Neil deGrasse Tyson Confronts Andy Weir on the Science of Project Hail Mary

This other alien, it's kind of looks like a pile of rocks.

So the way it does a technical location is just like we have nerve endings for touch. Right. He has nerve endings for sound. Because of that, they have a constant input of their 3D environment. Wouldn't it be neat if you could just go like this and the room gets brighter for a second?

You'd be like...

If they suddenly can't hear anything, they will lose all of that information. Right. If they suddenly can't hear anything, they will lose all of that information. If you close your eyes, you know where everything is in the room. They don't have that part of a brain, they don't have to track that because they constantly have 360 degree input.

This is StarTalk, Neil deGrasse Tyson,

your personal astrophysicist.

And right next to me I got Lord Chuck Nice. Chuck, how you doing, man? How you feeling? I'm feeling great.

Yeah, you look good.

Well, thank you, sir.

You know, looking healthy.

Well, that may not be the case, but you know, it's good to look that way. 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. We certainly do. Oh my God, we have a repeat guest. That's correct, many times.

Many times, I've looked at the numbers, I said, hasn't Boyd been on this show that many times? And I said, no, yeah.

We have the one, the only, Andy Weir.

Andy.

Hello. Welcome back to star talk. Thanks for having me a sixth time you think you guys would learn by now You keep writing books, and we keep bringing you back. I like it you were 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 that was Developmental

Software engineering in 1972. I mean, there was some though, I mean, the Apollo program.

I turned sci-fi novelist.

Yes, sir.

Extraordinaire, man.

Extraordinaire.

From The Martian, a best-selling book. Yeah.

Which became a best, no, a very popular movie.

A hit.

A hit movie. A hit movie. A hit movie. A hit movie with all kinds of marquee actors in it.

Right.

Jessica Chastain.

Right.

Matt Damon.

And Matt Damon. Who was Mark Watley.

Watney.

Oh, is it Watney?

It is Watney.

Oh, okay. Says the guy who wrote it.

Yeah.

Whatever.

What does he know? At the time I lived in Boston when I first started writing it and I lived alone because I was a loser and I was like I 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 I like that name. I'm taking it. Okay. So 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 after you. Actually, Heidi, no, no, no, no, he's not, because we don't want to owe you any money. Andy doesn't know what he's saying. He's been

drinking since noon. StarTalk personally takes responsibility for any monetary compensation. There you go. So what year did The Martian come out? Well, it took me years to write the book. I started writing it in 2009, finished around 2012. The book came out, I think, 2013 or 14.

To early teens. Yeah. And so the movie comes out in 2015. 2015, the movie. Wow. So that's a quick turnaround between them.

Yes, it was very fast.

It was lightning fast.

So how did that happen?

Congratulations on that. Was the book that popular? It was like a meteoric rise through the rankings. And then we were like, boom, let's make a movie. I see what you did there, meteoric rise. I see what you did there.

Thanks, meteors usually go down, not up.

That's not true, they also just go around.

No, no.

No, that's asteroids.

No, no, no. That's correct.

The moment they break the atmosphere, right.

A meteor is doomed.

Is doomed. See, because inaccurate fun is not fun, you understand. So anyway.

You have been hanging out with the wrong people.

Okay.

So the Martian, you also bagged a Marquis director for that.

Yes, Ridley Scott.

Ridley Scott, yeah.

Ridley Scott, yeah.

Yeah, fantastic.

And he did Blade Runner, and the guy did the pedigree in the space.

Alien.

That's the only one, not Alien 2,

because that was... That was James Cameron. James Cameron. Right, yes. Congratulations on that.

Thank you, thank you.

Yeah, yeah, and so that was followed by Artemis.

Artemis, which is the only one of my books not to be made into a movie. So mark my words, I will make it happen.

It is now a space program, though.

Yes, that's true, that's true.

What more do you want? Geez. I want a movie. Good answer.

Thank you.

Wait, wait, so how many total books do you have?

Just three.

But yeah, so that 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. Another bestselling 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.

