Avatar Growth Stimulation
 

I was wondering....At the time of the movie's occurrence (2154?ish) it was possible to stimulate an Avatar to grow to roughly the physical equivalent of 16/18 Na'vi years over a 4-6 year period. Could it be postulated that at some point it would be possible to reduce that growth period to a matter of months (between 5 and 8)? I'm running a very particular timeline in my story - it would be nice to speed this process up for timeliness' sake - but I don't want to come off as being ridiculously unrealistic. On the other hand, James Cameron has pushed the limits of scientific conceivability simply to put his plot in motion. What do you guys think?

I wouldn't push it much more than what he has presented. First, we don't know what stage they were at when they were put on the ship. Was Jake 'shown' his avatar? Judging from his reaction I'd say he had seen it before they left. It could have been an infant or a child, also we don't know what the normal Na'vi growth rate is.
In any case, don't reduce it too much without knowing the science behind it. Someone may catch you on it.

probably not.
reasons explained above.

Na'vi growth rate is probably around the same as humans as both species live to about the same age. The Avatars were probably given some kind of drug to speed up growth, so why don't you just make up your own drug and say it speeds up the growth incredibly to a number of months for full maturity. But if you could somehow stretch the timeline, then that would be better.

I'd guess Jake saw him before, he said 'they've got big', and norm said 'they fully mature on the flight out', so I'd guess he might have seen his avatar when it was a lot smaller before leaving for Pandora.
As for speeding up the growth, I'd guess it might well be possible, the rate could just be adjusted for the flight so they're ready on arrival without wasting resourced.

well, if they grew as much faster as you wanted, they would probably be defective. or something.