And we're gonna sing it again...

Eva Stratt, the world's whipping boy.

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But suppose the problem is not that simple. First, pulling the lever will most certainly kill the man but it will not guarantee the survival of Earth. In fact, the chance Earth will be saved is slim, and many of those 8 billion will die in the process. You are the trolley operator. Do you pull the lever?

It still isn’t that simple. The man tied to the other track isn’t tied down at all, in fact he does not know he is part of the dilemma. You will have to tie him down yourself. You are the trolley operator. Do you pull the lever?

But wait, there’s something you are forgetting. The man you must tie down and murder is your second in command, your best friend, your platonic soulmate. You love him. You know he will refuse to be the sacrifice. You watch as he begs and pleads for another way, betrayal in his eyes. He writhes as you give the command to sedate him, and prepare to tie him to the tracks. He goes limp, and you do not cry. He will hate you for the rest of his short life, and you will deserve it. Even so, you know you are doing the right thing.

compare how they react to remembering they were forced onto the ship:

in the book, he stands around in numb ashamed shock at his cowardice for a minute before deciding, against rocky's better judgement, that they should voluntarily subject the hail mary to a six g force again to get the lab equipment up and running instead of just waiting eleven days to get back to the blip-A, and it hurts him a lot and he ends up passing out from it. he locates the problem in his memory as being that he was too caught up in concern for his own wellbeing, so he tries to counterbalance it by opting to do something bizarrely personally risky so they can get back to work more quickly. his refrain in his memories is "I don't want to die."

in the book, he suddenly gets terrified that a good portion of students are going to literally die of starvation in twenty years, so he storms back to the lab and demands that stratt (the most powerful person in the world, has all possible authority, commands the actual US army) give him some astrophage to study. stratt initially thinks this is because he's upset that his one original idea / thing he staked his whole career on got disproved and that he wants to soothe his ego by doing further high-profile work, and while she's sympathetic, it doesn't make her budge. what actually convinces her is when he says he doesn't care about his ego or the fact that he was wrong and that he's really just here to try and save his students. the last time he got publicly shot down he just retreated from the source of humiliation so he wouldn't have to face it, so being willing to square up with the scariest woman alive and go back into this field for the sake of others despite being known as infamous within it is a big change in form for him.

in the film, he tells stratt he's the kind of annoying self-advocating person she's looking for, but then he shies away from it when she asks directly if he wants to be on the project. that's not a question she really needs to ask, obviously he wants to be on the project, he wouldn't have started this conversation with her if he didn't, so her asking isn't actually a measure of his desire but rather a test of if he really has the backbone he's claiming to possess. his first response of "if you think I can help..." is very true to form, he's shrinking back from admitting his own want by asking someone else if they think he's competent enough to be worthy of what he wants, but when prompted again he says "yes, I want to." it's uncharacteristic for him because willingly engaging in something challenging and high-stakes implicitly says he desires it and thinks he can handle it.

grace lands on calling rocky "he" because he has a split second of panic in one of their first interactions and thinks "uhhh he or she or oh gosh this species might have a dozen sexes and use pronouns I don't even have words for um uh okay I'll just use 'he' because using 'it' for a sapient creature feels wrong. why does no one talk about how to use pronouns in first contact." personally I find this hilarious because it characterizes grace as being just about Gender Aware enough to conceive of and be cool with the idea of sex and gender existing outside of the socially constructed binary and is probably even down to use neopronouns for people, but also a) he still opts for "he" over "they" and b) is completely unaware that zillions of people are absolutely having fifth dimensional discussions about pronouns and first contact.

grace never refers to adrian by pronouns.

grace thinks of adrian as rocky's spouse specifically, not husband or wife.

there's a tiny bit at the end where grace says if he shined a light out of the clear xenonite of his dome then he could "see an eridian going about his business," meaning he's probably just using "he" as the pronoun for all eridians.

rocky is both touched by the sentiment and disturbed by human medical practices

inspired by this grace quote:

Project Hail Mary // Incorrect quotes 1/?

Bonus:

Stratt: tries to make a going-off comfort gift and instead creates the most insensitive thing possible