Grace as a Spark Girl Genius yes or no
Here is where my thoughts went:
First gut reaction: oh no what if he tears apart the Hail Mary in a Sparky fugue
Okay but what about Grace biologist Spark + Rocky engineering Spark
…everyone on both planets is going to be absolutely stunned that they a) survived and b) found the solution without Wild Sciencing themselves and their ships out of existence
wait but if Grace is a biologist Spark specifically, maybe the Hail Mary WOULD be safe because the mechanical bits keeping him alive wouldn’t be as inspiring to his type of Sparkiness
but OH NO ROCKY THE ENGINEERING SPARK LEFT UNSUPERVISED ON AN ERIDIAN SHIP RUNNING ON CUTTING-EDGE ERIDIAN ENGINEERING
oh god, angsty possibility: what if Rocky thought his crewmates all starting to die was some kind of engineering-related failure, triggering a Spark fugue from him, and then when he snapped out of it his crewmates had all succumbed and he thought maybe he’d killed them all doing mad desperate Sparky experiments :((((( and he kept thinking that until Grace told him the real cause
wait so maybe this would work, if totally different fields of science inspire Grace and Rocky to Spark out, they could theoretically always have a Sane Guy available to balance out the Mad Scientist
In this universe, I think Stratt must be a non-Spark who has a *suspiciously* low tendency to fall into minion behavior, like a kind of anti-minion. maybe Grace even theorizes that she’s secretly some kind of rare Administrative Spark with unusually-expressed Sparky behavior, but he doesn’t have time and energy to look into that possibility and then it’s too late
but yeah anyway, I think Stratt’s angle in a universe with Sparks could possibly be that sending any Spark on this mission is too risky what with the inherently volatile nature of Sparks. so she recruits Sparks to *train* the primary and backup crews, but the crews themselves are not Sparks, just talented and smart regular people.
and here I finally answer your question: I think it could be a neat narrative choice if Grace thought he wasn’t a Spark on Earth (somehow? some kind of psychological baggage holding him back in some way maybe?). so with him not being a Spark, Stratt views him as a viable candidate for the mission. but then after he wakes up on the Hail Mary, he finally breaks through. and Rocky is there and they can bond over both their species having Sparks be a thing.
