have a thick atmosphere. How do you have a thick atmosphere when you're that close to the sun? Uh a star is like sandblasting your atmosphere off.

So you c you got two things you can do. You can do what Venus does or you can do what Earth does. You can do what Venus does, which is have really heavy molecules. That are hard to knock out of the planet's gravity well. Venus has carbon dioxide. I decided Forty Aradani has ammonia. There's ammonia everywhere in our system, so why not?

And then the other thing you can do is have a really powerful magnetic field, like Earth does. So I decided fortieradani or I've decided Arid, rather, has a tremendous magnetic field. The way you get a magnetic field is Neil. Spin, baby spin. I'm a Mambo King.

No, you need you need a uh a conducting core. So, you need a yeah, you need like a molten iron core with convection, but then also spin to make a dynamo. So their magnetic field is about twenty five times as powerful as ours and they rotate once every six hours. Wow. So that planet spins like crazy. But with those two things come out of here.

Then maybe. With those two things combined, I figure that's enough to protect the atmosphere. So now finally I have liquid water on this exoplanet. That was a long way to go. That was a long way to go. And then and then with those constraints I'm like, well, I'm not sure light would make it to the surface. Through that thickened atmosphere. So I decided that no light gets to the surface.

And so their their the biosphere works kinda like an ocean. There's there's photophilic life up top that like absorbs the sunlight and reproduces that way and then Beneath that there's life that eats it. Beneath that there's life that eats it. Just like our ocean. Like our ocean. Yeah. Yeah. And then so the apex predators or things that are the Iridians, which are the intelligent species, they live on the surface. There's no light down there. There's no reason for them to evolve eyes.

Of course. And they do everything through echolocation, et cetera, et cetera. So bit by bit I put it together. There's also no free oxygen in the air. So they have to have an enclosed body that deals with the carbon dioxide, oxygen, back and forth reactions. So they have different kinds of cells within their body. Everything's fine as long as they keep adding energy to the system. So they need to eat food. That's found on the ground.

So all this kind of like some of the animals that live near volcanic vents here on Earth. Well they're for their biosphere they're not really extremophiles. This is the normal thing for them. But they are obligate uh carnivores. And so if you imagine things that live on the seafloor, like crabs or things like that, so far down that the light isn't even reaching them, but there's so

This is Ken Venerdneck Zabera from Michigan and I support Star Talk on Patreon. This is Star Talk Radio with Neil deGrasse Tyson. It looks like a pile of rocks, an animated pile of rocks, but the appendages move in a crab like way. Well he has he has five um legs or arms, they can use them interchangeably, that each end in three claws. And so um it's penta um P pentagonally symmetrical, you might say.

And he doesn't actually move specifically like a crab. He walks on those legs, but he can walk on He can walk on three of them while holding stuff with two of them, or he can walk on two of them even if he needs to. I learned in the in the wiki fan page of your book. Oh, excellent. An an undeniable source of absolute truth. Yeah. Uh and I hadn't thought about it and I read this before I I saw a preview of your film. The creature Does not have a front or a back.

Right. It because it has um so the way it does its echolocation is it has I call'em oracles, but they're basically like all over his body are just like we have nerve endings for touch, right? He has nerve endings for sound. And so His body sh his brain untangles all that information. He knows his body shape and uh yeah he knows his body shape and his position like

An Iridian might reach out his arm to get a better view of something he's like, wait, let me let me hear this a little better. It's like this. That's his own. And also, wouldn't it be neat if you could just go like this? And the whole room gets a b brighter for a second. You can be like, you know, because that's that's how that works. Because of that, they have a constant input of their 3D environment.

Constantly going on in all directions. There has to be some sound somewhere for that to be the case. That's true, but there's always ambient sound. And if they don't have any, they can make some, right? Right. But so there's they they have this constant input. of their 3D environment. So they don't have the part of their brain that we have that maintains

Cognition of what's around us. So you're looking at me, but you know what's behind you. Right. And your brain you don't have to think about it, your brain's just keeping track of that. You know there's a bookshelf there. That's okay. And y in a way you can see it in your mind, you know where it is. Right. And if I turn around and it's not there, I'll notice it's not there. You'll notice it's not there. They don't have that part of a brain. They don't have to track that.

