into thin air ch 1 through seven

ch 1 pg 6

so our narrator is at the summit if mount everest and i gues hes done with that cause theyre trying to go down and hes taking pictures and after the fact looking at the pictures he can see a storm coming.  but at the time, his oxygen starved brain didnt see it.  so hes trying to go down and theres one narrow spot with one rope and he has to stop because people are coming up that rope.  so hes a little pissed that he has to wait for these people to get up and all the while hes losing brain cells because of the lack of oxygen.

ch 2 pg 13

A few stories of the early attempts at climbing Everest in the 1950s and 60s in this chapter.  the one that matters most to our author Jon Krakauer is about a 1963 expedition that included Willi Unsoeld from Oregon.  Hey, i'm from Oregon.  awesome, way to go Willi.  You got my attention Jon, tell me more about Willi.  Willi lived in Corvallis and at the time, so did Jon.  Another level, Jon's dad and Willi were friends.  Jon played with Willi's kids.  leanring this local comnection makes me care about Jon a lot more.

Jon is an accomplished climber.  He's climbed mountains all over the world.  Many that are considered to be more difficult than Everest.  He's become a bit of an accomplished writer and was invited in 1995 to come to Everest base camp to do a story about how crazy overly commercialized Everest has become.  He decided je couldn't just go to base camp.  if he's flying across the world to see Everest, hes gomna climb it.  So he went in 1996.

ch 3 pg 29

Jon's guide is a guy from New Zealand named Rob Hall.  He's very accomplished.  hes done this a lot.  so much so that no less a man than Sir Edmund Hillary himself criticized Rob for being a significant part of the Everest over commercialization.  Jon is getting uneasy.  he likes Rob and another guy in the party named Doug, but the group is large and of varied backgrounds and experience levels.  Previously Jon has really only ever done climbs like this with other very experienced climbers, most of whom he already knew.  So this is a really different sort of deal for Jon.

ch 4 pg 41

this chapter is all about the elevation aclimatizing walk climbers make as they slowly go from an elevation of 9,000 feet at the top of the Himalayan platue to basecamp at 20,000 feet.  they only walk a few hours a day because it take A Lot more energy to do anything when you're a couple miles up from sea level.  theres a village everyone stops at 16,000 feet.  usually its pretty relaxed.  but this year it was crazy poop in the streets crowded.  the snow was thicker than ussual due to a cool spring.  So it is taking a lot longer to get from there to base camp and so all these people that would  normally habe made it up to basecamp by now are stuck in this tiny village.  

Then, like Sticky Fingaz says, "Bu-bu-bu-but wait it gets worse."

Rob Hall gets word from base camp that one of their sherpas that went up to base camp ahead of the group has been injured.  so Rob is gonna go deal with that while the group hangs out in this insanely over crowded village.

ch 5 pg 59

The sherpa is gonna be ok.  everyone else gets to leave the crazy overcrowded village and go to base camp at 17,600 feet.  but the village has done a lot of damage to the crew.  lots of them are leaking out of both ends.  Jon has a nonstop cough he got from the dung fireplace.  they're a mess.  but you spend a lot of time at basecamp getting aclimatized to the elevation.  elevation even at base camp is higher than Jon has ever climbed.

ch 6 pg 75

the key to aclimitizing to the altitude is you do a lot of climbing up a few thousand feet from base camp and then back down again over and over again.  the hardest part is the ice fall.  it can be very unpridictable whether or not the ground beneath you is going to be solid or not.  so the system is that one team does it first and then once theyve established the safe route for the season all the other teams pay them to use their route.

ch 7 pg 89

project hail mary ch 6 through 10

ch 6 pg 100

 our narrator makes it to the distant sun hes headong toward.  the best part is that he does not adjust well to zero G when the decelleration finishes and he feels himself about to puke and he doesnt have a bag ir anything so he ends up puking down hsi shirt.  gross.  he uses his special instruments to see the Petrova line.  while he's observing it all of a sudden theres a bright light and it heads his way and he kinda gets scared and stops looking.  its scary, something heading at you super fast.  especially in space.  when he looks again, the Petrova line is half as bright.  The second best part is that as he's looking around he sees something blocking his view of the Petrova line.  he looks a bit more and realizes its an alien space ship.  

