In Project Hail Mary, any astronaut who does not have the good fortune of being Ryan Gosling does not last long. Since the start of Project Hail Mary is so mysterious, it’s not very clear why Ryland Grace is the only crew member not to die. Thankfully, the book goes into a lot more detail, and clears this up for us. Cinemagoers have come up with many clever theories about the causes of the other astronauts’ deaths in Project Hail Mary. Did Grace have better genetics that helped him cope with the coma? Did he have more adrenaline, as he didn’t want to be there? Were the other to astronauts just inherently flimsier? The author of the original Project Hail Mary book, Andy Weir, has cleared this up. He told Science News that the matter of who lives and who dies wasn’t down to human biology. Andy Weir explained: “It was a tech failure. I mean, being in a coma for four years is a dangerous proposition in the best of times. So a small tech failure can lead to catastrophic results. Which it did in this case.” Did nobody else do their homework before launch? So, Grace survived because his equipment all worked, and the rest didn’t. Andy Weir hasn’t specified which piece of tech caused the problems. However, details in the book have caused readers to think the culprit could be a component of the feeding tubes. In the book, about nine days before Hail Mary takes off, Grace sifts through documents in his trailer. There’s a report about “anomalies in Slurry Pump Fourteen of the medical feeding system”. This component was only “95 per cent effective”, so Grace makes a note to install a spare one. This is never mentioned again. Maybe this issue wasn’t fixed, and two out of three feeding systems failed. If the other astronauts weren’t fed properly and wasted away from starvation, it would make sense that they died at different times. For all the latest film and TV updates and hot takes, like our Facebook page. Featured image credit: Amazon MGM Studios / YouTube Post navigation Next storyPrevious story
