The RDA can't do physics

[Clarke]

Originally Posted by Human No More

What relevance do they have to a difference in scale? An enzyme and associated proteins are huge compared to the scale you were until recently talking about.

Well, yes, they are huge. Yet they still work as nano-manipulators, which you insisted were impossible earlier. Considering how powerful biotechnology is, there's your answer: gene-modify something to build Unobtanium for you.

Exactly. Thank you for disproving your own point.

I wasn't the one who brought up the date.

No, a higher particle count per line would since the majority would not adopt the desired state. Stop being intentionally obtuse.

Then have fewer particles per line, and more lines. ...Though I wasn't aware that particles were grouped together at all.

It is still 3 bits/hour. That means the average latency is still 20 minutes even if you had 10,000,000 of them (which actually would be prohibitively expensive).

Ding! With 10,000,000 lines, we can send 10MB per 20 minutes... or be clever about it and send 22kb per second.

you're still multiplying the on-world presence needed, as well as, as I mentioned before, abandoning all pretence of following the contract.

How can we require more technicians than SpecOps?

No, the fact that there is no communication and therefore none of the cooperation that there was meant to be - you know, the entire reason avatars were started in the first place.

Then bring the Avatars. Cuts into your savings, but that's going to happen regardless.

...Since the avatar link is psionic and apparently uninterruptible, are we sure that it doesn't double as FTL? In that case, we save yet more fuel/money: we don't have to bring the avatar drivers.

Why else are they there then?
Also, great way to move the goalposts again
If humans ARE required. there is no conceivable reason not to use manual operations where possible on a world which impeded electronic operation and has an atmosphere that also causes increased maintenance requirements. Any kind of self-maintenance by robots would be limited in scope to known and programmed procedures, and without the marines, there would be no defence at all.

Automated defenses as well. That's actually a lot easier than self-maintaining robots.

Also, the "impeded electronics" thing is not real physics full stop. A magnetic field large enough to even noticeably impede low-velocity electronics will do really, really bizarre things to biological tissue. ...And shielding is still lighter than humans.

They did.
Now you've resorted to restating what actually happened in defence of some 'robots lololol' point?

No, they took the equipment and far, far too many slow, squishy humans. And I'm restating what actually happened as a solution to things you point out. Portions of the RDA's solutions are efficient, but the humans thing isn't.

...and reproducing the conditions during a the formation of a star and associated solar system on a macroscopic scale?

Temperatures up to 1GK can be generated in fusion reactors. (But that's not going to help to generate compounds. ) Magnetic fields up to 15T can be generated non-explosivly. Acceleration can't be generated in a chem. lab, beyond centrifuges, AFAIK, but that's not going to be true for much longer if unobtanium is discovered to require it. Anything else?

Then why were you going on about 'use nanotech'?

Because nanotech is guaranteed to work.

You seem to be ignoring the fact that knowledge of unobtainium's existence is less than 80 years old in any case, and that there are siple structures that today can not be reproduced which, while doing so would not prove economical, it would be a huge advancement in the related technology - no pure research turns a profit in the theoretical or development stage.

The 80 years is the time you have to wait to fuel your ISV, remember?

And there's your stopping point: "would not prove economical." Pure research will be funded if someone thinks it'll be economical, and unobtanium is basically the be-all and end-all of "Too expensive to gather naturally."

...so the maximum energy use is not going to increase, particularly not in a world without any usable farmland and an almost lack of natural light?

Go read that page again. It's a curve. The average now is nowhere near 890GJ/year, it's more like 100, if that. If everyone used 890GJ/year, then energy usage would increase dramatically, even without more-than-doubling the population.