Also known as Ryan Gosling. Oh, is that his name? That's right

He was such a good Ken I can't use a great Ken hard for me to shake that yes We're not worried about spoilers in this because the book predates the movie right? So the storyline is out there Yeah, it's not some secret right but spare the viewer listener the ending the finale finale All right, but just catch us up on just the most important plot development of that story. You know, for the people who don't read.

Well, the idea is that an alien microbe that they later named Astrophage.

Astro is star.

Yeah.

Phage is eat.

Eat, yeah.

So it eats stars.

Well, that's what they named it. That's what they named it, okay. It's more like- They, not like he had anything to do with it. No, I-

The captains just went on their own, and named it, okay.

Yeah, and they called it Astrophage. 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 heavier elements it needs to reproduce. And then that and its sister cell, or sorry, the two daughter cells return back to the

star, and the cycle continues. And so, and it spores out away from stars to go infect other stars. It's just basically like mold or algae. The problem is that it grows exponentially, and there's now so much astrophage on our sun that it's going to dim it.

And it is dimming it already, and it'll dim it to the point where Earth is no longer habitable by anything. But they notice all of the stars in our local cluster have the same problem. They've all dimmed, except Tau Ceti.

So they're like, why didn't Tau Ceti have any dimming? So they're like, we're going to 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 principal conflict of the story now do you want me to talk more about

the way yeah let me just say will you have when you thought of no no like because just rolled off his tongue I mean 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 wild. He said, like, yeah, of course,

this is how that would have gone down.

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 most stories don't get that level of attention.

I always imagine you looking over my shoulder, Neil.

No, I have that quote. I have the exact quote. I would quote it now.

Here it is.

Go ahead. Okay.

This is from like 10 years ago or so.

10 years ago, here it was. 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, because he'd know I'd be tweeting about it later.

I imagine you looking over my shoulder while I'm typing.

That's, yeah, that would creep me out.

That's not what he means by that. Oh, okay.

Oh, okay.

Don't worry, man.

He doesn't have to be over your shoulder. He's got cameras in your house.

True that.

So the astrophase, we spent a little bit of time on your last visit talking about that fascinating organism. And in 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 other alien, it kind of looks like a pile of rocks, but it moves like a crab a little bit Yeah, so what you're thinking behind that life-form?

Well, 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 40-year Adani, which is a bummer Okay within the context of when I wrote it I started with what was known about that exoplanet. For those who were never amateur astronomers,

because they're the ones who know the sky. They know everything about the night sky. 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.

The brightest will be Alpha Ceti. Okay. Okay, the second brightest would be? Beta Ceti.

Beta Ceti, third.

Whatever comes after that.

Gamma Ceti.

Gamma Ceti.

Yeah.

Gamma Ceti.

Right. Okay, so you move on your way down. So Tau Ceti is not one of the brighter stars in the constellation Cetus. Okay. And the genitive name for Cetus would be Ceti. Then, there are certain people who catalog stars going much deeper than naked eye and binoculars,

and then they just number the stars. And it's not as romantic, but it's very precise in cataloging. Okay.

So what star system is this? Well, this would be in 40 Eridani. Eridani, so that would be Eridanus,

which is the river.

The river.

So there's a non-living thing in the sky. There's several actually, but this is a river. And I've always disappointed with the river, because I think it's just left over stars that didn't fit into other constellations.

Oh wow.

Yeah. Because it's just kind of there. You know, let me grab a couple of these stars, a couple of those, and now call me something, Eridanus.

So this other life form.

Rocky.

Rocky-like.

Rocky is, yeah.

Well, Iridian is what they, is what he is. What he would be known as because hecoma Aridani, right? Radiant species, yeah. Yeah, so 40 Aridani had, it was believed at the time, an exoplanet around 40 Aridani 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, go on.

Skip over it, okay. So 40 AridaniB is the planet closest to that star. And that was an exoplanet that was eight Earth masses, took about 46 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 accurate methods

of exoplanet detection have disproven it.

