Power source

I look a little closer. The Fuel info box says astrophage: 120kg—temp: 96.415°c. The Computer box says last memory check: 3 days ago. 5 tb functioning correctly. And the Radio info just says status: 100%.

It’s an unmanned probe. Something small, I guess. The entire mass of the fuel is just 120 kilograms. That’s not a lot. But a little Astrophage goes a long way. There aren’t any scientific instruments labeled. What’s the point of an unmanned ship with nothing on board?

Wait…what if the 5 terabytes of storage is the point of the ship?

A realization dawns on me.

“Oh. Shucks,” I say.

I’m out in space. I’m in another star system. I don’t know how much Astrophage it took to get here, but it was probably a lot. Sending a ship to another star probably took an absurd amount of fuel. Sending that ship to another star *and bringing it back* would take ten times as much fuel.

I check the Astrophage panel to refresh my memory.

REMAINING: 20,862 KG

CONSUMPTION RATE: 6.043 G/S

The consumption rate was 6.045 grams per second before. So it’s gone down a little bit. And the fuel amount went down too. Basically, as the fuel gets consumed, the total mass of the ship goes down, so it needs less fuel per second to maintain the constant acceleration. Okay, that all makes sense.

I have no idea what the Hail Mary’s mass is, but to be able to shove it along at 1.5 g’s of acceleration on a few grams of fuel per second…Astrophage is amazing stuff.

***

Chapter 4