ch 7 pg 121

narrator does some measuring and figures out the alien space ship is only 217 meters away.  its 139 meters long.  his ship is 47 meters long.  reading this at first i thought ot would be fun if the distance between the ships was gonna be equal to their lengths added together.  he takes control of the ships navigation and does a bit of moving around.  the alien ship mirrors the movements.  then a robot climbs on top of the alien ship and throws a canister to narrator.  its thrown very slowly so narrator has plenty of time to ger on his space suit and get out there and catch the cylinder.  he gets the cylinder inside the ship and is super excited and he opens it up.  it smells bad and its hot enough to burn his hands.  so he decides to slow it down and do some science.  problem is all the science stuff is set up to work in gravity.  so narrator has to figure out how to do that.

ch 8 pg 136

flashback to earth when they realize they need the lab to have gravity to work.  the ship is a centrifuge so the lab has gravity.  

back in the present narrator has opened the cannister and its a model of all the stars and planets affected by the astrophage.  one star is specially labelled.  narrator interprets this to say this is the star the aliens are from and they came here with the same goal of figuring out why Tau is not affected by astrophage.  he finds the sun in the model and marks it and sends it back to the aliens.  they send back a cannister with models of the two ships connected by a tube.  they want to meet face to face.

ch 9 pg 154

tubing commences.  narrator goes into the tube, which has a door half way.  possible big problems.  1 their air is very amonium smelling so they might not breath the same air.  2 their side of the door is super hot.  they might not be able to live at the same temperature.  theres a knock on the door.

ch 10 pg 169

There's an alien on the other side.  There's a lot of math and science based communication.  We learn some important stuff.  The aliens atmosphere is ammonia and their atmosphere is 29 times denser than earth's.  Also that their numbering system is base six and their second is a little less than two and a half earth seconds.  He's also able to explain the concept of two hours to the aliens.  Cause he needs a nap.  

Babelon's ashes ch 37 through 53

ch 37 Alex pg 307

Alex and Sandra Ip have quite the whirlwind romance going.  They make love and he lies in her bed while she went to work.  Shes an engineer on the station so shes always got work to do. Alex is a pilot who's ship isnt plannimg to go anywhere soon.  so they've got real different lifestyles.  Alex goes to lunch and Holden calls.  They are shipping out in thirty hours.  He finds sandra and says his goodbyes.

ch 38 Avasarala pg 315

Avasarala is talking to a Martian commander.  She says they need to talk alone.  The target is the ring gate.  More specifically to take over the Roman station they've strapped railguns to.  The how is by sending a TON of ships into the ring.  They are also going to send a hauler with the Rocinante as a distraction while they do it.

ch 39 Naomi pg 32

No matter what type of fight you're in, you're hoping for the element of surprise.  Fun reference to book 1 Forgotten arm

Amos and Bobbie are gonna be on the ship they're escorting.  They're hoping not to be noticed on the way so they can slip into the ring to attack the station.  It's not working.  A couple ships from ganamyde have spotted them and are heading their way.

ch 40 Prax pg 331

Prax is the one that sent the info on the super fungus to Earth.  He has been waiting for the free navy to find out and come for him.  Some uniformed thugs come for him at work.  They ask him about the super fungus that his underling was working on.  They ask why he moved those plans to a shared folder and who had access to that folder.  Prax starts spouting a bunch of biochemical mumbo jumbo.  He effectively baffles them with bullshit.  They tell him to be more serious about data security in the future and they let him go.  When he gets home to his wife and she asks what happened he says “I confessed,” Prax said. “I told them … I told them everything. And then they let me go.” “They did what?” “They said I shouldn’t do it again, and that I should leave,” he said. “It wasn’t at all the reaction I expected.”

ch 41 pa pg 339

Pa's group is hitting Pallas station.  The plan in to take out what defenses they can to ram a ship into the docs to render the station useless.  Then they head to Titan.  But in the midst of the plan Pa hates it.  She knows it'll end up hurting the people on the station way worse than it hurts the Free navy.  So instead of a hit and run she is turning this into a blockade.  She has a talk with the government of the station trying to convince them to surrender.  Things aren't really going well,  but they're not going badly.  The problem is it's just a matter of time before the station is able to get around their blockade.

