The RDA can't do physics

[Moco Loco]

Everything is physics That's why I love it

[Pa'li Makto]

Wow some of you guys managed to derail this thread for a while.

[Clarke]

Originally Posted by Human No More

And everything works. Everything is possible.

*pokes a bulletproof helmet on a stick out of his bunker and waits*

*when nothing happens, retrieves stick and tosses this link out, before slamming the door of the bunker*

[Human No More]

Originally Posted by Clarke

If we want to be excessively realistic about this, food isn't an issue if you have such huge quantities of energy avaliable. Hydroponics aren't used ATM because it's cheaper to actually farm things. That's not true when you have so many exawatts avaliable for cheap.

Hydroponics still need resources.
Food isn't an issue, it's just very nasty due to being mass produced for billions of people.

Sort of. The plot doesn't follow from the world completely.

It does - I've spent the last eight pages watching you abandon point after point as it is proven to be total crap.

I think I know what I originally meant to say. And if you mean in general, then there's no reason they couldn't be transmitted electrically. A cell is basically a Von Neumann universal constructor, after all.

...yes, it's arguably physically possible. THAT DOES NOT MEAN IT HAPPENS HERE. Either way, the several metres of DNA in a cell would take a lot of time to reliably transmit.

There is no Na'vi H.G. Wells. They aren't shown to have any concept of astronomy. How could they possibly arrive at anything approximating the right idea?

As I said, Even if a human had never seen any scifi.
There are other moons and a gas giantwithin visual distance of the naked eye, idiot. Telescopes are not necessary for a basic understanding as they are on Earth. You'd realise this if you had actually watched the film, at all.

See earlier. Non-Pandoran "creatures" are probably going to confuse them equally, regardless of whether they're humanoid or not.

Confuse, yes, but they're going to see a being with many broad similarities as something worth knowing about.

Some sci-fi authors have suggested that sufficiently powerful computers could be used to launch attacks against reality itself.

Some people have suggested all sorts of rubbish through out history (e.g. that a heavy object has a higher rate of gravitational acceleration). It doesn't make either true.

Computronium is only "fictional" to the extent we don't know what it is ATM. Thre has to be some configuration of matter for optimum processing power.

Of course, but that has zero relevance to your trolling here. On the other hand, it does not make any kind of measure of power infinite, even if too high to measure by conventional means.

Well, we do have a floor for how cheap it is: 2.20GJ/cent. (49kgc^2/$20m)

Try reading my post first.
$20m/kg is essentially arbitrary, because we have no idea how much $1 is at that time.

Allegedly, some of the Mexican peoples confused Cortez's men with centaurs, to the point where they were ordered to sleep and eat on their horses to not spoil the facade. I don't know how true that actually is, but it's a lot more understandable when there are actual aliens involved.

So you're back to the old standby of 'call the Na'vi stupid'?
IF that is true, it's because of horses, not humans.

I thought this was in the case you randomly came across a Na'vi? If you're speciifically meeting them, you use an Avatar.

This WAS about first contact until you realised you're fighting a losing battle and moved the goalposts. Discovery and first contact predates the avatar programme.

Humans can't survive there unprotected.

Protection != invasion.

They have Scorpians, which you mentioned earlier were penultimate generation hardware. Since energy weapons are part of RL research, that'd seem to imply laser guns are older than Scorpians, therefore almost certainly more avaliable. Also, you don't need the latest and greatest laser weapons, just usable ones.

Emphasis on 'you need usable ones'. Even then-current gen technology does not have reliable usable ones, as gauss weapons are the pinnacle of technology - yes, one may well be usable mounted on a vehicle, or with a 3 shot battery in a form usable by a person, but it's impractical and expensive.

If it isn't supposed to be used that way, why not use a civilian helicopter instead? Or take out the anti-tank rockets? It seems somewhat excessive when your "basic security" can take down a tree 300m tall.

I've already answered this one, pay attention.
I am talking about what they are allowed to use, not the numbers they built (clearly excessive), the way the marines used them, or what ammunition they built for it.

If you can deliver 1J fast enough, the power output will technically be measured in pe****ts. (Though you will never need 1PW except for silly physics experiments. 1GW will do fine as a weapon.)

1J isn't enough to warm up the air past the end of the emitter, as you well know.

Also, boom.

Do you have any idea how big the NIF laser is? This one is bigger.

Not sure what you mean. Did you mean that EMP weapons are effective?

Yes, and that a faraday cage is not a magic bullet which protects anything from everything, especially not when any internal connection renders it useless.

Avoiding connections to the othermost layer of the body seems fairly easy to integrate into the design. (And if you have to, you can put in air/optics gaps if it's important, or just let it fry if it isn't.)

Not if you want any semblance of aerodynamics, any sensors (which would be required as windows would compromise it), or any movable surfaces.

...Really? I have absolutely no idea how you could know that.

It's a multirotor aircraft, with the two not superimposed (tandem transverse - the prominent real example is the V-22 when taking off and landing, and several other designs when in level flight). They exist. The main difference past that is that they are ducted, smaller bladed, and capable of independently pitching.

I don't really understand how they'd be more accurate, and consistency depends on the engineering involved. Though for all I know, electromagnets are easier to make precisly than explosive mixtures. Arguably, they're less maintanable, since as you mentioned earlier, normal guns are manufacturable in any metalworking shop. Electromagnets are harder.

Accuracy/consistency: Recoil is known, not subject to varying with each round, and is not directed upwards.
For maintenance, there is less physical wear on parts as depending on the design, although yes, it is harder to initially construct, clearly.

[quote]They are there to defend the mining... things. Intimidating the Na'vi does that. They don't need to fire a shot at the Na'vi.[quote]
They are also explicitly forbidden from doing so by the entire basis they are allowed there in the first place.

A laser is just as appropriate as a gun, and the earlier models will be easier to get than modern firearms. (Why would less advanced models be harder to make?)

Go on then, see if anyone these days can make WW1/WW2 era aircraft on an industrial scale
1. Lasers aren't available in terms of general use personal weapons (YET AGAIN)
2. Normal firearms as still available do the job as well as advanced hardware that may not even exist at all.

So make sure the cage is electrically insulated from everything inside the craft?

...so you have no flight surfaces?

Well, no, I've seen the film. It's not really a good idea to hide background-critical detail in the manual.

The film is already nearly 3 hours long. SHOWING Earth would add at least another 10-15 minutes in order for it not to appear completely redundant. The majority of people would not get why such a point would need to be made.

If you want to argue about anything, you do your research. You find out about the background. Within a film hat is already ~50% longer than most films, you CAN NOT explain everything if you want an actual plot.

I don't feel the need to go onto forums for dr who and troll just because I don't like it, but if I ever did, you can be sure I'd research the background properly before doing so.

As I said, I did, close to a year ago now. I don't remember the number of mechs precisly.

I said there were twelve (12 with marines, Quaritch's was a 13th)
You said there looked like more.
I gave you an exact count with accounting of each one.
I pointed out that you never see them all on screen at once.
You THEN said you don't remember the number - then why did you start this in the first place?!

They're not exactly distinguishable. The end result is that Selfridge does as Quaritch says, paper chain of command be damned.

Quaritch still says to Selfridge what he wants to do, who then agrees for Quaritch to do it. Ergo, Selfridge technically tells him what to do, and is merely a spineless idiot incapable of standing up for anyone.

Well, since the concept of superconductivity has been around less than 100 years, I think it's far faster than that.

Yet that does not mean a perfect one will suddenly materialise.

...Yes, we (they) do? They have evidence of a superconducting substance on Pandora, ergo it exists?

We WERE talking about finding a perfect superconductor.
You said that knowing something's properties means its structure can be determined even without a sample of the material (which is wrong).
I said that you still need to have it to analyse a structure.
You said that knowing it exists is enough, when we are discussing a situation where its existence is still not known until AFTER reaching Pandora. Your point was that people shouldn't go because knowing it exists is enough to synthesise it (which is wrong).

[Human No More]

What, to make an arbtararily-sized fusion reactor? Engineering doesn't work that way.

It doesn't need to be arbitrarily sized. Again, compare 50MW to 1.3GW and counting.

...Yes? I mean, if you give us 140 years of biology research, we'll definitely get somewhere. And that was my point originally: you don't implant alien organisms wholesale, you just steal the interesting bits you find and integrate them into your own custom-made oraganisms.

Exactly. If you read back, you're proving my point here - that it may not be as optimal as something engineered for the same purpose, but it's possible to exist.

Originally Posted by Clarke

It gets steadily weaker until it's negligible compared to weight, atmospheric pressure, etc.

Yep. That's why the mountains remain within the atmosphere.

I'm sure you'll agree it wasn't, and because of that, he has to play by real physics unless he puts up an explicit sign post that says, "Technobable."

Again, everything seen is possible, even if advanced compared to Earth.
The majority of your arguments are about why you wanted to see spess mehren robots killing everything with lasers and didn't see your personal favourite things you wanted it to have - e.g. your 'hurr durr use nanotechnology lol' argument has since been abandoned as crap after I pointed out the failings.

It makes it closer.

Yes, and indeed, Jake was seen to be able to afford electricity, and a huge TV. There was lighting everywhere, and various technology on Earth. Having lots of energy available does not mean replicators will be available to solve problems such as scarcity.

