Featured Essays Project Hail Mary Project Hail Mary Knows What Makes Humans Special — And It’s Not Heroism Bravery and self-sacrifice are often tied to stories of heroism — but what if there’s a better alternative? By Emmet Asher-Perrin | Published on March 26, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share The best moment in Project Hail Mary is about oxygen. Ryland Grace is out in the middle of space and trying to befriend an alien he’s dubbed Rocky. (Because, you know, the alien looks like a rock.) In the process of getting to know each other, Rocky gives Grace two large rings with eight spheres attached to each, and it takes Grace a minute to figure out what they represent—his mind skews to jewelry before it occurs to him that it’s a pretty clear depiction of an oxygen molecule. Rocky is telling Grace that he’s made it possible for the human to breathe in the tunnel between their two ships. Grace laughs it off at first and says no, obviously. He has no way of knowing what the environment is like outside his space suit in that moment. He brought no equipment to test for this circumstance, and has no idea what Rocky has done to achieve this atmopsheric fix. As he points out, wryly, walking back toward his ship, the consequences of being wrong in this scenario—on either of their parts—would be catastrophic to him. He’d die pretty darn quickly, so that’s not worth testing out. And yet. Grace pauses halfway back to the hatch and acts on his instinct rather than rationality and safety. He decides to take off the helmet, effectively risking his life… and finds that Rocky was right. He can breathe now in that tunnel, and the two of them have taken important first steps toward saving both of their worlds from astrophage—microorganisms that are devouring the galaxy’s stars. But that first step isn’t about the functional ability to work in a same space, or even about a willingness to test what seems impossible. It’s about the greatest attributes that our species possesses, attributes that are constantly overlooked in the stories that we tell one another about greatness because we forget their value. What is a “hero,” in our modern parlance? Most of our fiction offers the same definition, intentionally or not—heroism is a position anchored in self-sacrifice and bravery. It is about doing for others, often (in fact, pretty much always) at the expense of yourself. It’s a definition that bugs me a lot because, while it is always worthwhile to remind people to care for others (because human cognition is weird and we don’t teach empathy in schools like we should), it leaves most people with the impression that they could never do anything remotely heroic. Contrary to popular fiction, most people aren’t ready, able, or willing to put themselves in mortal danger with the added knowledge that what they are doing will likely kill them. Which would make them cowards by definition, yes? And the more we learn about the brain, psychologically speaking, the more we find that human beings believe whatever they tell themselves most often—so you can see how that might work against our collective favor in the long run. The first antidote against this line of thinking required a redefinition of bravery. There are many pieces of fiction that will tell you outright that bravery doesn’t demand an absence of fear in the face of danger; bravery is being scared and doing scary things anyway. It tackles one arm of this mess, the thought that fear itself suggests a lack of bravery, that only cowards feel fear. What it doesn’t tackle is a top-down assessment of bravery as a measure of self-worth. And while I don’t think that author Andy Weir necessarily intended to address this idea in his novel Project Hail Mary, the film adaptation tackles the subject head on. Ryland Grace lacks bravery. That is positioned as the film’s major reveal, planted throughout consistent flashbacks as the narrative moves forward. While we learn how Grace (and Rocky) are going to save their worlds from destruction, we also learn how Grace wound up in this position, a history that he himself cannot remember due to his time in an induced space coma. The answer, finally given to us in the lead-up to the film’s finale, is that Ryland Grace was told he had to become the Hail Mary’s science officer after an explosion killed their previous officer—and he says no. Not just once, by the way. This isn’t a heartwarming tale of how a man finds his courage in the face of terrible adversity. Ryland Grace says no over and over. He is warned of the consequences to those actions, that his refusal will result in the death of billions of people, and he still says no. He doesn’t want this job, he doesn’t believe he has the fortitude or the wherewithal to handle it, he is simply too afraid to take on this monumental