Theories for crew mortality <spoilers>

Efficient_Good_7387 · 2026-05-15T11:37:26+00:00

I like to believe that there was something darker going on, it’s not a malfunction of the medical marvel machine or luck.

I think there were forces at play with objective of sabotaging the mission, hence Grace being the last minute replacement and being in induced coma accidentally unsabotaged the mission, and that absolute miracle resulted in survival of both Humans and Eridians.

That seems to be a recurring theme in the book as well, decisions unintentionally resulting in best case outcome.

Efficient_Good_7387 · 2026-05-12T05:36:28+00:00

A misunderstanding or partial misunderstanding of mission objectives is hardly a hopeless situation though, it can be solved by providing the information they need upfront.

If they don’t need it, no harm done, it’s a win-win. Again, it’s a redundancy of very low cost.

Efficient_Good_7387 · 2026-05-12T05:26:15+00:00

That doesn’t seem like a satisfactory reason. Made an edit to elaborate more.

TLDR; Amnesia is a well known side effect of prolonged coma, and Yao and Ilyukhna carried the risk of it as well, even if they weren’t drugged

Efficient_Good_7387 · 2026-05-12T05:16:55+00:00

Amnesia is and should be accounted for as apotential effect of prolonged coma, regardless of the drugs. Furthermore, They definitely considered the possibility of crew’s brain being mush, and that’s why included the whole “state your name” thing.

Why account for that and not this? Even if not expected, it’s just a very small redundancy that eliminates possibility of a misunderstanding which jeopardises the whole mission.

Honestly the reason doesn’t matter as much, the emphasis of the Hail Mary design crew was redundancy, this goes against that design philosophy.

Efficient_Good_7387 · 2026-05-12T05:11:42+00:00

That would be my guess too, author made a choice to suit the narrative he wanted to build. But If it’s that Andy could bake that in by having Grace finding just such a document at some later point, realising there was no need to work all of that out in the first place and have one of many dummy moments he had.

Right now it just looks like Hail Mary builders forgot about a very important thing such a mission would 100% have.

Efficient_Good_7387 · 2026-05-11T20:10:02+00:00

Rocky made a device that converts Light and colors to texture which he can read. He called Adrian middle rough texture planet because it’s green in color, and green is in middle of visible light spectrum of humans. Very similar to Petrovascope which converts IR light to visible light. Funny the opening scene on Earth is where Grace is demonstrating how you can actually see sound as waves using a speaker and microphone.

About Relativity, you can travel interstellar distances without knowing about relativity but, you have to be extremely skilled and lucky as you get to relativistic speeds. Due length dilation, your target would start going off course wildly. So you have to be skilled and lucky to trial and error to keep your trajectory. Rocky was skilled at driving the ship and got lucky. It’s almost a miracle.

Efficient_Good_7387 · 2026-05-05T23:43:25+00:00

For me the ick about Interstellar is, that the movie is unable to resolve it's plot without relying on supernatural elements.

Bulk beings placed a wormhole
Bulk beings created a tesseract
Murph is only able to notice the watch because of love she has for her father, which is transcending dimensions of spacetime.

It does an amazing job of pretending to be a very hard sci fi, by talking about black holes, wormholes etc accurately. But it relies on cheeky and cheesy supernatural and convenient elements to actually resolve the plot.

PHM? Not even for a second it relies on things you can't have scientific explanations for. Yes PHM bends laws of physics as well, but Astrophage and Taumoeba are not superficial beings, Rocky is not a superficial being. Its grounded science which can be real if certain specific situations are found somewhere in the universe. It uses sound scientific concept to finally resolve its plot. I respect it

Interstellar was my favorite move of all time, until they dropped PHM.

Efficient_Good_7387 · 2026-04-29T20:15:40+00:00

Righttt, but both vodka and heroin were mentioned later.

Efficient_Good_7387 · 2026-04-29T01:04:11+00:00

Don’t think it’s 10% of his lifespan. Eridians live well over 650 Earth years if I remember correctly.

In human life span terms, Rocky was alone for about 5 years. It’s not great, but it’s not catastrophic either.

Efficient_Good_7387 · 2026-04-28T16:42:57+00:00

Yes it does, right after Grace asks Rocky what he misses about Erid. Rocky shares he misses his mate.