Derp. I meant significant power sources. (Large solar collectors make a conspicious non-appearance in the film.)

Earth itself makes a non-appearance, other than a couple of on-surface scenes, so you can't say that as if it's a failing.

M'kay. 13,505 / 160 = 85 to the nearest integer. OK, so we've moved down from "fraction of planet" to "small country."

Isn't that a huge problem for your argument?

Did I say it was? I said you copy algorithms and solutions, not individual bases.

You still need to find alleles for every single basic part you need, and solve any interdependence and biological compatibility issues. You need to find examples of what you are looking to use before they can be added. As it is, engineering of whatever plant species may allow the use of the beneficial traits likely IS how it is implemented.
AGAIN, that makes it possible, not instantly happening (especially since any large-scale contracting is as much political as anything else, not to mention introducing alien flora to Earth - I'm sure even you can see how there may be some opposition or things to consider there, despite the potential).

Apologies for dropping the inference: Therefore you want the most versatile weapon avaliable.

You want one that is easily available, and not overkill for the job you are supposed to be doing, as that would allow abuses to be easily committed.

It is fairly plot-relavent what happens to the main anatagonist.

He's dead.

The ISV is returning to Earth, which will take ~6 years - the RDA have likely lost their contract based on what happened, so Selfridge will presumably be fired for allowing quaritch to cause that to happen.

I would think that the minutiae of who/what can come to Pandora weren't important for most people to know in the first film.

What, delibrately skimping out on peoples' safety when they could easily fix it?

People do that at this very moment. They're paid to do a job, not fight a completely safe invasion with ridiculous spess mehren lazors.

Eliminating risk is impossible. Indeed, if they even did their actual job as they were meant to, it isn't particularly dangerous other than simple hazards (don't take your exopack off). People work in more dangerous jobs than the environmental hazards.

Except if it was significantly more powerful than fusion, Earth would use that instead.

Only if it predated fusion in its existence. As it is, fusion would seem to be capable of providing energy anyway (as you mentioned, you were lying about the fraction required as it is actually 'small country').

[Clarke]

Originally Posted by Human No More

Hydroponics still need resources.
Food isn't an issue, it's just very nasty due to being mass produced for billions of people.

Why? I mean, skyscraper farms aren't that expensive compared to the amount of power Earth really needs to have sloshing around. You can, I believe, grow vegetables indoors today, it's just not economical.

It does - I've spent the last eight pages watching you abandon point after point as it is proven to be total crap.

PFM? JC himself disagrees that "it does work."

yes, it's arguably physically possible. THAT DOES NOT MEAN IT HAPPENS HERE. Either way, the several metres of DNA in a cell would take a lot of time to reliably transmit.

Well, the human genome is only 4 gigabits. (And I don't remember implying it happens there, only possibly that it should. "Theorectically." ) That's not that hard to transmit reliably, especially when you have a fairly large amount of carrying capacity.

As I said, Even if a human had never seen any scifi.

The Na'vi, AFAIK, don't even have the "the stars are other suns" meme that differentiates astronomy from mythology. You kind of need that to recognise people as aliens.

There are [b]other moons and a gas giantwithin visual distance of the naked eye, idiot. Telescopes are not necessary for a basic understanding as they are on Earth. You'd realise this if you had actually watched the film, at all.

Arriving at heliocentrism is actually a leap of mathematics, not just pure observation. To logically arrive at the Sun being the centre of rotation, rather than Earth/Pandora, you need to actually plot out the orbits of everything and see they all follow elipses if centered on the Sun. The Na'vi don't seem interested enough in astronomy to pull any of that off. They don't even share Newton's view of science as an investigation of God's creation. (If they do, I want to know about it! That'd be cool, and interesting, and completely unstereotypical!)

Actually, there's a major problem as far as astronomy on Pandora is concerned: light pollution.

Confuse, yes, but they're going to see a being with many broad similarities as something worth knowing about.

If they're thus inclined, why wouldn't they see a being that they know nothing about as worth learning about?

Some people have suggested all sorts of rubbish through out history (e.g. that a heavy object has a higher rate of gravitational acceleration). It doesn't make either true.

True enough. The point is that pure computation is useful.

Of course, but that has zero relevance to your trolling here. On the other hand, it does not make any kind of measure of power infinite, even if too high to measure by conventional means.

You can still do things with pure computation. (i.e. use it to manipulate the market and make yourself rich)

Try reading my post first.
$20m/kg is essentially arbitrary, because we have no idea how much $1 is at that time.

I know it's Watsonian, but the context of the scene implies that $20m is a very large amount of money. It is, after all, funding a very difficult interstellar mission.

So you're back to the old standby of 'call the Na'vi stupid'?
IF that is true, it's because of horses, not humans.

The Austrailian Aborigines apparently mistook the white settlers for the souls of the dead for much the same reason. (sans horses, obviously) Also, I don't really know where you got the idea I'm calling the Na'vi stupid; I'm saying they do not have the ability to recognise extraterrestials as such. They do not have the astronomy knowledge, nor the "extelligence" that is required to conceive of aliens from other planets. Not to mention the theology issues that Newton, Copernicus, et. al ran into when they proposed that Earth wasn't special. Maybe the Na'vi believe something similar?

This WAS about first contact until you realised you're fighting a losing battle and moved the goalposts. Discovery and first contact predates the avatar programme.

IMO, that's a stupendously bad idea. If you're there for devious purposes, (or even just not-so-devious purposes, and sufficiently paranoid) you want to give the impression that you are powerful, and vanilla humans aren't powerful at all on Pandora. You should be doing your discovery by unmanned drone, etc, not as inefficiently as in-person.

Protection != invasion.

Though the original point is that humans go there, rather than robots, because humans can survive there. ...Except they can't, which removes most of the benefits for being there.

Emphasis on 'you need usable ones'. Even then-current gen technology does not have reliable usable ones, as gauss weapons are the pinnacle of technology - yes, one may well be usable mounted on a vehicle, or with a 3 shot battery in a form usable by a person, but it's impractical and expensive.

Yet EMP weapons, which rely on the same technology, appear perfectly usable? (And to relatiely poor terrorists, AFAIK.)

I've already answered this one, pay attention.
I am talking about what they are allowed to use, not the numbers they built (clearly excessive), the way the marines used them, or what ammunition they built for it.

1J isn't enough to warm up the air past the end of the emitter, as you well know.

It does weird things if you can deliver it over 1as, though.

Do you have any idea how big the NIF laser is? This one is bigger.

"Though you will never need 1PW except for silly physics experiments. 1GW will do fine as a weapon."

Yes, and that a faraday cage is not a magic bullet which protects anything from everything, especially not when any internal connection renders it useless.

Presumably you mean a connection from outside the cage into it? Because, as I said, you can mitigate that, if it's important.

Not if you want any semblance of aerodynamics, any sensors (which would be required as windows would compromise it), or any movable surfaces.

1) How would aerodynamics be affected at all? 2) Windows can be meshed. The wavelengths of an EMP blast are on the order of centimres long, as opposed to the wavelength of visible light, which are billions of times smaller. 3) Movable parts work fine, because the cage does not have to be a static piece. It just needs to be electrically connected to itself.

It's a multirotor aircraft, with the two not superimposed (tandem transverse - the prominent real example is the V-22 when taking off and landing, and several other designs when in level flight). They exist. The main difference past that is that they are ducted, smaller bladed, and capable of independently pitching.

I did not realise this, thanks for pointing that out. However, equally, neither of us are engineers, so it might be unfounded to assume that converting a V-22-like to a Scorpian would be only a minor change.

Accuracy/consistency: Recoil is known, not subject to varying with each round, and is not directed upwards.

Aren't all three of those subject to the design/tolerence of the weapon?

For maintenance, there is less physical wear on parts as depending on the design, although yes, it is harder to initially construct, clearly.

Well, there is the fact that your magnets have a tendency to rip themselves into itty bitty pieces. Lorentz force, FTL.

They are also explicitly forbidden from doing so by the entire basis they are allowed there in the first place.

So Quaritch's whole speech about fighting terror about terror isn't actually allowed by the contract, regardless if anyone actually gets hurt? They're not only not allowed to hurt the Na'vi, but not allowed to intimidate them either?

Go on then, see if anyone these days can make WW1/WW2 era aircraft on an industrial scale

But why would we need industrial processing? We only need a couple of dozen of them...

...so you have no flight surfaces?

Not sure why flight surfaces are precluded by a faraday cage.

The film is already nearly 3 hours long. SHOWING Earth would add at least another 10-15 minutes in order for it not to appear completely redundant.

Then cut out some of the flying sequences, or re-work the training montage that constitutes Act 2.

If you want to argue about anything, you do your research. You find out about the background. Within a film hat is already ~50% longer than most films, you CAN NOT explain everything if you want an actual plot.

Inception managed to tell a story without leaving out any particularly large detail, and IMO, why the RDA are there, and what they're capable of doing there are pretty important details.

I don't feel the need to go onto forums for dr who and troll just because I don't like it, but if I ever did, you can be sure I'd research the background properly before doing so.

