Adding on to our class discussion of the significance of the scenes in Hammerlab, I think the astronauts’ discussion was important. In the novel, they discuss the fragility of the Earth. Niven and Pournelle even add a quote by Robert Heinlein saying that “The Earth is just too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in” (170). However, Leonilla worries more about man’s ingenuity, which I believe will be an important topic later in the novel. I think that it will be interesting to see how the characters try to rebuild human civilization after the fall of the comet. More characters will probably fear the ingenuity of characters, such as Fred Lauren, as the book progresses. It’s true that “necessity is the mother of invention”. The characters are going to have to struggle for survival and in that struggle they are going to have to recreate society and technology. I also found the astronauts’ debate about the fragility of the Earth significant because it cast a true sense of foreboding of what is to come later in the novel once the comet hits Earth. From space, the astronauts have a clearer persepective about how unsafe the world is. They are able to see how fragile the Earth is and they understand that humans “aren’t safe down there.” I think the characters on Earth have a different perspective, even though they try to prepare for the comet. They underestimate the consequences of the comet hitting the planet. The astronauts are more enlightened in the sense that they can see the Earth for what it is whereas some of the other characters cannot.
I also found another classmate’s observation about the title of the book to be very interesting. I agree that one can analogize the fall of the Hamner-Brown comet with the fall of Lucifer from Heaven. They both bring death and destruction and so I thought that was a really good insight.