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In this AU, both Project Hail Mary and the Quiet Rapture (from Iron Lung) happen in the same universe, 300 years apart from one another.

In the 2 decades between the HM's launch and the Beetles' return to Earth, Stratt needs to find a way to keep the worlds' leaders too busy to tear the world apart by way of war, so, along with Steve Hatch (an engineer from the book), she proposes a new space program "for redundancy."

This space program includes putting Astrophage production plants not on the Moon, as Hatch suggested in the book, but on Mars.

This program is exclusively meant to distract world leaders, and is not meant at all to be profitable or stretch beyond a 20 year lifespan.

Despite this expectation, the U.N.'s leaders develop a vested interest in Martian colonization following Hatch's discoveries regarding the ability to synthesize water using Astrophage-fuel (Astrofuel), and decide to dedicate 50% of the funds needed to finish Project Hail Mary to this program, instead.

Stratt protests, of course, but her pleads fall on deaf ears. There's no guarantee Earth will heal back to the way it was before the Petrova Line, and it's incredibly unlikely to happen within any of their lifetimes, anyway.

The few begin to see little profit in continuing to aid the many...especially when a clear option for a long, prosperous lifestyle is dangling right in front of them.