Because they constantly have three hundred and six degree input. Right. It's like if you had eyes all the way around your head. That's pretty brilliant. Now, if they suddenly can't hear anything, they will lose all of that information. Right. If you close your eyes, you still

know pretty much everything that's going on. Well no, uh but in addition to that, you just close your eyes. You know where everything is in the room. Yeah, I mean not precisely and you probably bump into stuff, but you know there's a table there, a microphone here, a chair here, bookshelves. Well, but why wouldn't they be able to do the same thing we do?

We have lost the input, but what we're doing is recreating it in our mind. But your mind has a whole system of maintaining a three D model of your environment. Because you can't look at it all to understand what you're saying. Because our minds are acclimated to always tracking what's around us. And persistent. Right. If we if we didn't have that, when that would be taken away, we'd be lost immediately.

Because they don't need to do that. Yeah, this is that famous test with with infants. Yeah. Yes. It's a famous test. Yeah. And until a certain age It goes behind the wall and then they just look somewhere else. It's gone. And then after a certain age, they'll look and they'll anticipate it coming out the other side. Yeah. So that's why peekaboo is so effective with infants.

You vanish from reality. Chuck's still working on object permanence. Well they do have object permanence. Iridians, if something leaves their sensory input, they do but they don't have that sensory. Okay. Richard Dawkins thinks that bats that use echolocation being mammals, that means they're structurally similar to us in important ways, he thinks they might use echolocation and map colors onto it. Interesting. Why not add color to

Why not? Yeah. I mean, uh you know, the only way we'll we'll know is to ask a bat. What what what color is this wood? Well one thing I thought i interesting lately is they took a they took a thing, you know how your your the the cones in your eye uh react to different wavelengths. So there's red and green and blue cones and there's overlap and stuff like that. Well there are some There there are some activations that never happen because like

Any wavelength that's this, you know, any wavelength in this range will activate your greens a little bit and your blues a little bit and any stuff like that. And so what they did for the hell of it, I think, was they took somebody, they took test human test subjects and shined lasers into their eyes. to just activate the blue cones. And so now their brain is getting a signal that has just blue cone activation and no green cone activation. And that makes a new color.

Because they have never experienced that in their life. And they kind of they have a hard time describing it. They say it's like this really, really brilliant, blight, bright blue. Which should surprise no one, but it's interesting. Imagine being able to go in and have somebody shoot a laser in your eye and see a color you have never seen, nor will you ever see again,'cause it can only be done by specifically activating those. We are way off topic.

No, love me some color. So through your pen, through your mind, the main character names this life form Rocky. Rocky, because he looks like a rock. Very imaginative. Okay. Then it took me a half second. I wanna alert people to this so that they don't lose this half second. Everyone on Rocky's planet is facing the same fate. as people from Earth. And they both notice this one star that is not dimming. Uh-huh. And they gotta find out what's going on there.

And not over here. Gotcha. So they both arrive at the same start for the same purpose with the same mission. Oh my God. And what an alignment that is. It is a very like Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks at the Empire State Building. He asks Rocky, is there someone back at home? Yeah. Okay. And Rocky goes, Adrian. Well and you can't understand. So uh uh okay. Uh I'll call you Rocky and I'll call your mate Adrian. Adrian Adrian. Okay. But you got it.

That's that's that's very pop culture. Very pop culture. Retro Decade decades. I'm from Philly, it's totally fine. We love it. It's fifty years ago. Yes. Yes, so am I. I am also from fifty years ago, so As for Philly, here's the thing, I wanted to do this as part of the publicity, but I came up with the idea too late. Everyone agrees it would have been a great idea. But we didn't say what's going on in case you don't know. Rocky the movie.

Oh. With Sylvester Stallone. Yes. And he's from Philadelphia. Correct. And his wife's name is Adrian. His wife's name is Adrian. We all know that'cause there's a big scene. Adrian Adrian Yeah. Right. But I wanted from the marketing, I wanted them to Project Hail Mary running up the steps.

Of the art museum in Philadelphia. Yeah, the art museum in Philadelphia and put his little put his appendages up, you know. Why not? Because I came up with it it would have been it would have taken too long and cost too much at the point that I came up with it. Well, it would have been stupid, okay.