River is a Sue!
Dr. Who is actually a really bad example of what you're talking about, because the show runs on continuity errors, retcons, and similar devices. It is about time travel, after all.
Also, I don't believe there are any fans who treat Who as such serious business as some people here treat Avatar. If you point out a flaw in it, they'll either jokingly provide a pseudo-explanation ("Space-wacey/timey-wimey ball" is a popular one) or just politely discuss it with you.

You THEN said you don't remember the number - then why did you start this in the first place?!

Because I did remember the impression that there was a lot of them?

[Clarke]

Quaritch still says to Selfridge what he wants to do, who then agrees for Quaritch to do it. Ergo, Selfridge technically tells him what to do, and is merely a spineless idiot incapable of standing up for anyone.

...which, functionally, is Quaritch being superior. I'm not interested in what technically happens; practically, Selfridge would never contradict Quaritch.

Yet that does not mean a perfect one will suddenly materialise.

Well, yeah; we'd need a theory of how high-temperature superconductivity actually works for that. Any reason to think they won't have one 140 years from now?

Your point was that people shouldn't go because knowing it exists is enough to synthesise it (which is wrong).

The point is that you know it exists (since you found it on Pandora) and you know what it does. Then there's a couple of decades of quantum chemistry research to find out how it does what it does, and then you know enough to build it. This research will be cheaper than actually flying an ISV there.

Originally Posted by Human No More

Exactly. If you read back, you're proving my point here - that it may not be as optimal as something engineered for the same purpose, but it's possible to exist.

I'm not sure what you mean. Sure, most of Pandoran biology can exist, but there's no reason to steal it wholesale; building your own out of the bits will work out better.

Yep. That's why the mountains remain within the atmosphere.

I mentioned that the cutoff for the Meisner effect becoming neglible is probably measured in double-digit metres, didn't I?

your 'hurr durr use nanotechnology lol' argument has since been abandoned as crap after I pointed out the failings.

Actually, it's probably for the best that that nanotech doesn't exist; I don't trust JC to write post-singularity fiction. (Do you know how much fun a plot device the technology underlying the T1000 is? )

Anyway, nanotech was abadoned because you kept focusing on how you'd arrive at the structure of unobtanium. If worst comes to the worst, you retrieve one sample of unobtanium, analysize and then cross your fingers, pray to $_diety, and hope like hell that the synthesis patent will recoup the cost. (Though if you avoid the monpoly lawsuits, then recouping the cost won't be such a problem.)

Yes, and indeed, Jake was seen to be able to afford electricity, and a huge TV. There was lighting everywhere, and various technology on Earth. Having lots of energy available does not mean replicators will be available to solve problems such as scarcity.

Scarcity becomes a lot less of a problem when energy is everywhere. See what happened after the Industrial Revolution, and less so, the printing press. Before the printing press, books were valuable, rare and expensive. After, we get "airport novels."

Earth itself makes a non-appearance, other than a couple of on-surface scenes, so you can't say that as if it's a failing.

More importantly, solar collectors would be more efficient to use over fusion reactors.

Isn't that a huge problem for your argument?

*pulls the factor of 20 back out of his sleeve*
Not really.

You still need to find alleles for every single basic part you need, and solve any interdependence and biological compatibility issues. You need to find examples of what you are looking to use before they can be added.

Pretty unlikely, considering how powerful genetic engineering apparently is. You're not going to get iterative construction of Avatars past ethics testing, for instance.

AGAIN, that makes it possible, not instantly happening (especially since any large-scale contracting is as much political as anything else, not to mention introducing alien flora to Earth - I'm sure even you can see how there may be some opposition or things to consider there, despite the potential).

It wasn't my idea to introduce Pandoran flora to Earth?

You want one that is easily available, and not overkill for the job you are supposed to be doing, as that would allow abuses to be easily committed.

Anti-tank rockets look pretty overkill to me. Also, abuse is easy regardless. You really need to get someone there you ostensibly trust.

The ISV is returning to Earth, which will take ~6 years - the RDA have likely lost their contract based on what happened, so Selfridge will presumably be fired for allowing quaritch to cause that to happen.

Personally, I'd be expecting the RDA to go bust at that point, since they spent at least one fuel load with nothing to show for it, possibly more if the conveyor belt of ISVs is canon. It's arguable whether or not unbotanium is so expensive as to be worth it, but I don't think you could argue that a corporation could be large enough to survive the loss. If we go back to the 50-ton ISV again, the total yield from that is $900bn. How on earth are the Directors going to save the company from having to cough up $900bn they unexpectedly don't have?

Eliminating risk is impossible.

...except when unmanned robots become involved.

Indeed, if they even did their actual job as they were meant to, it isn't particularly dangerous other than simple hazards (don't take your exopack off). People work in more dangerous jobs than the environmental hazards.

What did Grace call it, "the most dangerous environment known to man?" (Or something along those lines.)

Only if it predated fusion in its existence. As it is, fusion would seem to be capable of providing energy anyway (as you mentioned, you were lying about the fraction required as it is actually 'small country').

20 small countries, over 6 years. For one vehicle. Why would it need to pre-date fusion? Solar collection from orbit would be massively more powerful. (at least, can be made massively more powerful)

[Human No More]

Originally Posted by Clarke

Why? I mean, skyscraper farms aren't that expensive compared to the amount of power Earth really needs to have sloshing around. You can, I believe, grow vegetables indoors today, it's just not economical.

On the other hand, it still needs everything from growth media to a non-extinct edible plant species.

Well, the human genome is only 4 gigabits. (And I don't remember implying it happens there, only possibly that it should. "Theorectically." ) That's not that hard to transmit reliably, especially when you have a fairly large amount of carrying capacity.

...then why even make the point? Theoretically, any number of things could have happened biologically if selection had gone a different way.

The Na'vi, AFAIK, don't even have the "the stars are other suns" meme that differentiates astronomy from mythology. You kind of need that to recognise people as aliens.

Arriving at heliocentrism is actually a leap of mathematics, not just pure observation. To logically arrive at the Sun being the centre of rotation, rather than Earth/Pandora, you need to actually plot out the orbits of everything and see they all follow elipses if centered on the Sun. The Na'vi don't seem interested enough in astronomy to pull any of that off. They don't even share Newton's view of science as an investigation of God's creation. (If they do, I want to know about it! That'd be cool, and interesting, and completely unstereotypical!)

Which part of this do you not understand?
THERE. ARE. OTHER. MOONS. WITHIN. VISUAL. RANGE. DURING THE DAYTIME.

Not to mention a gas giant, which will semi-regularly eclipse the sun - that it itself would be enough to be capable of understanding their relative motion - on Earth, nearly nothing eclipses the sun, only ever the moon, and only in very specific spots due to their relative sizes.

If they're thus inclined, why wouldn't they see a being that they know nothing about as worth learning about?

I never said they wouldn't, but people are drawn to something that is alike. Why are 99.9% of portrayals of aliens by humans humanoid? Because humans can recognise them easily as a sentient being, most likely with many human-like traits.

True enough. The point is that pure computation is useful.

I know it's Watsonian, but the context of the scene implies that $20m is a very large amount of money. It is, after all, funding a very difficult interstellar mission.

I never implied it wasn't large - I said that we don't know how large - e.g. rich person's savings, value of medium sized company, or the GDP of a third world country.

The Austrailian Aborigines apparently mistook the white settlers for the souls of the dead for much the same reason. (sans horses, obviously) Also, I don't really know where you got the idea I'm calling the Na'vi stupid; I'm saying they do not have the ability to recognise extraterrestials as such. They do not have the astronomy knowledge, nor the "extelligence" that is required to conceive of aliens from other planets. Not to mention the theology issues that Newton, Copernicus, et. al ran into when they proposed that Earth wasn't special. Maybe the Na'vi believe something similar?

Persecution of Copernicus was down entirely to superstition. The Na'vi lack that attitude.

People on Earth who have had no contact have a far more 'flat Earth' understanding - there are not multiple moons observable, and certainly no planets visible with the naked eye (well, distinguishable from stars).
The Na'vi are present all over Pandora (although there is likely no settlement at the polar regions, ikran mean they will certainly have at least seen them). Their ease and availability of travel, particularly flight, means they will understand that Pandora is spherical far earlier and more easily than humans did (who kept inventing reasons to believe Earth was flat even when faced with objects disappearing over the horizon), so the assumption that Pandora is another one of those moons that they can see orbiting around the larger blue sphere is a natural step from there.

PS. As for your previous point, centaurs are from western mythology anyway

IMO, that's a stupendously bad idea. If you're there for devious purposes, (or even just not-so-devious purposes, and sufficiently paranoid) you want to give the impression that you are powerful, and vanilla humans aren't powerful at all on Pandora. You should be doing your discovery by unmanned drone, etc, not as inefficiently as in-person.

But nobody WAS 'there for devious purposes'. Nobody WANTED to 'give the impression that you are powerful' in the first place!
Also, discovery of the Na'vi != first contact, as you should well know if you weren't being intentionally obtuse in order to argue.

Though the original point is that humans go there, rather than robots, because humans can survive there. ...Except they can't, which removes most of the benefits for being there.

