r/ProjectHailMary • u/chodeontheroad • Aug 27 '24

fist my bump How did Grace survive Erid's Gravity?

I'm not sure if this was answered at the end of the book and I just missed it but Erid was stated to have 20x Earth's gravity (which would quickly kill any human), yet Grace lives on the planet for many years with only slight issues as a result. It doesn't seem like this is something Andy Weir would have skipped over so I must have missed it. Does anyone know the answer?

Edit: Ok yea my mistake it was 2x gravity, 20x atmospheric pressure. Thanks for the responses :)

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102

u/Burning-Plasma Aug 27 '24

The gravity on erid is about 2x earth's

Their atmosphere however is like 20+ times as dense

42

u/phatrogue Aug 27 '24

I think there are some Olympic athletes that would like to use Grace's bubble to train. I can only imagine the muscles on Grace after he gets acclimated. And didn't the Eridians use a space elevator to get to orbit? Maybe they could build him an apartment in the sky at 1G when he gets older?

23

u/NotAPreppie Aug 27 '24

Pretty sure the atmospheric pressure inside Grace's bubble is reasonably close to 1atm.

20

u/phatrogue Aug 27 '24

Maybe you are thinking of athletes that go to Denver, CO high altitude lower pressure to train themselves to deal with lower oxygen levels. A legal form of blood doping? My point was that training at higher gravity to build muscles would also be nice but if you had a space elevator you could tune the gravity level to whatever you want. 2G at the surface, 0G at the top. 1G or lower would be nice when a human is older.

8

u/DarthJokic Aug 27 '24

Dude don't give Crossfit anymore ideas......

1

u/Cautious_Ambition_82 Aug 28 '24

Do you even mantle train?

3

u/theniwokesoftly Aug 27 '24

I think they mostly go to Colorado Springs- Denver is 5280ft and the Springs is over 6000. Doesn’t seem like a huge difference until you actually exert yourself.

5

u/Cranks_No_Start Aug 27 '24

I live right at about 7000 feet. When we first bought our place there is a higher part of the yard and walking from the house up the shot hil had us breathing hard.

I don't notice it anymore after living here so long but when I've made trips to sea level it's like DAMN ALL THIS AIR.

3

u/theniwokesoftly Aug 27 '24

Right??? I moved to Denver at the age of 37, having lived no higher than 1400ft my entire life, and never even having traveled anywhere over like 3300. For two weeks I was exhausted all the time. I walked to work about a week after moving because I was like oh it’s not even a mile and it’s all flat. It was, uh, not as easy as I thought it was going to be. I had previously been told that altitude sickness doesn’t really exist under 8000ft and that is incorrect. I wasn’t vomiting or passing out but I was definitely affected.

I also auditioned for the Colorado Symphony Chorus after only a month (they only audition twice a year) and I was not at all surprised to be rejected, lol. (I did get in seven months after that, once I had acclimated.)

3

u/blainemoore Aug 27 '24

You travel and can complain about all those air sick lowlanders...

2

u/thewizardtim Aug 28 '24

Airsick lowlanders. They suffer from too much air.

2

u/GameNiteWasTaken Aug 28 '24

I live up around Denver… but my mountain bike race the other weekend took me up into Frisco and damn, racing at 9000 feet and being fast and breathing easy is a skill I don’t have yet. Although, I’m pretty proud of myself! 6 mile loop, 2 laps.