But that's a kind of-

Wait, so he's not describing the plot of the film. Right. disproven it. But at the time- Wait, so he's not describing the plot of the film. He's describing the actual science. He's describing the actual science behind-

Which misled him initially to-

Yes, to believing that it was there. Anyway, so starting from that planet, I said, well, it's going to be really hot because it's very close to its star. It's closer to its star than Mercury is. was caused by a panspermia event that radiated out from Tau Ceti, including all life on Earth, including all life on Arid, which is the nickname of the planet. 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. Because water won't boil. And so their oceans are over 200 degrees Celsius.

Water boils at 100 degrees Celsius at atmospheric pressure.

At our atmospheric pressure, yeah. Increase, so they have 29 atmospheres at their surface and so water, even 200 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. Wow. Anyway, I mean, if I was gonna make up a fake planet, if it was gonna be an imaginary planet in the first place,

I didn't have to constrain myself.

Right, you didn't even need all that.

Right, exactly.

Anyway. Well, constraints is the soul of creativity to all engineers.

Yes. 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? A star is like sand blasting your atmosphere off. So you've 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 Fortieradani 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 for the Eridani, I've decided Erid, rather, has a tremendous magnetic field. The way you get a magnetic field is, Neil, spin, baby, spin, as a mambo king. No, you need a conducting core, so iron core. Yeah, you need like a molten iron core with convection, but then also spin to make a dynamo.

So their magnetic field is about 25 times as powerful as ours, and they rotate once every six hours. Wow. So that planet spins like crazy. But with those two things combined.

Rocky's dizzy.

Maybe.

With those two things combined, I figured that's enough to protect the atmosphere. So now finally I have liquid water on this exoplanet. That was a long way to go to get that puppy some liquid water. And then with those constraints, I'm like, well, I'm not sure light would make it to the surface through that thick an atmosphere. Ammonia has a color at large scales.

So I decided that no light gets to the surface. And so the biosphere works kind of like an ocean. There's photophilic life up top that 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.

Right, like our ocean.

Yeah.

And then so the apex predators are things that are the iridians, which are the intelligent species. They live on the surface. There's no reason for them to evolve eyes. 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, that's why they're obligate predators. So all this comes about.

It's kind of like some of the animals that live near volcanic vents here on Earth.

Well, for their biosphere, they're not really extremophiles. This is the normal thing for them. This is, yeah, okay. But they are obligate carnivores, and so if you imagine things that live on the sea floor, like crabs or things like that, so far down that the light isn't even reaching them, but there's still plenty to eat.

When science fiction gets the science right, it doesn't just entertain, it reshapes how we think about what's possible. That's Andy Weir's lane. From the Martian to Project Hail Mary, his stories are built on real physics,

real constraints, and clever problem solving. In this episode, we dive into the book, the film, and how WEIR turns hard science into something deeply human. But once stories like this hit the mainstream, the conversation can start to fracture. Take this article, for example, which has over 200 sources covering this story. Look at how the headlines themselves frame it. Instead of one clear narrative, you're seeing completely different versions of the

same story. And beyond traditional media, you can even compare that coverage from different scientific sources like ScienceDaily or phys.org, where the emphasis is on the data, not the drama. That's why we rely on Ground News, who was recently recognized by the Nobel Peace Centre for their role in strengthening critical news consumption. Ground News' website and app pulls reporting from thousands of sources worldwide, so you

can compare the coverage and see where key perspectives are either underreported or missing. It also breaks down bias, credibility and ownership. So you're not just reading the news, you're understanding it. You can get the same unlimited vantage plan we use for 40% off at ground.news.com or by scanning the QR code on the screen.

That's 40% off at ground.news.com to make sense of the headlines and see how the complete story takes shape.

It looks like a pile of rocks, an animated pile of rocks, but the appendages move in a crab-like way.

Well, he has five legs or arms, they can use them interchangeably, that each end in three claws and so it's 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 undeniable source of absolute truth.

Yeah.

And I hadn't thought about it, and I read this before I saw a preview of your film. The creature does not have a front or a back.