Humans can survive there in terms of actual survival. If you manage to piss off the ecosystem itself, obviously you're not going to last long - but general environmental conditions on Pandora are similar to some areas of Earth (exopacks on Earth are just thanks to pollution (and possibly disease, I'd guess) rather than H2S/CO2), while the large farm-type area near the avatars' building implies more availability of good quality food than Earth's algae farms.
Remember, humans were never supposed to be causing wanton damage in the first place.

Yet EMP weapons, which rely on the same technology, appear perfectly usable? (And to relatiely poor terrorists, AFAIK.)

Such a weapon is by nature single shot.

"Though you will never need 1PW except for silly physics experiments. 1GW will do fine as a weapon."

1GW that's usable in a human-movable battery for more than a single shot? Isn't going to happen.

1) How would aerodynamics be affected at all? 2) Windows can be meshed. The wavelengths of an EMP blast are on the order of centimres long, as opposed to the wavelength of visible light, which are billions of times smaller. 3) Movable parts work fine, because the cage does not have to be a static piece. It just needs to be electrically connected to itself.

1. You're adding extra metal to the structure.
2. You're ignoring the fact that they're still a weak point.
3. ...and NOT electrically connected to anything internal. Good luck with that.
Oh, also, you're forgetting the cost of implementing this, something that is explicitly mentioned in background that scorpions do not have any kind of protection due to their small size.

Aren't all three of those subject to the design/tolerence of the weapon?

If you modified the design from that principle, it wouldn't be a gauss gun.

Well, there is the fact that your magnets have a tendency to rip themselves into itty bitty pieces. Lorentz force, FTL.

That's a railgun.

So Quaritch's whole speech about fighting terror about terror isn't actually allowed by the contract, regardless if anyone actually gets hurt? They're not only not allowed to hurt the Na'vi, but not allowed to intimidate them either?

...the one he made after going completely off the deep end and turning into a raging psychopath?
WATCH THE FILM FIRST, DO NOT RELY ON WIKIPEDIA.

But why would we need industrial processing? We only need a couple of dozen of them...

That precludes production for any reasonable cost.

Not sure why flight surfaces are precluded by a faraday cage.

I've already explained this.
They need power, and some kind of control. That necessitates an internal connection, which, if it's fly by wire, is also directly connected to the computer systems.

Then cut out some of the flying sequences, or re-work the training montage that constitutes Act 2.

So in other words, remove some of the best parts of the film.
[b]This is not the film you wanted to make/see. It never will be. Stop poiting out stupid things like this that YOU think would 'improve' it.
This describes you perfectly:

The Genre Alien: The Genre Alien is a rather amusing hater, a less focused version of the Foe Yay variety. They will make it clear that they utterly hate a genre, or a series. Nevertheless, they seek works in that genre out. They see examples of it and then complain how much it sucks. Interestingly, they are likely to criticize stuff that makes the genre what it is. (For instance, they might complain about kiss scenes in romance movies, blood and swearing in Die Hard, or soft rock band America not being "heavy enough".)
...
The Mad Editor: This is a subspecies of the above. This person frequently suggests a complete rewrite of the work, but they view it as improving it, even if it involves Flanderizing or Bowlderizing the work, completely derailing the characters, or complete genre-shifts and abandoning the work in its entirety.

If I haven't said this enough yet, I'll say it again. Avatar is not the film you wanted to have - that does not mean you can come on here, start trolling and talking about what you WANTED to see.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6036637/clarke.jpg

Inception managed to tell a story without leaving out any particularly large detail, and IMO, why the RDA are there, and what they're capable of doing there are pretty important details.

Inception is a rehash of a TNG episode (some might say a blatant ripoff of it), and also lacks an ending. It's also fantasy rather than scifi, and the vast majority of fantasy works on 'MAGIC!!'.
Unlike you, I can admit when I haven't watched a film and have only read the wiki page on it, but AFAIK,there's no explanation of how any of its magic works.

[Human No More]

Originally Posted by Clarke

...which, functionally, is Quaritch being superior. I'm not interested in what technically happens; practically, Selfridge would never contradict Quaritch.

You can't use a criticism of the people involved as a criticism of how things are intended to work.

Well, yeah; we'd need a theory of how high-temperature superconductivity actually works for that. Any reason to think they won't have one 140 years from now?

It works the same as any superconductor, just with a higher critical temperature. If your logic was true, it would be known today.

The point is that you know it exists (since you found it on Pandora) and you know what it does. Then there's a couple of decades of quantum chemistry research to find out how it does what it does, and then you know enough to build it. This research will be cheaper than actually flying an ISV there.

It doesn't explain how you got it in the first place.
As I said before, they're making tonnes of money in the meantime going there, not to mention developing a large enough presence in space to effectively allow them to shut out other competitors from any out of system resource.

I'm not sure what you mean. Sure, most of Pandoran biology can exist, but there's no reason to steal it wholesale; building your own out of the bits will work out better.

It will also be many orders of magnitude harder to do so when the entire original purpose was interaction with the Na'vi anyway. Also, it needs to be mostly-humanoid in order for a human to comfortably control it without months of learning.

Actually, it's probably for the best that that nanotech doesn't exist; I don't trust JC to write post-singularity fiction. (Do you know how much fun a plot device the technology underlying the T1000 is? )

Anyway, nanotech was abadoned because you kept focusing on how you'd arrive at the structure of unobtanium. If worst comes to the worst, you retrieve one sample of unobtanium, analysize and then cross your fingers, pray to $_diety, and hope like hell that the synthesis patent will recoup the cost. (Though if you avoid the monpoly lawsuits, then recouping the cost won't be such a problem.)

I've already explained why it can't - if they had your bull**** nanoassembler fantasy, they could just recycle rubbish into anything they wanted, and there would be no problems on Earth as everyone would have clean water and cheap, non-artificial food. It's the same as a replicator, except with 'nanotechnology lol' as a substitute for 'transporters lol'.

Scarcity becomes a lot less of a problem when energy is everywhere. See what happened after the Industrial Revolution, and less so, the printing press. Before the printing press, books were valuable, rare and expensive. After, we get "airport novels."

Yet they still need the materials to make them. Unless you can make something useful out of hydrogen, energy itself is no use for material items past using more energy-intensive manufacturing processes.

More importantly, solar collectors would be more efficient to use over fusion reactors.

Did you even read my post?
If extant, they don't necessarily predate fusion, and indeed, maybe have been built afterwards, being enabled by the on-Earth fusion reactors' existence. The power source is never specified, ONLY that fusion has been perfected.

Pretty unlikely, considering how powerful genetic engineering apparently is. You're not going to get iterative construction of Avatars past ethics testing, for instance.

Doing so is completely counterproductive when the real ones can be easily made form simple engineering without constructing them afresh.

Anti-tank rockets look pretty overkill to me. Also, abuse is easy regardless. You really need to get someone there you ostensibly trust.

They're ammunition.
There are no ICBMs, for example.

...except when unmanned robots become involved.

I'm not arguing that again, I've already proven why they aren't. It's like groundhog day in this thread.

What did Grace call it, "the most dangerous environment known to man?" (Or something along those lines.)

...if you're an idiot, it will kill you. If you take the time to understand, you're fine. Remember how disparaging she was to Jake at that point?

Why would it need to pre-date fusion? Solar collection from orbit would be massively more powerful. (at least, can be made massively more powerful)

I said it DOESN'T predate fusion - that is, that it could be built afterwards to ensure there are no energy supply problems.

[Clarke]

Originally Posted by Human No More

On the other hand, it still needs everything from growth media to a non-extinct edible plant species.

Why would these be a problem? (Also, I'd be amazed if anyone let food crops go extinct.)

Which part of this do you not understand?
THERE. ARE. OTHER. MOONS. WITHIN. VISUAL. RANGE. DURING THE DAYTIME.

Not to mention a gas giant, which will semi-regularly eclipse the sun - that it itself would be enough to be capable of understanding their relative motion - on Earth, nearly nothing eclipses the sun, only ever the moon, and only in very specific spots due to their relative sizes.

So? Just being able to see the thing doesn't mean you have any better idea what it is. Also, just understanding the motion still leaves you horribly confused if you think in terms of motion relative to Earth/Pandora. (because obviously the motion is irregular and roundabout) Thinking of orbits in relation to the Sun/Polyphemus is an intuitive leap that it took a very long time to make, and the Na'vi don't seem to have made at all.

I never said they wouldn't, but people are drawn to something that is alike. Why are 99.9% of portrayals of aliens by humans humanoid?

Budget. Look at H.G. Wells' Martians, for instance. (Literature gets away with non-human aliens all the time. It can even get away with non-material entities, such as in Diaspora.)

I never implied it wasn't large - I said that we don't know how large - e.g. rich person's savings, value of medium sized company, or the GDP of a third world country.

Since I suspect JC is after telling a good story over good worldbuilding, I think it's safe to assume he means the value of a medium sized company.

Persecution of Copernicus was down entirely to superstition. The Na'vi lack that attitude.

I'm not talking about persecution; people would probably reject the idea of "stars as other suns" because it contradicts the idea of Earth being a special place Adam and Eve were given by God.

so the assumption that Pandora is another one of those moons that they can see orbiting around the larger blue sphere is a natural step from there.

The other moons are visible as flat disks. It's also unlikely that Polyphemus can be made out as a sphere, rather than a disk.