What are you talking about? That's the first thing people do when they go to Philly is run up those damn stairs. So I'm like, how are you getting Rocky to Philly? How you get what? Through astrophase propulsion. Stupid. Come on, man! They did they did they did little things where they you know CGI put like Rocky on the red carpet for the London premiere and he's like signing autographs and so that's cool. That's cool. That's cool. You got it. So one thing that I didn't quite Follow precisely.

How by what means and mechanism was the Lee character, of course played by Ken. Ken. You know what? I can't think of his name now because I'm not sure. Calling him Ken. By Ryan Gosling. Thank you. So he sets up his computer to There's initially a shared vocabulary. They start with science and symbols and things. And then rapidly becomes full on exchange of translated knowledge. So

I didn't quite follow how that got so effective so quickly. Well, it's just he tr he had his computer like be able to analyze the waveforms and so Rocky would say a word. The acoustic waveforms, yeah. The acoustic waveforms that Rocky's making. And it would say a word and then uh then he'd put that in his program and say this and and this is the word like hello. And then when the computer heard something close enough to that, it would then have a synthesizer voice say, Hello.

To be Rocky's voice. So and Rocky is not speaking. full you know, poetic, very high end he's talking like real simple words for dumb human, you know. He's speaking sort of a pigeon, you know, Iridian English hybrid thing to try to keep the words simple and keep the sentence structure simple. So that they can each talk to each other. Oh, cool. And but there would but there had to be some starter exchange of vocabulary. Mm-hmm.

And they started with I think uh the number one. Yeah. This this this this is my number one. One. One. So what do you say for one? Okay, cool. Two. Two. It's you know. Okay. That's cool. That works. So I I Oh and by the way, since you're talking about Rocky and Adrian, I'm surprised. Did you notice that the name of the ship is the Hail Mary and it's full of It better be Grace, but Grace? Yeah. What the main character's name is Dr. Ryland Grace.

Uh the Hail Mary is full of grace. I could not resist it. Why I am weak. I'm weak, Neil. But but I'm weak. But is the Lord with thee? Uh I I well the writer would be the Lord, right, in this case. Okay. I guess so hilarious. I guess so. There you go.

But are you blessed art thou? I don't want to know anything about the fruit of your womb. That's all I'm saying. That's all I'm saying. Let me ask you this though, because you seem to have this theme of Alone in space. What is it that fascinates you about alone? in the cosmos. Well, uh to be fair, Ryland is not alone, right? He's got his he's got his uh brother from Iraqi mother with him, right? Okay. But but um failing that

Uh it's just a it's just a very convenient method of storytelling. You have your your hero is like completely isolated when they're out in space, it's like Even if all of humanity wanted to help him, which was the case of the Martians, right? character in this story is n he's kind of a reluctant hero. To say the least. He's kind of a selfish coward. I mean selfish. He doesn't want to save the world. He doesn't want and yet he's cast into this spot.

kind of against his will, reminding me of the great Shakespearean line. Yes. Some people A born great Some people achieve greatness. Other people have greatness thrust upon them. He had it thrust into him. It was not a good one. He had greatness just absolutely injected into him. Injected into it. He was a reluctant participant in this mission. Right. But everyone knew they needed him.

So they just drugged him and put him on. Yeah. That's a pretty big spoiler, by the way, for the movie. So you might want to make an extra warning. Okay. And and the book also. But yes, he was uh there against his will. And I wanted to make a likable protagonist. And it it's I think we can all feel um like we've all felt at times that we are like unqualified, unwilling and scared.

I don't know, maybe not you. You just radiate confidence, but for the rest of us more. But that's not interesting to a viewer. You want the person to overcome his weaknesses. Which he does. Yeah. And then triumph. Yeah. Yeah. Which he does. Yeah. Okay. scared, cowardly, but then overcomes that to do heroic feats. Right. You know, especially if they're Selfless heroic feat.

Right. I mean the first time he was willing to really risk his uh really risk his neck was because of the friendship he had made with Rocky. So that's cool man. That's cool. So he didn't want to save humanity. but he put his ass on the lawn for some rocky ass alien. Yeah, yeah. Now saving him off. Yeah. Not now I'm angry. Within the context, saving humanity was a guaranteed death sentence. It was a it was a suicide mission. Gotcha. Saving Rocky was um uh high risk of death.

