Project Hail Mary

by Andy Weir

“How do the Astrophage breed in this scenario? Your blackpanels will enrich them, sure, and they’ll be breed-ready. But there are a bunch of steps they need to go through when they breed.” “Oh, I know.” He smirked. “We’ll have a static magnet in there to give them a magnetic field to follow—they need that to kick off their migration response. Then we’ll have a small IR filter on one part of the glass. It’ll only let the CO2 IR spectral signature wavelengths through. The Astrophage will go there to breed. Then, after dividing, they’ll head toward the glass because that’s the direction of the sun. We’ll have a small pinhole somewhere in the side of the panel for air exchange with the outside. It’ll be slow enough that it doesn’t cool down the panel, but fast enough to replenish the CO2 used by Astrophage while breeding.”