But Pa's gotta try to do this as peacefully as she can.  "Killing people because they got in the way is inner-planets bullshit. It’s Free Navy bullshit. We’re better than that.”

ch 42 Marco pg 347

Marco is fighting, just like always.  He is fighting OPA that aren't free navy anymore.  The fighting is going well, but the free navy operation in totality is bad.

Filip is asking what the plan is now.  Like the real long term plan.  Not whatever the next thing Marco is gonna make up.  Tell the real truth for once.  Marco says he's having a tantrum and laughs at him so Filip leaves.

 The economic guy is explaining again to Marco that if they don't get some start of stability their currency will be worthless and they'll have to start using Mars and Earth money again and that defeats the whole purpose of everything they've done.  Marco wants to attack Tyco station so he can kill Holden.  One of his people tells him Holden's not on Tyco station.  They've found the rocinante escorting an old ice hauler.

ch 43 Holden pg 355

The ice hauler is full of smaller ships.  When they get close enough to the ring gate they're gonna launch out of the ice hauler and attack.  But before that they have to make it there and there's two free navy ships launching missiles at them.  They make it through without any casualties and lots of ships launch out to attack the ring.  But Holden really only cares about the one with Bobbie and Amos on it.

ch 44 Roberts pg 363

They're getting ready for the attack.  The ships from Ganymede are still attacking as holden and the old ice hauler make their way to the ring.  The goal is to make them move faster than they want.  Hope in their haste they get sloppy and make mistakes.  When the ice hauler gets there they see thousands of drive plumes.  Mostly missiles.  But lots of real tiny ships.  Roberts sees one big problem.  Any ship that small is gonna have the rails go right through it.  So they cant shoot the railgun at the ships that have positioned themselves between the Roman station and Medina station or they'd effectively be shooting at Medina station.  Every one is pretty pleased with themselves as the rail gun and the Medina station defenses are making quick work of the missiles and ships small enough to be indistinguishable from missiles.  But Roberts sees that a couple of those small ships that are hanging out between the Roman station and Medina station are making their way to the Roman station.  They're gonna take over the rail guns.  EVERYONE needs to prepare for the rail guns to fire on them.

ch 45 Bobbie 371

Their little transport makes it to the Roman station.  But there's Martian bunkers full of people with guns.  Taking over the rail guns isn't going to be easy.  In fact, it.looks like it will be impossible.  They're going to die here cause they're outgunned and Holden can't help cause the second he gets into the ring, those rail guns will tear them to shreds.  Amos has an idea, the rail guns have got to be getting power from something on the station.  Let's get rid of that and we solve a pretty big problem.  Bobbie takes the idea and runs with it.  She gets their little transport into the air again.  It's a tricky deal.  If she flies too low she can't get a good view of things and if she gets too high the rail guns will take her out.  She threads that needle and finds the reactor powering the rail guns.  She bails out and the transport crashes into the reactor.  It messes things up real bad.  All the rail guns are now inoperable.

ch 46 HOlden pg 379

Things go amazingly well. Medina station surrendures right away.  Avasarala is doing a press conference and feeling very confident about everything.  Bobbie says this is foolish cause she's just gonna look super bad when Marco takes the station back.  This is a surprising and upsetting idea to Holden.  Bobbie lays it out real simple, Marco is close by and has lots of ships with guns.  Also Duarte and the other laconians might come back through the gate to help Marco.  Earth and Mars are very far away and any backup they send won't get here until Marco has finished killing them.  Without the railguns they don't have much of a chance to keep Medina station.  The button on the chapter is Bobbie saying this is a good hill to die on.

ch 47 Filip  pg 387

Filip is hanging out at a bar on Calisto talking to a girl.  He asks her how bad the attacks were.  His thought is they just attacked the Martian ship yards, so it couldn't have been too bad for the belters.  But you don't just kick half a ball.  The whole ball gets kicked.  Lots of units got cracked and people died.  Her mom was one of those people.  