It was a little different. Okay. That's that's an interesting distinction. I like the distinction. Yeah. High risk of death or certain death? Certain death. Certain death. Yeah. I'm taking the high risk.

So I wanna just compliment you on conceiving of aliens that are not just actors in a suit. Yeah. So so therefore you have the freedom for them to not be humanoid. Right. Which is One of the weakest points of all Hollywood aliens. Well, to be fair, Hollywood aliens are usually not in two hundred million dollar movies, right? And so you've gotta you've gotta be what do your movie cost? Yeah.

Two hundred million dollars. Actually closer to two fifty, but we got tax rebates from the UK for shooting there. Yeah. Why nice. Yeah, we better make a lot of money on this. Well, that's why he's got an expensive Panama hat. That's why I've got this expensive Panama hat. So half of that budget went to this. But but yeah, um most of the time, you know, for

If you're gonna write a science fiction story and you wanna tell it in a reasonable budget, like an episode of Star Trek or something like that. You get the rubber costume and you put it. Um, but yeah, with the luxury of being able to do whatever you want, we can have our alien require, you know, xenonite barriers, you know, and stuff like that and and be completely non-humanoid.

Uh tell me about the barriers because your alien requires a different environment. Twenty nine atmospheres of ammonia. Twenty nine atmospheres. A lot of pressure and and ammonia. And a lot of heat. Yeah, that's right. And poisonous gases. Yep. So Sounds a lot like me and Melania. Anyone sorry. Go ahead. So How do you- After a lot of tacos. How that the boundary between the regular spaceship and the alien in the spaceship what was that bound? It was transparent.

Made of xenonite, which is a material that is somehow one of the main components of it is xenon. A noble gas that doesn't normally react with things. It makes super bright headlights because Ryland has no idea how that stuff works or how it's made. Oh so so it's a rocky it's a rocky. Yeah, it's an iri it's Iridian technology. Okay. And so what I wanted was W w I didn't want either either species to be like

Completely scientifically more advanced than the other. From the Iridians point of view, we're kind of the advanced aliens because we have computers, we have better technology across the board. Um but Iridians have much better materials technology. So they're material scientists, basically. Yeah, their materials science is far better than ours. Um, but our like Like they didn't understand relativity.

The Iridians didn't or they didn't they didn't understand. We've only known it for about a hundred and twenty years, so don't get so high it might be. Flight before we figured out relativity. Okay. So wh why was it important that they did not know relativity as a storyteller? Because it gave me an excuse to if you calculate if you assume Newtonian physics, which they did. Uh they calculated how much fuel they would need to get from their home star Forty Ardani to Talicetti.

And and and for a trip back. It was supposed to be a round trip thing. Um and you calculate that fuel, you get a certain number. The real amount of fuel you need to use is considerably less due to the time dilation and and the relativistic effects you have when you're going there. So he ended up with a whole bunch of excess fuel, which enables him There I didn't catch that. Yeah. There it is. Yeah.

And so that's the evidence they didn't know relativity, otherwise they would have done the c the proper calculation. Right. Right. And Rocky the it's in the book but not in the movie. Rocky says they were very confused. It's like Okay, we the the planet was you know, the other star was closer than it should be, so we slowed down, but then it got further away.

Uh what they're experiencing relativity, not knowing what the hell's going on. What is going on? Wow. So do you regret that that wasn't in the movie? No. Yeah, so what's what okay. What because you don't have final edit control, I presume, because you're just the author. Well I'm also a producer, so I had say. But were you executive producer? No uh no, I was a real producer. Ow! Ow. So is there a scene you Should have been in the movie.

And Drew and I both fought for this. Drew made the wrote the adaptation for it. He credited him for that. Uh-huh. Um Drew with the full name? Drew Goddard. Drew Goddard. Drew Goddard wrote the adaptation, did a fantastic job. And he and I both wanted this one scene and we just didn't have time for it because the runtime was going so long. But th there's a scene in the book where they nuke Antarctica. They basically...

Put they're back on Earth, yeah. They dro they set off a bunch of nuclear explosions in Antarctica to make an entire ice shell fall into the ocean. so that it will melt and release all the methane, which is greenhouse gases, so that Earth will retain more of the heat that it is getting from the sun. Because they are f because the astrophase is eating. Dimming the sun. So wow. So they're like, we need some global warming. Oh and that's why Are you doing trumpets? Is that it? And that's why

There's something between Trump and Fat Albert. And somewhere he I think there's something wrong with your ears. That's a pretty gravelly Trump, my friend. No, if you've listened to him now, that's how he talks. So I'm not doing rally Trump, I'm doing the Trump that talks in front of the cameras and once you know So that's something that was not in the film where we don't see Earth descending into Right.

