hail mary was a hail mary because they had one shot. the sun was dimming at a rapid rate and the amount of astrophage they could make would only amount to one ship on one suicide mission.
erid was cooling at a much slower rate and found it almost comically easier to breed astrophage. and the one ship they sent out there hasn't come back.
all this to say uh. it would only be logical that they sent more.
rocky gets back to erid and everyone's shocked not because someone came back, but because they're from the ship everyone accepted as gone forever.
meanwhile, a ship left 25 years ago that should have made it to tau ceti years before rocky left. they've been launching doomed ship after doomed ship into a sea of poison.





