Some guy comes along and bumps Filip and starts hassling him.  Filip considers pulling our his gun and killing this guy.  It'd be easy and he'd get away with it cause he's Marco Inarezes son.  He decides to just walk away.

He gets a call on Hus tablet.  Its time to go.  They're gonna kill Holden and Naomi and take back Medina station.  Philip starts walking to the docks.   He gets there and sees the dock for their ship.  But instead of getting on, he puts his gun and tablet in the recycler and heads to the employment office.  He says he needs a job.  The lady says come back tomorrow and she'll see what she can do.  He puts down his name as Filip Nagata.

ch 48 Pa pg 395

Pa is at a luxury resort on Titan.  She gets a call from Avasarala asking her to help Holden.  Giving her sincere condolences that two of her spouses died in the fight for Titan.  It's pretty sad.  She messages back that she's got  no ships to send.

She feels bad for all of this.  She fought and people she loved died and for what?  Things won't be better for belters.  If anything things will be worse for belters because she joined up with Holden.  This song is called I am sad, so very very sad.

ch 49 Naomi pg 403

Naomi is pouring through the Medina station data and sending it out to everyone.  Holden comes in and they talk about their options RE: Marco and the rest of the free navy ships headlong their way. 

They are just gonna stay and fight and probably die.

Avasarala wants all the data they have on the disappeared ships so she starts digging through that data.  She thinks she's figured out something important.

ch 50 Holden pg 411

The important thing Naomi thinks she's figured out is that after a certain amount of mass and energy goes through a gate the next ship after that gets disappeared.  She thinks if the big ice hauler and the Rock go.through just right maybe the next ship to go through after them disappears.  So that's Tue plan.  They're gonna go through a gate and hope that the next ship disappear and then one less ship to fight.

ch 51 Marco pg 419

Marco is a crazy person.  He thinks a lot of thoughts and when I see them strung together on paper they're the ravings of a mad.man.  when he goes through the ring he sees his molecules start to stretch out and disappear.  

It worked even better than expected all fifteen ships disappear.  “Huh,” Amos said over the ship system. “That is super creepy.”

ch 52 Pa pg 425

Its been six months.  They have big problems.  Mainly a lack of air, water and food.  The solution should be easy, there's plenty of all those things on the other side of the ring gates.  But we've gotta come up with a system cause if we don't ships will keep randomly disappearing.  Holden has a plan.  We create a government -esque organization to organize all traffic through the ring gates.  Anyone that's able bodied will end up on a planet.  So this governing organization should be made up of belters that will not have that ability.  And the person in charge should be someone that's always done what's good for the belt.  Michio Pa.  

Michio hadn’t come to a meeting. This was an anointing.

ch 53 Naomi pg 434

They're All just hanging out talking abouwhat t the future might bring.

Epilogue Ana pg 441

remember preast Ana who was in the slow zone?  shes taking her family on a ship to the new settlement Eudoxia.  it should be better than earth.  good luck.

Project Hail Mary CH 1 - 5

CH 1 pg 3

Our narrator is being asked math questions by a computer.  It takes a while to gain back their facilities before they can answer.  They are attached to a bunch of tubes.  After they regain the ability to move robot arms remove most of the tubes.  A cathader, a butt tube and an IV.  The computer asks our narrator their name.  The narrator has no idea what their name is.  But it's a white guy so he guesses John and the computer says incorrect.  Next time our narrator wakes up, little robot arms are shaving his face.  He jumps out of his bed and the IV and butt tube come out OK.  The catheter comes out with much more pain.

Flashback: narrator is eating breakfast at a diner in San Francisco and he reads an email from a Russian lady about odd IR light activity in our solar system.

Narrator wakes up from the flashback and is underwhelmed by the lack of useful information.

There's two other beds in the room with people and they're both dead.  Like been dead for a long time cause they look.like mummies.

The computer gives narrator a tube of food.  He feels stronger and is able to climb up a ladder to another room.  In that room he does physics and calculates the gravity here is 15 mpss not 9.8 like it should be.  So he's not on earth.

