thinking about how grace was probably project hail mary's backup stratt before he was the backup backup science astronaut
because stratt says she has no reason to keep around a junior high science teacher when she says he's her backup science team, which is true, but also, if she really needed a third backup science astronaut imo she should've & would've trained one?? it can't have been that hard even if their third choice was vastly underqualified in comparison?? grace literally spent years teaching junior high after his phd & spent half the project doing physics which isn't his specialisation either?? and like, grace was stratt's #2. de facto number 2 on such a big project. he was there for everything, which means if stratt had an actual separate #2 he would've known?? if she needed an actual #2 she would've had one??
so yeah anyway i will die on the hill that grace was, primarily, the backup stratt because stratt definitely had a plan for what if she, rather than the astronauts died? she would need someone to take over, someone who knows enough about the project & who cares to save the world (unlike a lot of the other scientists, who were dragged in unwillingly, or that guy who was there to get out of prison, grace volunteered for his kids. not for himself, but for his /kids/) & someone who's involved AND well-liked by everyone (he's the astronauts' favourite, is on decent terms with the science staff)
so yeah i think it was just unfortunate that it ended up not being stratt but the science astronauts who needed a replacement, and being the backup stratt grace was ALSO able to serve the double function as a backup anything, which is how he ended up as a emergency astronaut
YOU GET IT
