The RDA can't do physics

[Human No More]

Originally Posted by Clarke

It still looks like Cameron trying to have his realism cake (i.e. no FTL comms) and eat it too. (i.e. we need FTL comms to make the plot make sense)

Actually, we don't. There's no problem with 4.4 year latency for high priority data and nearly 6 years for low priority.

Either you have FTL, in which case you might as well have arbitrary bandwidth because you have no real-physics justification, or you don't have it at all.

Adding arbitrary bandwidth just opens an attack surface for accusations of being unrealistic.

Nobody asks how the Avatars work... except when they keep working in areas where regular electronics fails. We accept that they're some part of 22nd century supertechnology. We don't need an explanation beyond that. But that does mean our belief stretches when other 22nd century supertechnology fails and the Avatars continue for unexplained reasons.

Technically, apart from the FTL communication, they are the only 'supertechnology'.

Specifically, they let him offer Jake's legs back early. Otherwise, the response would take 8.8 years, and Jake would be long gone by then.

It's far more likely they were going to put him back onto the shuttle and into cryo, sending authorisation with him to have it done back on Earth, rather than on Pandora.

I would have thought your probe would have enough sensory hoohah on it to tell you that you're faced with a jungle of some sort.

Yes, but not necessarily that there are 'angtsik running around

Well yeah, remote controlling them from Earth is impractical unless/until you multiply your FTL bandwidth. You'd remote control them from inside Hell's Gate, or (better) give them rudimentary AI and only have humans involved when something goes wrong.

It's still overcomplicating it compared to using a human if the capacity to bring them there is available (and still requiring more intelligent and better paid humans to maintain the equipment if not).

I mean billions invested specifically in fusion research. The only plans I know of are ITER and DEMO, and they don't seem to be very high priority.

NIF, JET, LLE, HiPER is another potential one.

Fossils fuels don't go "poof" suddenly. They'll peter out, and when they do, the price goes up, which means the economics of using them go down, which means they get used less, which means the price doesn't go up as fast...

That doesn't make them unlimited. Indeed, when remaining deposits become too marginal to use is exactly the same as exhaustion in effective terms.

Which takes a few decades at least, so we can get nuclear going in that time.

The issue is that the majority of existing reactors are near the end of their lifespan and require upgrades or replacement within the next 5-10.

Well, manned interstellar space exploration is mostly completely stupid under real physics.

Again - yes, humanity is working on it because they have that mentality.

Also, I don't mind when a story invents its own rules to tell a story, such as in the Who example where you get "science" like, "This is my timey-wimey detector. It goes 'ding' when there's stuff." However, if you want to tell a story about a interstellar mining operation, you've got to pick rules that permit that plot, and RL physics isn't one of them. He could have fixed that easily enough with a FTL drive the RDA have a monpoly on or something.

That would create all sorts of issues if travel because so casually easy - it would completely change the scope of operations there.

I don't think anyone is doing space research for the profit margins. It was my understanding it was for PR.

Tell that to companies entering things like the X Prize.

Depends how much you learn from the moon. If you learn enough to only leave one possibility for its structure/properties/etc, then you can model it, despite never having seen a sample. Once you can model it, you know what you're building.

It would be possible, particularly for simple covalent bonds between a few elements, but the structure increases the difficulty - probes are very specialised in their function. It may well be possible, but the simple fact that it didn't happen implies that fell down somewhere along the route.

Yes, and we have no figure on unobtanium. However, the original statement was "unlimited power" which isn't feasible.

No, but the limit could still be high enough as to be near-arbitrary. It's a fictional compound, it can have parameters of whatever it is required to be.