a completely non-exhaustive list of what I think could be in a museum exhibit about project hail mary! :] both because it’s fun to think about and because it’s relevant to a fic I’m writing, but since the fic is short I can’t include nearly as much as I want to. please discuss/add your contributions in the notes!!
location: Grace being American, I imagine the main exhibit would be at one of the Smithsonians (or affiliates). originally I went with Space Center Houston, but the National Air and Space Museum in DC might make marginally more sense. it’s pretty small, but they do also literally have Neil Armstrong’s spacesuit and the command module from Apollo 11, so a Hail Mary exhibit might make a nice companion.
name: Earth’s Saving Grace: The Story of Project Hail Mary (if this was real life it would be called like “The Lockheed Martin Hail Mary Exhibit” or something equally asinine, but this is fake so I can ignore that <3)
actual artifacts:
at least one of the Beetles probes (probably Ringo, idk I’m attached to that one for some reason)
xenonite taumoeba breeder tank
replicas of the yellow and red jumpsuits grace wore, with highlights on each of the individual patches and what they mean + the patches that were on Ilyukhina + Yáo’s suits
a small replica of the astrophage panels used to power the Hail Mary
I imagine Grace kept some kind of physical research journal while working on Stratt’s Vat, that would be in here
interactive:
tech panel breaking down time dilation + the difference between the actual time the hail mary traveled to tau ceti, the time as experienced from earth, and the time as experienced by the crew onboard
tech panel that teaches about base 6 + Eridian numbers, and has a little quiz where you’re given a number in base 10 and have to convert it to base 6 (or you’re given a number 0-5 and have to pick the Eridian equivalent)
tech panel with a 3D model of Rocky you can spin around and click various parts of to learn about Eridian biology (or at least what they know of it from Grace’s logs)
tech panel comparing the planet characteristics of Earth vs Erid, + potentially Venus vs Threeworld + maybe Sol vs 40 Eridani A; I’m not sure how comprehensive I want this panel to be actually thinking through this a Sol/40 Eridani A comparison would be built in, as I envision you being able to both look at the planets themselves side by side and switch views to look at their orbits around their hosts side by side
other elements:
one of those semi-enclosed movie rooms with the big wall projection(s), where they loop through a curated collection of the video clips sent back by Grace [when the museum is busy this part of the exhibit in particular is packed]
wrapping around the exhibit is a timeline of the entire mission, from the Petrova line discovery all the way to the Sun returning to full brightness (and when they have confirmation that 40 Eridani A has also returned to full brightness, I imagine this would be added as well) [the actual line part of the timeline is red, of course]
a dedicated wall with pictures of all of the big players in the mission, and a placard naming them all. Stratt is at the top (which she hates), with Grace immediately beneath her, and then the remaining astronauts side by side underneath him, continuing down through technicians scientists etc. Grace never took a mission picture the way the rest of the astronaut crew did, so it’s just his final yearbook photo as a teacher. it’s led to a number of conspiracy theories online that maybe he never actually agreed to be the tertiary scientist, but it’s explained in the exhibit as highlighting that he wanted to be remembered as a teacher, not an astronaut
that's all I have for now, but I will likely rb with more in the future; it's a fun concept to rotate around in my brain