They're starting to have problems. And a lot of their problems are caused by the amelioration techniques they're pro proactively doing. So they nuke in our they're gonna things are gonna get worse, but then we're gonna need that heat. Yeah. So we have a we have a mouse problem. Well, let's get a bunch of hawks. And now we have a hawk problem, okay? Exactly. That that's the deal. All right. And it was a stretch for me, mm-hmm, if I may. You and I are enemies now. It was a stretch.

for me to as an academic to completely embrace the idea that the entire world of growchemists is insufficient to handle this mission. And they need the one guy who has the expertise. that no one else has and he's a middle school hi a middle school chemistry teacher. Right. So to be fair, he was uh you know, a speculative xenobiologist, uh he is a PhD, he's you know, astrobiologist, so he had done that and then he'd left

that field. He'd written papers. But he wrote papers, so the papers are out there and other people are still active. Right. And he's no longer active. Right. So why does he still become the guy? Because he's been part of the mission and the mission planning.

the whole time. So he understands all the other aspects of the mission as well. He knows all about the Hail Mary itself. And they don't have time to train someone else up on all the other stuff. And he's as well trained as any of the other biologists. In the in the way they need them to be. Okay. Okay. Does that work for you? He got out of that one. I got wriggled out of that one. So again, congratulations. Thanks so much.

Some of your books getting turned into movies. Two no two two out of three. Two out of three. Some of your books getting turned into movies. And it's a delight anytime you come visit us here and uh for whatever might be your next book still. Uh we want to stay on your tour. Okay. Uh your tour list. Always. All right. All right, cool. Excellent. Thank you. Thanks for having me. And any last uh just bits of wisdom or advice for us all. How about inspiring writers? What mighters?

Uh I've got three bits of advice for aspiring writers. One, you have to actually write. ideating and imagining and world building is not writing. You need to type uh number two is resist the urge to execute the idea. Yeah. Yeah. Number two is resist the urge to tell your friends and family your story. Right. It satisfies your need for an audience and saps your will to write.

Oh very nice. So you you can you can give them a chapter at a time as you write it to satisfy that need trick or don't write them. Don't write them. And then the third one is there's never been a better time in human history to self-publish. There's no old boy network between you and the readers anymore. You can for absolutely zero financial risk, you can put your book out there and millions of people have asked you. Okay, I was gonna say initially published on Kindle Direct Publishing. Oh

But for all of you who aren't this talented, don't quit your job. I didn't quit my job until I had a traditional publishing gear category. So we're done here. That was Project Hail Mary.

Nice. Full of grace. Yeah. The Lord was with thee. Well still Lord. Chuck, always good to have you, man. Always. Lord Nice. And and Andy. Uh thanks for being high up on my compliment list. Oh thank you. Thank you. And uh let me give you the highest compliment I could ever give. Don't stop moving the needle in your storytelling for Hollywood because It was looking like same shit, different day. Yeah. For so many years. And with your stories out there

It gives us something fresh to embrace and imbibe. Thanks so much. That means a lot to you in the genre. Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. Do keep looking up. Do Uh and we got enough here and then we can Yeah yeah yeah. They say in that song they're going to Venus and then they also say they have so many light years to go.

Oh god. Yeah, don't get me started. Yeah, god damn it. That's awful. No, no, but we don't start it was the I did the Kessel run in tall parsecs. That's the one. No, the Kessel Hey. Hey No, no, that's don't don't come after the fact and explain that. No, no, no. At the time they didn't do what the two black holes orbiting. Don't make me don't make me slap you.

And so if you go between the black holes, don't make me slap you. Then you manage to do it in under twelve parsecs. Everyone else goes around the black holes. Okay. I've heard that res I've heard that explanation before too. You're just bailing out there. Yeah. Um that's what we're doing. Nob nobody has given me a compliment at all. I don't know w what I don't know, man. Wait a wait a wait a Escape Philly? Oh, that was that hurt. That one hurt.