u/Loreliemorris

So in episode 5, the gym teacher hangs out in the room with the dead body for three whole days. When they finally drill the door open, he slips out into the hallway and puts his hand on Freya's shoulder to look shocked or surprised.

Freya is deaf, so her other senses like smell should be pretty sharp. Wouldn't the absolute stench of a three-day-old corpse be totally soaked into his clothes and hair by that point?

I know someone's probably going to say the room was just opened so the smell was just wafting out into the hallway, but still—sitting in a confined room with a decomposing body for 72 hours means that smell has to be radiating right off the guy. She has to notice it's coming straight off him, right? Or am I totally overthinking this?

And if this wasn't an oversight, it would have made for such a good clue or piece of physical evidence to catch him right there!

Warning: Full Spoilers for the ending of Project Hail Mary below!

Like everyone else here, I’ve rewatched/reread the ending multiple times, and while I love that Grace is happy teaching the Eridian kids, but his diet of eating cloned muscle tissue ("Me-Burgers") and processed Taumoeba sludge for the rest of his life sounds incredibly lonely and depressing.

I realized Andy Weir missed a massive engineering loophole that could have given Grace a much different ending.

If Grace knew he wasn't going back to Earth, he could have loaded his exact home coordinates into the Beetle probe. Once Earth was saved and mass-producing Astrophage again, humanity easily could have sent an automated cargo drone or an air ship or space station straight to the 40 Eridani system.

Here is how the physics and engineering of the "Potato Rescue Mission" would work:

The Sky Hotel / Space Station: Because Erid’s surface is a lethal, high-pressure furnace, the cargo ship wouldn't land on the ground. Instead, it hooks up to an orbital space elevator above the atmosphere, expanding into a human space station and hotel where the environment is a comfortable, rotating 1-G with Earth-like oxygen.

The Interstellar Greenhouse: Instead of unloading supplies onto a toxic planet, the entire cargo ship is the greenhouse. It arrives pre-packed with rich Earth soil, UV grow lights, and automated irrigation. Rocky could easily use his Xenonite glass skills to upgrade it with viewport windows and attach geothermal heat exchangers to give it infinite power.

The Interstellar Bridge: This completely changes Grace's retirement. During the week, he commutes down the elevator to teach the Eridian children. On the weekends, he takes the elevator up to the Sky Hotel to breathe fresh air, walk through a lush garden of potato vines, and eat real Earth food while hanging out with Rocky. Eventually, human tourists and scientists could take passenger liners to stay at the station, turning Grace into a living diplomatic bridge between two species.

To me, this solves the tragedy of Grace's food crisis and opens up an amazing, emotional concept for a slice-of-life sequel. Rocky and his wife (who would be profoundly grateful to the human who saved her husband's life) could help Grace manage his garden, and the Eridian kids could experience an actual sprout growing in soil for the first time.

🥰🥰(⁎⁍̴̆Ɛ⁍̴̆⁎)🎶(๑>◡<๑)🚀