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I turned the beetle this way and that. It was surprisingly light. A few pounds at most. “Okay, so there are four of these. How likely is each one to survive the trip? Is there at least a little system redundancy aboard?”
He shrugged. “Not that much, no. But it doesn’t have to travel for nearly as long as theHail Marydoes. So stuff doesn’t have to survive as long.”
“It’s going the same route, right?” I asked. “Why doesn’t it take the same time?”
“Because theHail Mary’s acceleration is limited by the soft, squishy humans inside. The beetle doesn’t have that problem. Everything aboard is military-grade cruise-missile electronics and parts that can handle hundreds of g’s of force. So it gets to relativistic speed much faster.”
“Oh, interesting…” I wondered if this would make a good question for my students. I dismissed the idea immediately. It was absurdly complicated math no eighth grader would be able to handle.
“Yeah,” Hatch said. “They accelerate at five hundred g’s until they reach a cruising speed of 0.93c. It’ll take over twelve years to get back to Earth, but all told the little guys will only experience about twenty months. Do you believe in God? I know it’s a personal question. I do. And I think He was pretty awesome to make relativity a thing, don’t you? The faster you go, the less time you experience. It’s like He’s inviting us to explore the universe, you know?”
He fell silent and stared at me.
“Well,” I said. “This is really impressive. Good work.”
“Thanks!” he said. “So can I have some Astrophage to test it?”
“Sure,” I said. “How much you want?”
“How about a hundred milligrams?”
I drew back. “Easy there, cowboy. That’s a lot of energy.”
“All right, all right. Can’t blame a guy for trying. How about one milligram?”
“Yeah, I can swing that.”
He clapped. “Hell yeah! Astrophage comin’ my way!” He leaned forward to me. “Isn’t it amazing? Astrophage, I mean? It’s like…the coolest thing ever! Again, God’s justhandingus the future!”
“Cool?” I said. “It’s an extinction-level event. If anything, God’s handing us the apocalypse.”
He shrugged. “I mean, maybe a little. But man. Perfect energy storage! Imagine a battery-powered household. Like—you have a double-A battery, but full of Astrophage. That’d last your house about a hundred thousand years. Imagine buying a car and never having to charge it up? The entire concept of power grids is going to end. And it’ll all be clean, renewable energy once we start breeding the stuff on the moon or something. All it needs is sunlight!”
“Clean? Renewable?” I said. “Are you suggesting Astrophage will be…goodfor the environment? Because it won’t be. Even ifHail Maryfinds a solution, we’re looking at a mass extinction. Twenty years from now, a whole bunch of species on Earth will be extinct. And we’re working hard to make sure humans aren’t one of them.”
He waved off my comment. “Earth’s had five mass extinction events in the past. And humans are clever. We’ll pull through.”
“We’ll starve!” I said. “Billions of people are going to starve.”
“Naaaah,” he said. “We’re already stockpiling food. We’ve got a bunch of methane in the air to hold in the solar energy. It’ll be all right. As long asHail Marysucceeds.”
I just stared at him for a moment. “You are, without a doubt, the most optimistic person I’ve ever met.”
He gave me a double thumbs-up. “Thanks!”
He picked up the beetle and turned to leave. “Come on, Pete, let’s get you some Astrophage!”
“Pete?” I asked.
He looked over his shoulder. “Sure. I’m naming them after the Beatles. The British rock group.”
“I take it you’re a fan?”
He turned back to face me. “Fan? Oh, yes. I don’t want to exaggerate, butSgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Bandis the greatest musical accomplishment in the history of mankind. I know, I know. Many would disagree. But they’re wrong.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “But why Pete? Aren’t the Beatles named John, Paul, George, and Ringo?”
“Sure. And that’s what we’ll call the ones aboard theHail Mary. But this fella is for testing in low Earth orbit. I get a whole SpaceX launch just for me! Isn’t that amazing! Anyway, I named him after Pete Best—he was the drummer for the Beatles before Ringo.”
