the first manned shuttle ever to launch into space- the vostok in 1961- had a space for the crew around 6 feet (2.3 m) in diameter. the first manned shuttle to carry three people at once- the voskhod in 1964- was practically the exact same size, and required the crew to forego spacesuits in order for all three of them to fit.
the death engine is... well. a hell of a lot bigger than either of them. we never get a picture of it in its entirety, but from what we see both in photographs as well as the visible space in person, the docking bay alone probably has more space than both of those ships combined. which makes sense, as it is a satellite and not exclusively a flight vessel.
... but the death engine still had a crew of three to man it for however long it was intended to be in immediate use. three people, solaris only being one of them.
as if that wasn't bad enough on its own, the other two assistants who tagged along weren't professionals, but intern astronauts- making it rather obvious why none of them survived as long as solaris herself did. before she discovers who the agent is, she assumes them to be equally as inexperienced right out of the gate (“Okay, lesson one of space internships: You need oxygen to live”).
from these two factors alone, we can assume that solaris would have been pulling over twice her weight around the satellite regardless of whether or not her assistants were alive, and only took on more responsibility after they were killed while on duty. that's already a huge mental strain and time investment in its own right. but that's not even all of it.
astronauts need to exercise for at least two hours if they don't want to suffer muscle or bone atrophy. as a result, they need to eat more calories than they normally would on earth. sodium intake also needs to be reduced (as the human body sheds less of it in space), and vitamin d intake needs to be increased (as it can not be generated from the sun). that means, perhaps rather obviously, that their diet is very important.
unfortunately for solaris, she is stuck eating the grotesque space slop.
not only does the food ration not include the recommended amount of essential vitamins, and include a self admittedly high amount of salt, but it is unclear what it even is supposed to be.
i can only hope that vitamin d happens to be a part of the 'some essential vitamins' included, since- considering there is zero orange juice located in the orange drink- there is probably none of it to be found in there.
this isn't even mentioning the importance of sleep on a spacecraft, partnered with how difficult it is to acquire in altered gravity. and partnering that up with solaris' poor diet, and the mountain of tasks she probably has to go through just to keep everything operational?
i clown on her a lot for 'doing nothing' while the agent was meddling with her things, but this entire time she's been overworked, underfed, and presumably doing all of that on a heavily fragmented sleep schedule.
no wonder she hasn't gotten around to clearing the radiation from the docking bay. no wonder she stayed in her chair the entire time. i would have gotten the call from zor and gone straight back to fucking bed!!!
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i think it's unfortunate that in all the hypotheticals i've seen about prism and solaris working together- potentially with right robot in tow- there's never been a mention of... just how comically flawed prism's lasers were. every consecutive iteration of her lasers without fail led, in one way or another, to the destruction of her robots.
you mean to tell her that you built an entire machine and then added the lasers in LAST?? so that you weren't accounting for wire placement or proper ventilation systems?? you put the consistently overheating laser module DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF THE CORE OF THE MACHINE?? THE EXPLOSIVE CORE OF THE MACHINE?? THAT EXPLODES SPECIFICALLY WHEN IT GETS TOO HOT?? (well yeah) 😟
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