As to your second issue: one ship had a science person and a bunch of equipment that they’d need built to operate in that science person’s environment.

[–] spectrums_coherence@piefed.social 2 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (2 children)

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 3 points 1 hour ago

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)

[–] selfAwareCoder@programming.dev 3 points 1 hour 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.