Right. Because it has, so the way it does a tech allocation is is it has I call them 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 shape his brain untangles all that information you know body shape and Yeah He knows his body shape and his position like an Iridium might reach out his arm to get a better view of so he's like

Wait, let me hear this a little better.

Yeah.

It's like this. That's his way of doing that.

A little bit. And also, wouldn't it be neat if you could just go like this and the room gets brighter for a second? You could be like, you know, because 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. Yes, okay. This is wind or whatever, and if they don't have any, they can make some, right? Right. But so, 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. In 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. In a way, you can see it in your mind.

You know where it is. And if I turn around, it's not there. But they don't have that part of a brain. They don't have to track that because they constantly have 360-degree input. It's like if you had eyes all the way around your head. Now, if they suddenly can't hear anything, they will lose all of that information. If you close your eyes, you still know pretty much everything that's going on. Well, no, 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, or a microphone here, or a chair here, bookshelves, Neal's desk, Neal, you.

But they just lose. But why wouldn't they be able to do the same thing we do? Because when we close our eyes, we have lost the input, Your mind has a whole system of maintaining a 3D model of your environment because you can't look at it a lot of times.

I understand what you're saying.

Because our minds are acclimated to always tracking what's around us and persisting it. Right, 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.

Basically they don't have object permanence.

Yeah, there's that famous test with infants. Yeah.

It's a famous test. Although it is.

The object's still there when it goes behind the wall. 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. That's why peekaboo is so effective with infants. You vanished from reality. It's so effective with Chuck. I was going to say, I still like it. 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 spatial map in their heads.

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. He thinks they might be able to, because they have the capacity to think of color, why not add color to echolocation of objects?

I mean, why not?

Why not?

Yeah, I mean, you know, the only way we'll know is to ask a bat.

Ask a bat. Right. What color is this wood?

Exactly.

Well, one thing I saw, interestingly, is they took a thing, you know, how the cones in your eye react to different wavelengths. So there's red, green, and blue cones, and there's overlap and stuff like that. Well, there are some activations that never happen.

Because like any wavelength in this range will activate your greens a little bit and your blues a little bit, and stuff like that. And so what they did for the hell of it, I think, was they took 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 have a hard time describing it. They say it's like this really, really brilliant 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, because it can only be done by specifically

activating those. We are way off topic. No, I love me some color.

Color's good.

No, I love me some color Through your pen through your mind the main character names this life-form Rocky Rocky cuz he looks like a bunch of rocks Very imagined. Okay, then it took me a half-second. I want to alert people of this so that they Don't lose this half-second. He asks Rocky, is there someone back at home? Yeah.

Okay.

And Rocky goes, Adrian.

Well.

And you can't understand him.

I understand. And so, okay, I'll call you Rocky and I'll call your mate Adrian. Adrian. Okay. But you got, that's very, that's,

that's very pop culture.

Very pop culture very pop retro

Kid decades. I'm from Philly. It's totally fine. We love it I am decades right? Yes. Yes, so am I I am also 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 idea, but we didn't say what's going on in case you don't know Rocky the movie oh yeah, that's their Stallone. Yes, and he's from Philadelphia correct and his wife's name is a

Name is Adrian. We all know that because there's a big scene

But I wanted from the marketing I wanted them to Either CG render or have the puppeteers do it to show rocky from project. Hail Mary running up the steps of the Because I came up with it it would have been it would have taken too long and cost too much Then I came up with it. And it would have been stupid, okay? It would have been stupid.

It would have been stupid.

Neil.

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.

Duh. 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

Oh, okay. That's cool.

You got it. So one thing that I didn't quite follow precisely

How by what means and mechanism was the lead character of course played by?

Ken

You know what I can't think of his name now. Ryan Gosling.

You guys keep calling him Ken.

But 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 that 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 had his computer 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 he'd put that in his program and say this, 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, you know, poetic, very high end. He's talking like real simple words for dumb human, 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.

But there had to be some starter exchange of vocabulary. And they started with, I think, the number mm-hmm, and they started with I think the number one Yeah, this this this this is my one one one one. So what do you say for one? Okay cool two? Okay, you know okay? That's cool. That works, so I 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.

