Department of Energy

The Department of Energy (DOE) is a United States government agency that, in the context of the Astrophage crisis, becomes a subordinate executor of Eva Stratt's global authority, providing logistical support, military assets, and legal cover for the Hail Mary Project.

Role in the Petrova Taskforce

When Eva Stratt is granted unprecedented authority by a unanimous secret vote of every member nation of the UN, the Department of Energy falls under her command structure. Marissa, a friend of Ryland Grace who works for the DOE, is the first person to inform him of the severity of the Petrova problem, revealing that the sun's output is decreasing exponentially and that the president will address the nation the following morning. The DOE's role is not one of independent policy-making but of execution: Stratt dictates that the Russians, Canadians, and Americans all do whatever she tells them without question, and the DOE, like other national agencies, complies. This subordination is demonstrated when Stratt orders Roscosmos to land their Soyuz capsule in Saskatchewan, and the Royal Canadian Air Force, with U.S. permission, recovers the sample and delivers it to San Francisco via fighter jet—a complex multinational operation that the DOE facilitates without resistance.

Legal and Logistical Authority

Stratt's authority over the DOE extends to the legal realm. When the Intellectual Property Alliance sues Project Hail Mary for copying every copyrighted piece of software and literary work, Stratt appears in court alone and asserts her immunity. She holds up an international treaty granting her personal immunity from prosecution for any crime anywhere on Earth, ratified by the U.S. Senate, and a preemptive pardon from the president of the United States for any and all crimes within U.S. jurisdictions. When the bailiff attempts to restrain her, she calls in five armed men in U.S. Army fatigues, stating, "I have the U.S. Army. And that's a damn fine army." The DOE, as a civilian agency, is part of the broader U.S. government apparatus that Stratt commands, providing the logistical backbone for the Hail Mary Project's most extreme measures, including the nuclear strike on Antarctica. Stratt orders 241 nuclear weapons, courtesy of the United States, buried fifty meters deep along a fissure in Western Antarctica and detonated simultaneously to release methane and buy humanity time. The DOE's resources and personnel are thus instrumental in executing Stratt's single-minded focus on saving humanity, regardless of legal or environmental consequences.

Energy and Resource Management

The Department of Energy's core mission—managing the nation's energy resources—is directly relevant to the Hail Mary Project's most critical bottleneck: producing enough Astrophage fuel. Stratt's team calculates that producing two million kilograms of enriched Astrophage for a one-hundred-thousand-kilogram ship would require approximately ten to the twenty-third Joules of energy, a quantity that would take the largest nuclear reactor on Earth, making about eight gigawatts, two million years to generate. The DOE's expertise in nuclear power and energy infrastructure is implicitly leveraged to support the blackpanel farms in the Sahara Desert and the breeding operations on Stratt's Vat, the aircraft carrier in the South China Sea. The agency's vast institutional knowledge and resources are absorbed into Stratt's global effort, functioning as a tool rather than a decision-maker in the race against the dimming sun.