CH 2 pg 20

Narrator does some more physics and then has a flashback and realizes he's on a spaceship.  The two mummies are people he knew.  A lady named Marisa and a military guy he can't remember the name of.  But he still can't remembehis own r name.  Commence uncontrollable sobbing.  Another flashback and he remembers the reason he's on this mission is the IR oddness mentioned before is actually draining the sun.  Its like Venus is draining the sun.

The ship keeps telling him “Angular anomaly" and he assumes that means the ship needs some sort of course correction but he has no idea how to steer this ship.  He remembers something else about himself.  He's a teacher.

CH 3 pg 34

Our narrator has a flashback to his teaching days.  Sixth period has just finished and he's looking forward to chillaxing in the teachers lounge with a cup of coffee.  “Ryland Grace?” said a woman’s voice.  She tells him he's on the team to study why the sun is dying.  It's mainly because of a paper he wrote back in his academic days about how you don't need water for life.  It pretty much ended his academic career cause it was so whckypants.  She tells him they think they found life on Venus and it might be what's killing the sun.  They want him to study it.  He doesn't want to.  But when he goes home the FBI is there to abduct him. The lady is at the place they take him and she says welcome to your new lab.

He comes out of the flashback and tells the computer his name.

His name gets him into the pilot's cabin.  There's all sorts of screens and what not.  It turns out the angular anomaly was just an informational message to let him know that his measured speed didn't match his actual speed.  He flashes back to his time in the lab.  The short story is they have found life on Venus.  It consumes energy from the sun and then uses that energy to emit light, which it uses as a means of locomotion.  We go back to the ship.  There's a screen focusing on the sun.  Doing some science he comes to the conclusion that this isn't our sun.  He's in another solar system.

CH 4 pg 54

Lots of flashback in this chapter.  Ryland is doing a lot of lab work on the alien algae that he has named Astrophage.  It doesn't reflect light, its always black to look at.  Radiation doesn't have an affect on it.  But he kills one by stabbing it with a nano needle and does a bit of an autopsy.  He finds that they are mostly water and that makes him sad cause it goes against his life without water theory.  And also how does something made of water live on the sun?  Back from the flashback on the spaceship he sees that one of the screens is labeled Astrophage and its what is powering the ship.  It has a constant temperature of a bit above 94 degrees Celsius.  Maybe that's how something made of water can live on the sun cause it can keep that constant temperature.  

Flashback again, the lady in charge of the lab tells Ryland she's having the astrophage shipped off to a bunch of other labs all over the world to be investigated.  Ryland wants to keep investigation and she says she can't give him any astrophage cause they're all spoken for.  Each lab is only getting five.  He begs and pleads and cries about his kids and she says he can have 3.

Back on the space ship he realizes this is a one way mission.  He's sent to gather info and then put it on four ships named after the Beatles to send it back to earth.  He's gonna die here all alone.

CH 5 pg 74

This chapter is all flashback.  

He does a bunch of science and figures out the reproductive cycle of the astrophage.  They gather up energy on the sun.  Then they go to the north pole of the sun and launch off.  Then once they're far enough away from the sun to detect a source of CO2 they use the stored up energy to go there and once they hit the CO2 they reproduce.  Then they go back to the sun and do it all over again.  He's able to get one of his three to reproduce.  He tells the leader lady about this and says cool, we gotta go.

An army guy takes him to a chopper, which takes him to a plane, which takes him to Hawaii.  Another plane takes him to an aircraft carrier and then a chopper takes him to a Chinese aircraft carrier.  All these super smart people that have been doing astrophage experiments are here.  They talk about how they need to make a lot more astrophage and get it fully charged up so they can use it to power a spaceship to get to another solar system.  They call the.project hail Mary.  His ship is named Hail Mary so obviously this plan worked.  The question now is where is he going and why.  The where is a star named Tau Ceti and the why is that it's the only star they're aware of that isn't infected by the Astrophage.  Every other nearby star has gone down by 10% if the sun goes down by 10% earth won't be able to support human life anymore.