PS. As for your previous point, centaurs are from western mythology anyway

Meh, it was an example of what can happen.

But nobody WAS 'there for devious purposes'. Nobody WANTED to 'give the impression that you are powerful' in the first place!

Having checked my dictionary, (always a good idea) I want to contradict what you said earlier: this is [url=http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/invasionan an invasion.[/url] The RDA are there specifically to take something it turns out the Na'vi "own," and it would be amazingly stupid to say that they're going to get away with it scott-free.

Also, discovery of the Na'vi != first contact, as you should well know if you weren't being intentionally obtuse in order to argue.

Done by robot or Avatar? There shouldn't be a need for them to meet a human.

Humans can survive there in terms of actual survival. If you manage to piss off the ecosystem itself, obviously you're not going to last long - but general environmental conditions on Pandora are similar to some areas of Earth (exopacks on Earth are just thanks to pollution (and possibly disease, I'd guess) rather than H2S/CO2), while the large farm-type area near the avatars' building implies more availability of good quality food than Earth's algae farms.

Such a weapon is by nature single shot.

...which means that it has to be even cheaper for it to be worth terrorists using.

1GW that's usable in a human-movable battery for more than a single shot? Isn't going to happen.

It's not the energy density that's important, as I've said before.

1. You're adding extra metal to the structure.
2. You're ignoring the fact that they're still a weak point.
3. ...and NOT electrically connected to anything internal. Good luck with that.
4. Oh, also, you're forgetting the cost of implementing this, something that is explicitly mentioned in background that scorpions do not have any kind of protection due to their small size.

1. ...No I'm not. (AFAIK) The airframe itself would work.
2. To what? Because if the mesh has holes, say, 5mm across, no radio signal is getting through it.
4. It's not much of a cost if you consider it when you first design the thing.

If you modified the design from that principle, it wouldn't be a gauss gun.

No, I mean the recoil as compared to a chemical firearm. A chemical weapon can divert the recoil wherever it likes.

That's a railgun.

High power magnets tend to wrench themselves apart. That's just how magnets work.

...the one he made after going completely off the deep end and turning into a raging psychopath?
WATCH THE FILM FIRST, DO NOT RELY ON WIKIPEDIA.

Are they allowed to intimidate the Na'vi or not? If not, how are they supposed to maintain security?

That precludes production for any reasonable cost.

Production cost is a drop in the bucket compared to the ISV's fuel.

They need power, and some kind of control. That necessitates an internal connection, which, if it's fly by wire, is also directly connected to the computer systems.

Er.., yes. Internal connections. Unless you're having wires connected to the actual airframe, there's no problem there. (Motors involve airgaps, and probably wouldn't be a problem.)

So in other words, remove some of the best parts of the film.

Or something else. Those were just the two longest scenes that came to mind.

Inception is a rehash of a TNG episode (some might say a blatant ripoff of it)

*is surprised such a point came up*

and also lacks an ending. It's also fantasy rather than scifi, and the vast majority of fantasy works on 'MAGIC!!'.
Unlike you, I can admit when I haven't watched a film and have only read the wiki page on it, but AFAIK,there's no explanation of how any of its magic works.

The explanation is, AFAIK, PFM. And you have some very odd defintions of the terms if Inception is fantasy.

Originally Posted by Human No More

You can't use a criticism of the people involved as a criticism of how things are intended to work.

...This conversation started because you critized me naming Quaritch as one of Selfridge's bosses.

It works the same as any superconductor, just with a higher critical temperature.

We don't know how high-temperature condutivity works. (In this case, "high-temperature" is >-170C or something) If we did know how room-temperature superconductivity could work, we could probably build Unobtanium today.

As I said before, they're making tonnes of money in the meantime going there, not to mention developing a large enough presence in space to effectively allow them to shut out other competitors from any out of system resource.

Their prescence has nothing to do with it, since they have a government-granted monopoly on exosystem resources. (...How on Earth did they get such a thing?)

I've already explained why it can't - if they had your bull**** nanoassembler fantasy, they could just recycle rubbish into anything they wanted, and there would be no problems on Earth as everyone would have clean water and cheap, non-artificial food. It's the same as a replicator, except with 'nanotechnology lol' as a substitute for 'transporters lol'.

"It spoils the plot" is not a valid in-universe reason.

Yet they still need the materials to make them. Unless you can make something useful out of hydrogen, energy itself is no use for material items past using more energy-intensive manufacturing processes.

(I have a fusion reactor, don't I? )
And yes, the energy-intensive manufacturing is the key: if energy is so abundant I can just throw it away, I can make things with whatever process I want, no matter how inefficient.

If extant, they don't necessarily predate fusion, and indeed, maybe have been built afterwards, being enabled by the on-Earth fusion reactors' existence. The power source is never specified, ONLY that fusion has been perfected.

Yes, and any power source significantly more powerful than fusion will supersede fusion power on Earth.

Doing so is completely counterproductive when the real ones can be easily made form simple engineering without constructing them afresh.

Attaching the driver's DNA into a completely alien genome is "simple engineering?"

They're ammunition.
There are no ICBMs, for example.

There's nothing that needs blowing up on Pandora, so why have anti-tank rockets?

...if you're an idiot, it will kill you. If you take the time to understand, you're fine. Remember how disparaging she was to Jake at that point?

Quaritch also says, "I will not succeed." We are generally bashed over the head with the idea that Pandora is dangerous in the first 20 minutes or so of the film.

I said it DOESN'T predate fusion

I herped when I should've derped there, sorry.

[Human No More]

[QUOTE=Clarke;159450]Why would these be a problem? (Also, I'd be amazed if anyone let food crops go extinct.)[/quoe]
It isn't necessarily - just that it's still out of the price range of most people, who eat synthetic food and algae.

So? Just being able to see the thing doesn't mean you have any better idea what it is. Also, just understanding the motion still leaves you horribly confused if you think in terms of motion relative to Earth/Pandora. (because obviously the motion is irregular and roundabout) Thinking of orbits in relation to the Sun/Polyphemus is an intuitive leap that it took a very long time to make, and the Na'vi don't seem to have made at all.

They do not seem NOT to have. That's the difference - they are far older than humanity.

Budget.

Originally, but not any longer. Nonhumanoids are still usually only one episode characters, or find some other way to interact (e.g. Galaxy quest) because humans need to relate to them. Even in books, humanoids are overwhelmingly prevalent.

I'm not talking about persecution; people would probably reject the idea of "stars as other suns" because it contradicts the idea of Earth being a special place Adam and Eve were given by God.

Exactly. That's persecution rooted in superstition.

The other moons are visible as flat disks. It's also unlikely that Polyphemus can be made out as a sphere, rather than a disk.

Actually, no, they would be visible as spherical, especially with rotation. The same goes for Polyphemus. Earth's moon is tidally locked, but not all moons are.

Originally Posted by Human No More

The Na'vi are present all over Pandora (although there is likely no settlement at the polar regions, ikran mean they will certainly have at least seen them). Their ease and availability of travel, particularly flight, means they will understand that Pandora is spherical far earlier and more easily than humans did (who kept inventing reasons to believe Earth was flat even when faced with objects disappearing over the horizon), so the assumption that Pandora is another one of those moons that they can see orbiting around the larger blue sphere is a natural step from there.

Having checked my dictionary, (always a good idea) I want to contradict what you said earlier: this is [url=http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/invasionan an invasion.[/url] The RDA are there specifically to take something it turns out the Na'vi "own," and it would be amazingly stupid to say that they're going to get away with it scott-free.

Wrong context of the word.

If you really want to be pedantic, they are not there as a hostile invasion force.

Done by robot or Avatar? There shouldn't be a need for them to meet a human.

I. HAVE. EXPLAINED. THIS. BEFORE.
First contact predates the Avatar program. First contact is between HUMANS and aliens.

...which means that it has to be even cheaper for it to be worth terrorists using.

Because it has to be extremely common to be a threat, right?
Oh, wait.
(Also, modern weapons such as missiles cost hundreds of thousands per shot and are common enough that they can be considered obtainable, especially older generation ones)

Again, a single shot weapon is not going to be a particular problem for energy, since there's no requirement for reuse.

It's not the energy density that's important, as I've said before.

As I've said before, a single joule over a short time still isn't going to be dangerous.

1. ...No I'm not. (AFAIK) The airframe itself would work.
2. To what? Because if the mesh has holes, say, 5mm across, no radio signal is getting through it.
4. It's not much of a cost if you consider it when you first design the thing.

1. It's still larger, slower and bulker. Impractical.
2. Depends on your frequency.
4. I HAVE ALREADY EXPLAINED they are older generation aircraft - newer ones are more dependent on electronics but also said to have protection.

No, I mean the recoil as compared to a chemical firearm. A chemical weapon can divert the recoil wherever it likes.

Not consistently, hence the point.

High power magnets tend to wrench themselves apart. That's just how magnets work.

Permanent ones, yes. The point of an electromagnet is that it isn't (and if it was, the projectile would never move past it). You're thinking of railguns again.

Are they allowed to intimidate the Na'vi or not? If not, how are they supposed to maintain security?

By not causing confrontations in the first place. By stopping a random angtsik from knocking down the gates and smashing through the buildings inside. By stopping a human who has gone made from doing damage.

