5. Why Have The Mission At All If Plan A Is A Lie?
When Cooper flies off into the stars the explicitly stated goal is to find a new home for the humans of Earth. This is revealed to be a massive lie, with Plan B, which sees a new brand of human created from embryos populate the new world, with those on Earth left to die, the only viable option. Mass exodus from Earth is, it seems, scientifically impossible. It's a pretty gut-wrenching twist that brings the film's notion of preservation of the species over the self to the fore, but it doesn't do that without raising a pretty large question. If the plan was always to start a new branch of the human race (it clearly was before Dr. Mann left), why didn't they send the embryos in the first place? Bump up the number of astronauts on each of the original twelve scout missions, give them all embryos and send them off to set up colonies if their planet ends up habitable. Sure, you're sending more people to potential death and greatly increasing the cost of the initial mission, but surely it'd be cheaper than the sending the Endurance out there years later. Potential Answer: The only real explanation of this plot hole is that, with NASA more unpopular than Matthew McConaughey five years ago, the prospect of a way for Earth-humans to survive needed to be maintained to keep people working towards the ultimate goal.