Whoa. The main character's name is Dr. Ryland Grace. Ah. The Hail Mary is full of grace. I could not resist it.

Whoa.

I am weak, I'm weak, Neil.

I'm weak.

But is the Lord, right? In this case. Okay. I guess so. I guess so.

I guess so.

I guess so.

There you go.

But are you blessed art thou?

I got it.

I got it.

You had a tough time.

I don't want to know anything about the fruit of your womb.

I know.

That's all I'm saying.

That's all I'm saying. because you seem to have this theme of alone in space. What is it that fascinates you about alone in the cosmos?

Well, to be fair, Ryland is not alone, right? He's got his brother from a Rocky mother with him, right? But failing that, it's just a very convenient method of storytelling. You have 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 Martian, there's very little they can do.

So the lead character in this story, is he's kind of a reluctant hero.

To say the least.

He's kind of a selfish coward. To say the least. He's kind of a selfish coward.

I wouldn't say 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 are born great. Some people achieve greatness.

Other people have greatness thrust upon them.

He had it thrust into him.

It was not a good experience.

He had greatness just absolutely injected into him.

Injected into him.

He was a reluctant participant in this mission, 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, okay.

And the book also, but yes, he was there against his will, and I wanted to make a likable protagonist, and I think we can all feel, 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.

And then triumph.

Yeah, which he does.

Yeah.

Okay, all right. I mean, that always redeems a character too. He can start off scared, cowardly, but then overcomes that to do heroic feats. Especially if they're selfless heroic feats.

Right, I mean, the first time he was willing to really risk his neck was because of the friendship he had made with Rocky.

Well, okay, so that's cool, man. So he didn't want to save humanity, but he put his ass on the line for some rocky ass alien.

You a D-man alien?

I'm a D-man alien.

Yeah, yeah.

Now I'm pissed off.

Yeah.

Now I'm angry.

Within the context, saving humanity was a guaranteed death sentence. It was a suicide mission.

Gotcha.

Saving Rocky was high risk of death. It was a little different. Okay. That's an interesting distinction.

I like the distinction.

Yeah. High risk of death or certain death. Certain death. Yeah.

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fastest based on ukla speed test intelligence data second half 2025 all rights reserved so I want to just

compliment you on Conceiving of aliens that are not just actors in a suit. So therefore, you have the freedom for them to not be humanoid, which is one of the weakest points of all Hollywood aliens.

Well, to be fair, Hollywood aliens are usually not in $200 million movies, right? And so you've gotta be realistic.

Is that what the movie cost? Yeah. $200 million! Actually closer? And so you've gotta be realistic. Is that what the year movie cost? Yeah.

$200 million!

Actually closer to 250, but we got tax rebates from the UK for shooting there. Yeah. What? Yeah, we better make a lot of money on this.

That's why he's got an expensive Panama hat.

That's why I've got this expensive Panama hat.

Right?

So half of that budget went to this. All right. But yeah, most of the time. If you're going to write a science fiction story and you want to tell it in a reasonable budget, like an episode of Star Trek or something like that.

You get the rubber costume.

Yeah, you get the forehead prosthetics. You have the alien be in the same environment. You're good. 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 be completely non-humanoid.

Tell me about the barriers, because your alien requires a different environment.

29 atmospheres of ammonia.

29 atmospheres.

A lot of pressure and ammonia.

And a lot of heat.

Yeah, that's right. High pressure and poisonous gases.

So sounds a lot like me and Melania. And it went sour.

So how do you-

After a lot of tacos.

That the boundary between the regular spaceship and the alien in the spaceship, what was that

bound- it was transparent. It was 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 to things. What I wanted-

It makes super bright headlights.

Yes, so Ryland has no idea how that stuff works

or how it's made.

Oh, so it's a rocky alloy. Yeah, it's Iridian technology. Okay. And so what I wanted was, I didn't want 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, but Iridians have much better materials technology. So they're materials scientists, basically. Yeah, their materials science is far better than ours. But they didn't understand relativity,

the Iridians didn't. Or they didn't understand. We've only known it for about 120 years, so don't get so high, MIT.