task. The head of the project, Eva Stratt, removes his autonomy and makes the decision for him. Because the stakes are the potential survival of their world, Grace doesn’t get a choice. She has him drugged and sent up on the ship with two previously selected crewmates. Only Grace survives the journey. Grace has a whiteboard on the ship where he writes the words: WHO AM I? and works to parse this question out as the film continues. “A pressganged coward” oddly never shows up on his list of evidenced traits. So our next assumption might be that the amnesia is the real driver of this story: Ryland Grace was always a brave and heroic person by nature, perhaps. He only needed a break from the memory of who he was to find this part of himself, buried under the auspices of selfhood. And it’s an interesting idea, but again, no. Though his memories aren’t intact, Ryland Grace is still a twitchy, nervous guy. A lot of things frighten him, including taking on the roles that were supposed to be filled by his fellow shipmates.  During one of the flashback sequences (before he’s forced to be a part of the ship’s crew), Grace tells the Hail Mary’s commander, Yáo Li-Jie, that he could never do what they’re doing. He knows he doesn’t have that bravery in him. Yáo’s reply is that none of the people on this mission truly do—what they have (and Grace doesn’t) is someone to be brave for. And it’s important that later on in the film, Grace does commit one true act of bravery, and that it is for the sake of another. But, and here’s the kicker… the Earth has already been saved by that point. That’s right—Grace and Rocky figure out how to heal their respective suns from the affects of the astrophage (by finding another lifeform that eats it) and execute a very scary plan that nearly kills them both—but they achieve their ends while working together. Despite his fears, Grace handles the mission with an impressive amount of collected calm because, like most folks, he can accomplish more than he thinks when there’s really no other choice available. Once the situation is thrust upon him, he manages to be exactly the person that the mission needed. To put it more clearly: Saving the world didn’t require Ryland Grace’s bravery at all. So how did he do it? What did he actually need to meet this Sisyphean task head on and come out the other side? He needed to take off his spacesuit helmet. Someone out there might try to insist that this choice was an act of bravery, but it’s emphatically not. Grace knows this because he’s a scientist—you don’t just experiment on yourself for giggles. It’s a terrible idea and reckless to boot. But he does it anyway, and that moment informs every single moment that follows. You know what that moment was? An act of trust. Trust. Not to the point of stupidity, but with the end goal of connection, curiosity, and honesty. The very same attribute of every scientist working on Project Hail Mary, across nations, with full knowledge that their respective governments will refuse such cooperation in the future. All of them sharing data and knowledge and secrets and believing that everyone in the room shares the same desires and outcomes. The same attribute that Stratt shows in forcing Grace to participate in the mission. The ability to trust, even in the face of unimaginable danger—that is one of our greatest collective traits as a species. Trust, in that precise moment of taking off his helmet, is what makes Ryland Grace a hero of this particular story. It forges and deepens his bond with an alien who could not be more different from him, molecularly speaking. It creates a relationship that Ryland Grace is eventually willing to die for, the kind of bond that Yáo warned would make him brave. Grace’s act of bravery is not saving the Earth because, as mentioned, he’s already done that. His act of bravery—going after Rocky once they’ve parted ways, on learning that their astrophage solution is about to devour his friend’s ship—instead saves Rocky’s people and planet, but that wasn’t the central goal of the act. Grace had to save Rocky. Is that really bravery, then? Or just love? And if it’s the latter, as Yáo is ultimately suggesting, then why are we out here touting bravery at all? What if, instead of bravely pushing ourselves toward death, we loved each other into collective survival? What if we valiantly trusted in one another when every talking head and angry pundit told us it was a disgusting weakness? What could we create if heroism stopped being about sacrifice and became about solving problems together instead? In a world of stoic, self-destructive solutions, I think I’ve had enough. I’d rather take off my helmet and make a lifelong friend.[end-mark] The post <i>Project Hail Mary</i> Knows What Makes Humans Special — And It’s Not Heroism appeared first on Reactor.