The RDA can't do physics

[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.