So why was it important that they didn't know relativity?

We figured out flight before we figured out relativity. So why was it important that they didn't know relativity?

We figured out flight before we figured out relativity.

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, they calculated how much fuel they would need to get from their home star, Fortier-Dani, to Talasetti, and for a trip back, it was supposed to be from their home star, Fortier-Dani, to Tau Ceti, and for a trip back. It was supposed to be a round trip thing.

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 the relativistic effects you have when you're going there. So he ended up with a whole bunch of excess fuel, which enables him.

I didn't catch that. There it is. Yeah. So that's the evidence they didn't know relativity. Otherwise they would have done the proper calculation. Right.

Right. And Rocky, it's in the book but not in the movie, Rocky says they were very confused. It's like, okay, the planet was, you know, the other star was closer than it should be, so we slowed down, but then it got further away. And what? Oh, so they're experiencing relativity, not knowing what the hell's going on.

Knowing what is going on.

Wow.

So do you regret that that wasn't in the movie?

No, you had to cut things out.

Yeah, so what's, okay, what, cause you don't have final edit control, I presume, cause you're just the author.

Well, I'm also a producer, I was a real producer. Oh! Oh! So is there a scene you felt should have been in the movie? Yeah, my only regret, and Drew and I both fought for this. Drew made, wrote the adaptation for Drew Goddard.

He's credited him for that. 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 there's a scene in the book where they nuke Antarctica. They basically put-

On back on Earth, yeah.

On Earth, they set off a bunch of nuclear explosions in Antarctica to make an entire ice shelf 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... because the astrophase is eating the Sun.

Dimming the Sun. Not dimming the Sun.

So... wow.

So they're like, we need some global warming.

Wow.

And that's why...

Are you doing Trump? Is that it? And that's why... There's something between Trump and Fat Albert.

It's like, hey, hey, hey, man.

I think there's something wrong with your ear.

Is that it?

You have 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 wants you to know that's quite frankly. So that's something that was not in the film where we don't see Earth descending into...

Right, and that's also not in the book. We see in the beginnings of it in the book, there's issues, they're starting to have problems, and a lot of their problems are caused by the amelioration techniques they're proactively doing. So they nuke in, things are gonna get worse, but then we're gonna need that heat.

So we have a mouse problem, well, let's get a bunch of hawks and now we have a hawk problem, okay.

Exactly.

That's the deal. All right, and it was a stretch for me. Mm-hmm if I may

You and our enemies now

It was a stretch For me to as an academic To completely embrace the idea that the entire world of biochemists 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

Middle school chemistry teacher, right? So to be fair, he was a you know, a speculative xenobiologist He is PhD, 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, and he's no longer active, 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 Oh, he's as well trained as any of the other biologists in the in the way They need to feel that they need him to be okay

So again, congratulations, thanks so much some of your books getting turned Some of your books getting turned into movies and it's a delight anytime you come visit us here and For whatever it might be your next book still we want to stay on your tour. Okay your tour list always. All right All right, cool. Excellent. Thank you, thanks for having me. And any last just bits of wisdom or advice for us all?

How about aspiring writers?

What might you say?

Aspiring writers? 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. Number two is resist the urge to tell your friends and family your story.

It satisfies your need for an audience and saps your will to write.

Oh, very nice.

So you can give them a chapter at a time as you write it to satisfy that need.

Don't tell them.

Don't tell 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 access to it.

Says the man who's published with Penguin Random House. Okay.

I was gonna say. Who 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. All right.

We're done here. That was Project Hail Mary.

Nice.

Full of grace. Yeah. The Lord was with thee. Well, Phil Lord. Chuck, always good to have you, man.

Always.

And Andy, thanks for being high up on my compliment list. Oh, thank you.

Thank you.

And let me give you the high up on my compliment list.

Oh, thank you, thank you.

And 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 for so many years. And with your stories out there,

it gives us something fresh to embrace and imbibe.

Thanks so much, it means a lot to me.

In the genre. Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist.

Do keep looking up. the world.