The blast would have probably shoot that shields away. Jim really had to brace himself when he got hit. I agree about the autodesk, hard to believe there would be only one. At least there should be some in storage to use on the planet.

Bracing or not, I think Jim would have been vaporized. We're talking fusion here, that's not just "oh, that's hot!"

But that couldn't happen, Because Plot/Because Drama.

It's said on most of the movie that nothing on the ship ever fails, so it has no fail proof measures. Everybody would be hibernating for the whole travel and wake up only 4 months before arrival. It's surprising they have even 1 autodoc.

But yeah, plot is weak and full of holes. They have 1 autodoc because it's needed to resurrect Jim, and it supports improvised hibernating to make it so Aurora ends up staying awake on her choice and not for Jim's fault.

We'll eventually have robots doing medical procedures and it's not impossible that some of them are done autonomously eventually. But if there are procedures that can't be done so and require a medic, then there's a reason for that. A ship's crew who's not a medic wouldn't have special authority to order such procedures to be done.

They had the commander's codes and stuff.