But the collection process doesn't need a science person and is extremely dangerous. One ship has a fabrication person (basically can build and repair structures instantly) with robot arm and prob. It doesn't seem like a science person's job to "space walk" (atmosphere walk, really) on a completely unknown planet's atmosphere.

After the collection, they can bring the sample in the lab to test and breed, which is exactly what they did.

[–] SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

There are a lot more details in the book

But it basically boils down to, that the hail Mary is more capable

Plus, navigating would be a two person job due to the complexity, and grace can't get on board of the blip a (the scene with him in the xenonite suit is movie-only)

[–] spectrums_coherence@piefed.social 1 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

From what other have pointed out, the blip is much more primitive than hail mary, and Eridian is not really a space-dwelling spices. I guess this is hinted at in the movie: the way they communicate via throwing bottles, they don't understand Grace phoning home, and they don't know about space radiation.

But I feel these are not properly conveyed in the movie: rocky can instantly build tunnel and adjust to environment to make it livable for human (without encountering Grace or visited his ship), and later Grace went on rocky's ship, seems to all suggest Eridian has much more advanced technology than human.

Just a sentence in Graces log probably can set a better tune that human has more advanced tech, but Eridian are better at manufacturing.

[–] selfAwareCoder@programming.dev 6 points 23 hours ago

Part of the book is that everything is slower, it took them weeks to get to the planet from where they met, and Rocky had already spent time retro fitting graces ship to let him live there. (they did not go to the planet with the intention of sampling it, they were just going to sample the line and orbit the planet as an easy way to get close to the line)

It's been a long time since I read the book, but I think they considered the danger relatively low for the ship with their plan to stay high up and were more focused on "maybe we'll lose the bucket risks" and didn't want to go back to rocky ship until they were done because travel time and stuff.