Production cost is a drop in the bucket compared to the ISV's fuel.

You're right - there IS a reason they used them, after all
I was just pointing out the fallacy in your logic when they still need ones that are producible, meaning the designs, knowledge and equipment is still extant.

Er.., yes. Internal connections. Unless you're having wires connected to the actual airframe, there's no problem there. (Motors involve airgaps, and probably wouldn't be a problem.)

Isn't that what I just said?
Current can jump gaps - after all, an EMP itself doesn't need contact.
Oh, and yes, I did mean internal connections to the airframe - you do want propulsion, sensors, refuelling capability, movable structural components and weapons, didn't you?

Or something else. Those were just the two longest scenes that came to mind.

See the Mad Editor point.
Stop being such an idiot hipster than you think 'I can do better than James Cameron lol'.

*is surprised such a point came up*

You're the one who brought Inception up.

...This conversation started because you critized me naming Quaritch as one of Selfridge's bosses.

Yes, because you were WRONG.

We don't know how high-temperature condutivity works. (In this case, "high-temperature" is >-170C or something) If we did know how room-temperature superconductivity could work, we could probably build Unobtanium today.

Does it follow a different principle from low temperature? That's like saying 'high temperature freezing' somehow works differently - IT DOESN'T.

Their prescence has nothing to do with it, since they have a government-granted monopoly on exosystem resources.

Yep. If they aren't actually doing anything, someone else will bid to take over it.

"It spoils the plot" is not a valid in-universe reason.

It's also several centuries too advanced, minimum, not to mention, as I JUST SAID, the fact that if it was present, there are hundreds of applications that actually would make life on Earth perfect.

(I have a fusion reactor, don't I? )

So you think the amount of energy used to produce a single hydrogen in the same process as antimatter is somehow cheaper than electrolysis from water?
lol wut.

And yes, the energy-intensive manufacturing is the key: if energy is so abundant I can just throw it away, I can make things with whatever process I want, no matter how inefficient.

Not when you reach something like iron - the worst nuclear fuel possible in either direction.

Yes, and any power source significantly more powerful than fusion will supersede fusion power on Earth.

Coal/oil haven't been superseded yet, have they?

Attaching the driver's DNA into a completely alien genome is "simple engineering?"

Simpler than your bull**** fantasy of creating new organisms. In your previous post, you were talking about 'iterative construction' of them, not production via manipulation of existing sequences.

There's nothing that needs blowing up on Pandora, so why have anti-tank rockets?

DID YOU EVEN READ MY POST?
That's ammunition, which is inappropriate in itself, but not the basic system - anyone can think up clever abuses of something. As I just said, there are no ICBMs, because there is no actual use for them.
...oh, and anti-tank missiles are not simple explosives, they haven't been since WW1.

Quaritch also says, "I will not succeed." We are generally bashed over the head with the idea that Pandora is dangerous in the first 20 minutes or so of the film.

Yes, because he's an idiot.

Originally Posted by Human No More

if you're an idiot, it will kill you. If you take the time to understand, you're fine.

Anyway, who's to say that 'being all intimidating with scar and scary speech to scare the newbs' should be taken as literal '1 more more people WILL die'?

[Clarke]

Originally Posted by Human No More

It isn't necessarily - just that it's still out of the price range of most people, who eat synthetic food and algae.

...But it'd be cheap. That's a result of there being so much energy avaliable. (Completly ignoring "synthetic meat," since AFAIK they didn't exist when Cameron was writing the script.)

They do not seem NOT to have. That's the difference - they are far older than humanity.

And have no scientific inquiry whatsoever, as far as we're shown. If they did, they'd probably have passed the Singularity by now.

Originally, but not any longer. Nonhumanoids are still usually only one episode characters, or find some other way to interact (e.g. Galaxy quest) because humans need to relate to them. Even in books, humanoids are overwhelmingly prevalent.

So this would be a good reason to do first contact with Avatars, rather than humans?

Actually, no, they would be visible as spherical...

So Na'vi vision has sub-arcsecond resolution? Polyphemus is probably going to be further away from Pandora than Earth is from the Moon, and it's very hard to show that the Moon is spherical without a telescope.

(Of course, ideally this would spawn an intricate mythology about the roles of the various moons in the context of life, but that would be good worldbuilding. )

Wrong context of the word.

If you really want to be pedantic, they are not there as a hostile invasion force.

"3. entrance as if to take possession or overrun."
The RDA are there to take posession. Looks like an invasion to me.

I. HAVE. EXPLAINED. THIS. BEFORE.
First contact predates the Avatar program. First contact is between HUMANS and aliens.

IMO, that's being stupid. Why not completely falling into the Uncanney Valley when you first meet the Na'vi?

Because it has to be extremely common to be a threat, right?
Oh, wait.
(Also, modern weapons such as missiles cost hundreds of thousands per shot and are common enough that they can be considered obtainable, especially older generation ones)

Unless you're in a warzone like Afghanistan, the terrorists aren't going to be well-funded enough for £100,000 missiles to be affordable, hence my inference that if a terrorist group were using one-shot weapons, they must be relatively easy and cheap to manufacture.

Again, a single shot weapon is not going to be a particular problem for energy, since there's no requirement for reuse.

You know how an EMP is generated, right?

As I've said before, a single joule over a short time still isn't going to be dangerous.

Depends entirely how you deliver it, as I said. If you deliver it fast enough over a small enough area, it will do incredible damage.

1. It's still larger, slower and bulker. Impractical.
2. Depends on your frequency.
4. I HAVE ALREADY EXPLAINED they are older generation aircraft - newer ones are more dependent on electronics but also said to have protection.

1. So internal insulation that can be as little as a thin layer of some insulator is going to be larger...
2. 1mm gaps, then. That stops even the highest energy microwaves.
4. So, I presume, EMP weapons are the latest and greatest thing... except I get the impression that they're actually a relatively old thing and weapons technology has moved on from them. The Scorpians aren't that old, are they?

Not consistently, hence the point.

Isn't consistency just a matter of engineering? I even saw one weapon that redirected the recoil to reload the chamber.

Permanent ones, yes. The point of an electromagnet is that it isn't (and if it was, the projectile would never move past it). You're thinking of railguns again.

Do you know why it is so hard to build more powerful magnets? Because they explode! Passing current through a circular coil will, per the physics involved, attempt to expand the coil. At high intensity, as required in a coilgun, this can be a very large force indeed.

By not causing confrontations in the first place.

This contradicts the mission's purpose. Oops.

I was just pointing out the fallacy in your logic when they still need ones that are producible, meaning the designs, knowledge and equipment is still extant.

They can presumably construct anything they like at Hell's Gate, with a 3D printer or something similar, so I'm not sure how specialised equipment becomes involved.

Isn't that what I just said?
Current can jump gaps - after all, an EMP itself doesn't need contact.
Oh, and yes, I did mean internal connections to the airframe - you do want propulsion, sensors, refuelling capability, movable structural components and weapons, didn't you?

Forgot to mention: not all electronics are vulnerable to EMPs. Only transistors and other such things are destroyed, and you can use relays to protect those. (In fact, that's probably what you're doing anyway because of the current differences involved)

See the Mad Editor point.
Stop being such an idiot hipster than you think 'I can do better than James Cameron lol'.

Ah, so JC is the God of Editing, then?

You're the one who brought Inception up.

Yes, as an example of good exposition. Then you attack it for being ripped off of a TNG episode, when it's actually ripped off of a Donald Duck strip... The fact that it ripped off something else isn't a sign of quality, especially since most of the internet knows this particular film as Dances with Smurf!Pocahontas IN SPACE.

Does it follow a different principle from low temperature? That's like saying 'high temperature freezing' somehow works differently - IT DOESN'T.

Yes, actually, it does.

Yep. If they aren't actually doing anything, someone else will bid to take over it.

Why's it a monopoly in the first place?

It's also several centuries too advanced, minimum, not to mention, as I JUST SAID, the fact that if it was present, there are hundreds of applications that actually would make life on Earth perfect.

Yeah, which is an argument from consequences, and basically boils down to "It spoils the plot." That's a valid argument outside the context of the film, otherwise it runs into a problem, since there's no idea of "plot" inside it. You also have no idea what is realistic for 2154. (The only thing we have to go on is what is believable, and that varies widely.)

So you think the amount of energy used to produce a single hydrogen in the same process as antimatter is somehow cheaper than electrolysis from water?
lol wut.

I have the hydrogen already. The reason the fusion reactor is useful is because I can build everything lighter than iron using it, and even get energy out at the same time. But anyway that was a joke comment; there are more efficient ways of building most things than doing it molecule by molecule.

Not when you reach something like iron - the worst nuclear fuel possible in either direction.

I was tlaking about mechanical, not nuclear engineering.

Coal/oil haven't been superseded yet, have they?

We don't have microwave death beams from space yet.

Simpler than your bull**** fantasy of creating new organisms. In your previous post, you were talking about 'iterative construction' of them, not production via manipulation of existing sequences.

Standard software design (which is what genetic engineering becomes when you crack how genes behave) involves wriitng one bit of code, testing it to make sure it works, and then writing another bit. You can't do that when you're constructing sentient organisms, for obvious reasons, and you seem to be suggesting than an Avatar would be a thing that you get right on the very first try, with zero mistakes.

