Spin Drive
The engine that burns Astrophage.
Spin drives are the Astrophage-powered engines of Project Hail Mary, invented by the Russian team of Dr. Dimitri Komorov; the Hail Mary carries 1,009 of them, and the beetle probes use them too. Each works in a three-phase cycle that turns the microbe's own light-driven propulsion into thrust.
Quick Facts
- Inventor
- Dr. Dimitri Komorov's team
- Fuel
- Astrophage
- On the hail mary
- 1,009 drives
- Cycle
- Lure
- expose and push
- scrape
- Also used by
- The beetle probes
Facts from the source article.
Background
Low-intensity light at the carbon-dioxide wavelengths of 4.26 and 18.31 microns, the Petrova frequency, lures Astrophage to coat one face of a transparent triangular slide; the slide rotates to face space and the light is turned up, so the cells push hard against it and drive the ship forward; then it turns back inside and the spent cells are scraped off before the cycle repeats. Because Astrophage converts matter to energy, the drives give extraordinary specific impulse and delta-v from little fuel. Komorov first showed Grace a drive in a vacuum chamber in the carrier's 'Little Russia' labs; the Blip-A also burns Astrophage, but how is never explained.
Source
Text adapted from Spin Drive on the Project Hail Mary Wiki (Fandom, CC BY-SA 3.0). Page history: contributors. Codexery summarised the page, and this entry is shared under the same licence.
Elsewhere in Project Hail Mary
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