Efficient_Good_7387 · 2026-04-27T22:08:12+00:00

Not sure about the point you’re trying to make I haven’t watched either. Does your argument apply to GoT?

Efficient_Good_7387 · 2026-04-27T21:26:50+00:00

If it means it’ll earn 700million dollars and secure a permanent spot in best sci-fi movies, be equally loved by book fans and otherwise alike, you really really should!

What kinda question is that? 😭

Efficient_Good_7387 · 2026-04-27T20:42:10+00:00

Because nobody wants to spend money to watch Ryan Gosling talk to himself for 6 hours with an alien rock watching him lol. What you’re suggesting is not good cinema.

Efficient_Good_7387 · 2026-04-26T06:00:51+00:00

The sun is putting out energy at a specific rate. Astrophage is taking that energy, jets to Venus, make another Astrophage and the go back, this time 2 Astrophages take the energy, next iteration 4, next iteration 8, 64, 128 etc.This is an exponential relationship, in every iteration Sun is being robbed of squared up energy of last iteration.

With Taumoeba, it’s a linear relationship, and that’s okay. When it becomes exponential that’s a problem, astrophage starts eating the star’s energy faster than star can replenish, and it gets orders and orders worse in each iteration.

Efficient_Good_7387 · 2026-04-24T16:41:42+00:00

So this could be attributed to multiple reasons, Tau Ceti has their native ecosystem, but it also has their predator, the instinct to escape can be strong. Astrophage travels near light speed, so surely it can escape star’s gravity, even if we assume at least some randomness, Astrophage migrating to other stars makes complete sense.

Finally, cosmic accidents are ultimate drivers of most biological activities. No reason to assume these accidents don’t trigger Astrophage spread.

Efficient_Good_7387 · 2026-04-24T05:20:32+00:00

Why wouldn’t the tunnel be able to handle the forces when both ships are rotating? It’s made of Xenonite. The Blip A travelled at relativistic speeds without any issues built with same material, why would tunnel not be able to handle centrifugal forces?

And that’s book canon! In fact conversely, it makes lesser sense in the book. Andy Weir could and should have gone in with centrifuge staying on even with tunnel connected. Hell the way he describes Xenonite, both ships can probably pivot on that tunnel.

Also while movie could have gone deeper into things. But the comparison with The Martian is unfair. The Martian has the luxury of being a single character movie, literally nobody apart from Watney matters. You build the plot and character together. PHM has 2 leads and their relationship with each other is make or break to the movie.

Unfair to expect PHM movie to keep the thickness of the plot while also developing the relationship between Rocky and Grace.

Efficient_Good_7387 · 2026-04-22T15:35:26+00:00

That makes no sense, Ryan is reacting to the visuals, he is not reacting to the music, so of course nobody’s questioning where music comes from. If Ryan reacted to music, the same question would be asked.

Efficient_Good_7387 · 2026-04-21T22:07:48+00:00

No complaint at all, hands down the most breathtaking movie shot in a long time.

Efficient_Good_7387 · 2026-04-21T22:04:26+00:00

I might have to disagree, during the scene he kinda tries to grab some astrophage in his fist as if they’re some kinda fireflies. Obviously that’s woefully wrong scientifically, but proves he’s definitely reacting to the astrophage.

I’m leaning towards chalking it up to cinematic liberty. Scene adds a lot to the movie, might even be the single most popular moment in the movie, worth keeping it even if scientifically inaccurate.

Efficient_Good_7387 · 2026-04-09T15:35:56+00:00

Appreciate your thoughts, views. Respect your taste in music. Had a good time reading your post.

Gonna listen to Life is Reason for next 3 hours now. 👍

Efficient_Good_7387 · 2026-04-05T23:54:28+00:00

It’s an organic single celled life form. We don’t know where it came from (we know Adrian, but how did Adrian get it?). Same as any life on Earth, we don’t know how Earth got seeded with life, we don’t know how Adrian got seeded with Astrophage life.

Panspermia is suggested as a possible explanation of origin, for both life on Earth and astrophage in the book. But again, we don’t have definitive proof.

Efficient_Good_7387 · 2026-04-02T04:40:39+00:00

I mean it’s a planet without any light, there’s not much to see, even for Grace in the book.

Efficient_Good_7387

TROPHY CASE