DID YOU EVEN READ MY POST?
That's ammunition, which is inappropriate in itself, but not the basic system - anyone can think up clever abuses of something. As I just said, there are no ICBMs, because there is no actual use for them.

Sorry, I didn't realise what you meant by ammunition in that context. In that case, the question is why Quaritch is there in the first place.

...oh, and anti-tank missiles are not simple explosives, they haven't been since WW1.

What was that about holes and Confucius you told me in IRC?

Yes, because he's an idiot.

Ah, so that's why the mission went so horribly wrong. It seems the RDA directors are idiots too, then.

Anyway, who's to say that 'being all intimidating with scar and scary speech to scare the newbs' should be taken as literal '1 more more people WILL die'?

Nobody suggests that Quaritch is exaggerating or trying to intimidate anyone.

[Human No More]

Originally Posted by Clarke

...But it'd be cheap. That's a result of there being so much energy avaliable. (Completly ignoring "synthetic meat," since AFAIK they didn't exist when Cameron was writing the script.)

Depends on how many billion people you have.

And have no scientific inquiry whatsoever, as far as we're shown. If they did, they'd probably have passed the Singularity by now.

They understand enough. Again, you're being an idiot who calls them stupid simply because you don't like them and like spess mehrens.

So this would be a good reason to do first contact with Avatars, rather than humans?

Ah, no. The point was about how humans react within expected ways to other humanoids.

So Na'vi vision has sub-arcsecond resolution? Polyphemus is probably going to be further away from Pandora than Earth is from the Moon, and it's very hard to show that the Moon is spherical without a telescope.

AGAIN (see earlier), it isn't tidally locked.

"3. entrance as if to take possession or overrun."
The RDA are there to take posession. Looks like an invasion to me.

That's because you're a bull****ter who has clearly never seen Avatar and wants it to be some 40k-esque story.

IMO, that's being stupid. Why not completely falling into the Uncanney Valley when you first meet the Na'vi?

Try reading what something actually is before using it in your argument.

Unless you're in a warzone like Afghanistan, the terrorists aren't going to be well-funded enough for £100,000 missiles to be affordable, hence my inference that if a terrorist group were using one-shot weapons, they must be relatively easy and cheap to manufacture.

...hence my point about previous generation stuff being available more widely.

You know how an EMP is generated, right?

You know rhetorical questions contribute nothing to an argument, right?
(Yes, and that has no bearing on this argument)

Depends entirely how you deliver it, as I said. If you deliver it fast enough over a small enough area, it will do incredible damage.

Great, if you want sub-metre range.

1. So internal insulation that can be as little as a thin layer of some insulator is going to be larger...
2. 1mm gaps, then. That stops even the highest energy microwaves.
4. So, I presume, EMP weapons are the latest and greatest thing... except I get the impression that they're actually a relatively old thing and weapons technology has moved on from them. The Scorpians aren't that old, are they?

1. Stop moving the goalposts AGAIN. This WAS about a faraday cage, which is in the realm of pure fantasy in this application.
2. Fine, but that still doesn't mitigate the problem in your reasoning that I pointed out earlier that all it would need was charged objects to come into contact.
4. The 'Scorpians' (sic) are late 21st century. EMP weapons may have existed at that time or not - but providing some kind of shielding was not practical at that point, especially if only the side deploying them had it at that time.

Do you know why it is so hard to build more powerful magnets? Because they explode! Passing current through a circular coil will, per the physics involved, attempt to expand the coil. At high intensity, as required in a coilgun, this can be a very large force indeed.

Interesting, but if I understand it properly, it doesn't make them impossible to use.

This contradicts the mission's purpose. Oops.

No, it doesn't, because the purpose is not your 40k-esque fantasy, no matter how much you like to pretend otherwise.

They can presumably construct anything they like at Hell's Gate, with a 3D printer or something similar, so I'm not sure how specialised equipment becomes involved.

Electronics, as I've pointed out before, Not only do they need to come from Earth, but they need to be able to be made there.
Oh, and yes, the stereolithography still needs the design - I thought even someone as dense as yourself could figure that one out

Forgot to mention: not all electronics are vulnerable to EMPs. Only transistors and other such things are destroyed, and you can use relays to protect those. (In fact, that's probably what you're doing anyway because of the current differences involved)

Which current difference?
The ENTIRE POINT is that the scorpions are not vulnerable to EMP in such a manner because of their older design, as I have explained multiple times.

Ah, so JC is the God of Editing, then?

Yes. You, on the other hand, are some random hipster.

Yes, as an example of good exposition. Then you attack it for being ripped off of a TNG episode, when it's actually ripped off of a Donald Duck strip... The fact that it ripped off something else isn't a sign of quality, especially since most of the internet knows this particular film as Dances with Smurf!Pocahontas IN SPACE.

Again, never having read/watched either. That's like calling Star Wars LOTR in space - it only has the most basic ideas in common.

Yes, actually, it does.

"Cuprate superconductors (and other unconventional superconductors) differ in many important ways from conventional superconductors, such as elemental mercury or lead, which are adequately explained by the BCS theory."
That's not high temperature specific, it's specific to a subtype.

Why's it a monopoly in the first place?

On what? If you mean space, because it managed to get that contract.
If you mean anywhere else, it isn't.

Yeah, which is an argument from consequences, and basically boils down to "It spoils the plot." That's a valid argument outside the context of the film, otherwise it runs into a problem, since there's no idea of "plot" inside it.

It's also a less complicated consequence than ones you were implying through 'NANOTECHNOLOGY!!' anti-Avatar arguments.

You also have no idea what is realistic for 2154. (The only thing we have to go on is what is believable, and that varies widely.)

You've based this ENTIRE THREAD on what you personally believe is.

I was tlaking about mechanical, not nuclear engineering.

Then hydrogen is useless for your purposes.

We don't have microwave death beams from space yet.

We have both cheaper and more available sources available, more than enough to completely phase out any one of choice.

Standard software design (which is what genetic engineering becomes when you crack how genes behave) involves wriitng one bit of code, testing it to make sure it works, and then writing another bit. You can't do that when you're constructing sentient organisms, for obvious reasons, and you seem to be suggesting than an Avatar would be a thing that you get right on the very first try, with zero mistakes.

No. Doing so would take time and trials, but by constructing an entirely new organism as you believe would take many orders of magnitude more time and resources.

Ah, so that's why the mission went so horribly wrong. It seems the RDA directors are idiots too, then.

For hiring him? I'd agree - testing anyone who will be around weapons for being a complete psychopath or not seems like a reasonable step.

Nobody suggests that Quaritch is exaggerating or trying to intimidate anyone.

He doesn't pull out statistics either.

[Clarke]

Originally Posted by Human No More

Depends on how many billion people you have.

The quantities of energy involved are massive. Literally.

They understand enough. Again, you're being an idiot who calls them stupid simply because you don't like them and like spess mehrens.

...How? I mean, they're older than humanity, but nobody, anywhere, has advanced beyond the Iron Age in terms of technology? (Woo for Singularity-level tech sharing!) The Internet is a powerful tool when its only been around for a couple of decades; I don't even want to try to guess what it does after millenia.

...Also, you appear to have conflated "unscientific" and "stupid."

Ah, no. The point was about how humans react within expected ways to other humanoids.

Yeah, and the Na'vi appear to behave similarly.

AGAIN (see earlier), it isn't tidally locked.

And? It's almost physically impossible to see any sort of depth at that distance. It's not an unexpected inference to suppose Polyphemus was the surface of some body of water.

Try reading what something actually is before using it in your argument.

I'm not sure what you mean. You don't want to meet a new species and have them immediatly reject you because you look alien. That's common sense.

You know rhetorical questions contribute nothing to an argument, right?
(Yes, and that has no bearing on this argument)

Questioning whether you know what you're talking about has everything to do with the argument. Namely, energy is a concern for an EMP weapon because an EMP is generated by, surprise surprise, discharging a high energy capacitor very quickly!

Great, if you want sub-metre range.

IR, longer wavelengths, etc, etc. Air is not necessarily an obstacle.

1. Stop moving the goalposts AGAIN. This WAS about a faraday cage, which is in the realm of pure fantasy in this application.
2. Fine, but that still doesn't mitigate the problem in your reasoning that I pointed out earlier that all it would need was charged objects to come into contact.
4. The 'Scorpians' (sic) are late 21st century. EMP weapons may have existed at that time or not - but providing some kind of shielding was not practical at that point, especially if only the side deploying them had it at that time.

1. It still is about the farady cage: namely, the airframe itself. All bar one aircraft I can think of are built out of metal, and the only reason they aren't automatically completely invulnerable to EMPs is because they might have electrical connections on the outer airframe. Once you make sure those aren't connected to anything electrically fragile, like a transistor, you're done.
2. Um, no? Even directly contacting a cage won't do anything to anything inside it. You have to breach the cage to do that, and that's either 1) impossible or 2) useless in the case of an aircraft.
4 ...It's practical at any point because the shielding is not a physical addition to the vehicle.

Interesting, but if I understand it properly, it doesn't make them impossible to use.

