r/ProjectHailMary

Double standards much?

So we've got a fully trained astronaut specialized as a miracle engineer with a goofy humor stranded far away from his home planet, surviving all on his own... and who takes up making video logs for Earth extremely very quickly.

Pretty much the only thing missing is that he isn't a botanist and wasn't really forced to think about growing food because they packed his ship with a ridiculous amount of it, I assume, enough for two dozen crew on a MUCH longer mission. I hope Rocky wasn't tormented by his planet's equivalent of disco in the decades he was stuck on the Blip-A.

(insert joke about Andy Weir only having templates for five characters or so)

This may not be very important but I've always pictured the scene with his friend Marissa at the restaurant for steaks every Thursday. For me it's kind of important because we get the origin of the petrova line which was missing to me. We could also get Grace's character development and see them eat steaks lol. It might not be too long, 5-10 min would be totally fine.

The movie starts straight with him as a teacher and a bunch of kids asking questions about the petrova line and the things going on but the audience doesn't have a clue what's going on and Grace briefly explains it, but it does not really sink in as that scene would have.

When I first read that part it felt so interesting and I was so curious to know what was going on. But like I said it's minor to the story and I just always imagined it in my head. That was the start of the story to me. My guess is that we don't see her anymore after that hence why they thought it was pointless to add her in the first place. But still it would add a warm element to the plot.

Marissa and Dr Lokken are the short relationships which are quickly forgotten but still pretty nice to think about in Grace's life. They literally met very week for steaks!

What do you guys think?

When trying to come up with a name for Adrian's mate, Grace translates to Adrian. Wheni looked ot up behind the name says that Adrian means "of the water" which makes a little sense. The lover of the land(rock) would be the sea. However, that feels far too poetic for Grace.

Is there a movie reference I am missing here?

BTW I am only on chapter 16 so sorry if it's explained later on

I started eating sour skittles since watching the movie. I wanted to eat what Grace was eating. Long story short my small filling which I have had for 6 long years fell out.

At my last dentist visit in December of last year I asked the dentist to check my fillings integrity and he was absolutely pleased with how it was looking.

Now I have to schedule an emergency appointment with the dentist. If you like your teeth be mindful of the rainbow. 🙃

Stratt is completely out of options. DuBois and the backup were dead. Dead to an error that Grace would have caught and DuBois didn't, by the way.

There are no qualified volunteers ready to take the mission now. The time taken to train a new specialist and calculate a new launch window would be measured in 7 digit human casualties. There was no time, and exactly 1 human left in the world with the expertise to pull this thing off.

Stratt was trying to save her species and did not have the luxury of coddling Dr. Grace's qualms. The emergency she was facing was easily of a level where individual rights go out the window. If Grace didn't man up on his own, she had to either conscript him or doom perhaps millions of humans. She worked with him as long as she dared, hoping his better nature would win out, and then when it didn't, she made the move that her role demanded.

Grace was trying to doom his entire species due to his own self doubt. That was not happening on Stratt's watch no matter how much she liked the man..

The astrophage response had Dr. Grace's fingerprints all over it, he was by far the best qualified man for the mission, and he was young and healthy enough to risk the voyage. At the end of the day his species' survival depended on Dr. Grace being on that spacecraft, so Stratt made sure that he was there.

The people whining about his freedom got sucked in by the book's conceit of telling the story from Grace's own perspective. Ordering a man to his death to save the group is something executive officers just have to do sometimes if if the occasion rises to a certain level of seriousness. That's exactly what Stratt did, and it's a perogative of leaders in any crisis of this magnitude.

Was it a violation of Grace's rights? Probably, but his integration into Project Hail Mary came with a duty to see the mission through and save humanity. He was part of Stratt's command chain, so when the sequence of events made him the only viable option, she was likely well within her authority to sacrifice him.

I do like the movie making it extra clear that Stratt didn't enjoy any part of the process of sacrificing Grace. Grace was a friend, and a key figure in Project Hail Mary. If she had a viable alternative she'd never have done it. But she did not.