Depends how much power you put through them. It just so happens that railgun research is not progressing very fast because the weapon needs replacing every 2 or 3 shots...

No, it doesn't, because the purpose is not your 40k-esque fantasy, no matter how much you like to pretend otherwise.

The purpose is to take something from Pandora. The Na'vi are in the way, and, as Jake quite clearly says, will not move. (And at that point, he's merely confirming what they theorised anyway.) At that point, you either abandon the mission, (and get shot by your shareholders ) or forcefully take what you came for, i.e. invade.

Electronics, as I've pointed out before, Not only do they need to come from Earth, but they need to be able to be made there.
Oh, and yes, the stereolithography still needs the design - I thought even someone as dense as yourself could figure that one out

Von Nuemann machines FTW... (Aslo, it';d make more sense to bring an electronics synthesizor with them. Fuel costs and whatnot. )

Which current difference?

The current difference beteween what goes through a transistor and what comes out of a diesel engine or a lead-acid battery. There's a significant difference in the circuits used to actually power things and the circuits used to transmit signals, and the two are kept quite seperate.

The ENTIRE POINT is that the scorpions are not vulnerable to EMP in such a manner because of their older design, as I have explained multiple times.

You mentioned earlier that the scorpions have no shielding against EMPs. This implies that the RDA found a design that is naturally immune to them with no extra cost...

Yes. You, on the other hand, are some random hipster.

Oh right, just making sure we're on the same page.

Again, never having read/watched either.

I'm absolutely confident that some people using that joke have seen both. Not everyone who disagrees with you is an idiot.

That's not high temperature specific, it's specific to a subtype.

"Until Fe-based superconductors were discovered in 2008,[2][3] the term high-temperature superconductor was used interchangeably with cuprate superconductor..."
The theory only goes up to 30K. Iron-based superconductors go up to 50K.

On what? If you mean space, because it managed to get that contract.

Yes, I mean space, but I'm asking why space would be monopolised in the first place. It's not a one-of-a-kind thing.

It's also a less complicated consequence than ones you were implying through 'NANOTECHNOLOGY!!' anti-Avatar arguments.

The nanotechnology originally came up because it was suggestged that unobtanium could be synthesized under any circumstances. That can't physically be true, because nanotech is possible to build.

You've based this ENTIRE THREAD on what you personally believe is.

And on the proof-by-contradicton of "If you actually do have this much energy around, you get non-appearing side effect X." If we know P leads to Q, and Q is false, we can actually conclude that P is also false.

We have both cheaper and more available sources available, more than enough to completely phase out any one of choice.

...We can phase out nuclear?

No. Doing so would take time and trials, but by constructing an entirely new organism as you believe would take many orders of magnitude more time and resources.

...And? Every single time you construct the thing without getting it absolutely right, you have to murder something. That's going to get you into a legal storm.

For hiring him? I'd agree - testing anyone who will be around weapons for being a complete psychopath or not seems like a reasonable step.

Maybe I should change the thread title to "The RDA can't do human resources"?

He doesn't pull out statistics either.

Basic rule of worldbuilding: we trust characters, especially expositional speeches, unless we have a good reason not to.

[Human No More]

Originally Posted by Clarke

The quantities of energy involved are massive. Literally.

Yep

...How? I mean, they're older than humanity, but nobody, anywhere, has advanced beyond the Iron Age in terms of technology? (Woo for Singularity-level tech sharing!) The Internet is a powerful tool when its only been around for a couple of decades; I don't even want to try to guess what it does after millenia.

Yet there has been change over time, but just at a slower pace, which you would know if you had read any background at all.

Yeah, and the Na'vi appear to behave similarly.

Exactly. You just defeated your own argument there

And? It's almost physically impossible to see any sort of depth at that distance. It's not an unexpected inference to suppose Polyphemus was the surface of some body of water.

THEY ARE NOT STUPID.
If you think it looks like water, that's another clear proof you haven't seen the film ("it's blue!", perhaps?).There will even be observable features at different points in the orbit.

I'm not sure what you mean. You don't want to meet a new species and have them immediatly reject you because you look alien. That's common sense.

I mean that it's the discredited theory that the more detailed a CG/drawn human is, the less realistic they will look. It has nothing to do with this argument.
My point was that first contact pre dated the avatars, and you just threw that out there in absence of anything relevant.

Questioning whether you know what you're talking about has everything to do with the argument. Namely, energy is a concern for an EMP weapon because an EMP is generated by, surprise surprise, discharging a high energy capacitor very quickly!

AS I SAID MULTIPLE POSTS AGO, for a single shot. That is the issue with your ridiculous 'NEEDS LAZORS GRIMDARK KILL EVERYTHING LOL'.

IR, longer wavelengths, etc, etc. Air is not necessarily an obstacle.

Great, if you have the entire operational environment with a controlled atmosphere and consistent air temperature
...oh, and can get useful heating out of a single joule.
Also, AGAIN, discharging a massive current over a short time is not an unlimited capability in any battery. That's a reason ones designed for high current draw are much bulkier, heavier and higher voltage.

1. It still is about the farady cage: namely, the airframe itself. All bar one aircraft I can think of are built out of metal, and the only reason they aren't automatically completely invulnerable to EMPs is because they might have electrical connections on the outer airframe. Once you make sure those aren't connected to anything electrically fragile, like a transistor, you're done.
2. Um, no? Even directly contacting a cage won't do anything to anything inside it. You have to breach the cage to do that, and that's either 1) impossible or 2) useless in the case of an aircraft.
4 ...It's practical at any point because the shielding is not a physical addition to the vehicle.

1. That isn't going to happen for any production aircraft. For a one off no expense spared, perhaps, but otherwise no.
2. Actually, it's 1. easy and 2. useful, assuming non-mechanical flight control (the reason the Scorpion DOES NOT NEED shielding, because it's not electronically operated)
4. Yes, it is.

Depends how much power you put through them. It just so happens that railgun research is not progressing very fast because the weapon needs replacing every 2 or 3 shots...

Railgun != coilgun, AGAIN.
Yes, there will be wear issues on a coilgun, but nowhere near as much as a railgun. Also, they exist in universe. GET OVER IT. The mechanics of them have nothing to do with your anti-Avatar rant.

The purpose is to take something from Pandora. The Na'vi are in the way, and, as Jake quite clearly says, will not move. (And at that point, he's merely confirming what they theorised anyway.) At that point, you either abandon the mission, (and get shot by your shareholders ) or forcefully take what you came for, i.e. invade.

AND THEY ARE NOT ALLOWED TO DO SO. They were not supposed to ever put the Na'vi in that position.
Do you understand this? If not, then please say so so I can spell it out in a manner suitable for someone with an IQ of less than 80 to understand.

Von Nuemann machines FTW... (Aslo, it';d make more sense to bring an electronics synthesizor with them. Fuel costs and whatnot. )

They do not exist yet. I have already explained that.

Oh, and if you knew anything at all about chip fabrication, you'd know that bringing one with an ISV's cargo space would potentially take decades.

The current difference beteween what goes through a transistor and what comes out of a diesel engine or a lead-acid battery. There's a significant difference in the circuits used to actually power things and the circuits used to transmit signals, and the two are kept quite seperate.

Ah, I see what you mean there now.
The problem with that is that info that was true and any barrier would automagically prevent all EMP damage, then they would never be viable at all, which is not the case.

You mentioned earlier that the scorpions have no shielding against EMPs. This implies that the RDA found a design that is naturally immune to them with no extra cost...

No, it implies that they won't lose flight control if their systems are disabled (navigation, communication, whatever, is another story).

"Until Fe-based superconductors were discovered in 2008,[2][3] the term high-temperature superconductor was used interchangeably with cuprate superconductor..."
The theory only goes up to 30K. Iron-based superconductors go up to 50K.

Fair enough - but on the other hand, having unobtainium (which then would not be Fe-based, presumably) implies they would determine the new base. That does not mean they can automagically synthesise it just from knowing what metal base produces higher temperature superconductivity than Fe.

Yes, I mean space, but I'm asking why space would be monopolised in the first place. It's not a one-of-a-kind thing.

It can be if governments determined that they didn't have the ability to bring in out of system resources while the RDA did.
Even today, there are all sorts of treaties on space that are past the national level.

The nanotechnology originally came up because it was suggestged that unobtanium could be synthesized under any circumstances. That can't physically be true, because nanotech is possible to build.

Possible, yes.
A ****ing dyson sphere is POSSIBLE to build, but humans can not yet if they ever will be able to at all.

And on the proof-by-contradicton of "If you actually do have this much energy around, you get non-appearing side effect X." If we know P leads to Q, and Q is false, we can actually conclude that P is also false.

WRONG.
All of your 'non-appearing side effects' are ones that will not necessarily suddenly appear just because it's theoretically feasible to do. That's an appeal to probability.

...We can phase out nuclear?

Yes, if use of coal and oil was ramped up to compensate.

...And? Every single time you construct the thing without getting it absolutely right, you have to murder something. That's going to get you into a legal storm.

Potentially so, so that's ANOTHER reason it's crap. You just shot your own point down there again

Basic rule of worldbuilding: we trust characters, especially expositional speeches, unless we have a good reason not to.

We have one.