The RDA can't do physics

[Clarke]

Originally Posted by Human No More

Yep

So feeding a few billion people shouldn't be that hard. You have tons of energy, after all.

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.

Pretty unlikely, IMO, but this is not a sociology thread.

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.

But they're also not (apparently) scientific or rational thinkers. Nobody with no astronomy knowledge would look at the moon and suppose it's an object largely similar to Earth; they'd look at the moon and think "god," or "spirit" or whatever other notion fits into their beliefs, which are most likely mystical. At that distance, a Jupiter-like object looks like a flat disc with a fluid moving across it.

My point was that first contact pre dated the avatars, and you just threw that out there in absence of anything relevant.

IMO, it's simply a bad idea for Uncanny Valley reasons. It doesn't really matter if the Valley actually applies to the Na'vi; you don't really want to take the risk.

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

EMPs are more energy-hungry than short range lasers, especially if they're omnidirectional. (You'd have to actually do the math if you wanted to tell if they're more energy-hungry than long-range lasers.)

...oh, and can get useful heating out of a single joule.

Not sure why you're fixated on the arbitarary number I picked out of the air to demonstrate the difference between energy and power.

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.

Well, yes, but 1) I never said it was unlimited, just large compared to the current being drawn, 2) the current involved is very small, because it doesn't need to be large.

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.

1. Isn't it? It involves less major adjustment than removing fly-by-wire, as is mentioned elsewhere.
2. If you breach the cage, you might as well be using an ordnance warhead, not an EMP. The explosive is more reliable at actually destroying the craft.
4. What do you add to the craft then? Because, if you look up how a faraday cage works, you'll see that any conductor will suffice. The airframe itself is conductive, ergo the airframe will work as a faraday cage for anything that is inside it but not electrically connected to it. You can re-arrange the internal wiring so that only heavy-duty things are eletrically connected to the airframe surface; voila, one EMP-proof vehicle.

Railgun != coilgun, AGAIN.

It's an example of the physics involved.

Yes, there will be wear issues on a coilgun, but nowhere near as much as a railgun.

Well, they'll still be significant if you want a decent muzzle velocity for the bullet. It's almost precisly the same force responsible for both, after all.

Also, they exist in universe. GET OVER IT.

I don't remember questioning this.

AND THEY ARE NOT ALLOWED TO DO SO. They were not supposed to ever put the Na'vi in that position.

Go directly to Earth, do not pass Go, do not collect $200bn. The RDA potentially go bust, game over? Once the Na'vi have established they are not moving, it is no longer possible to complete the stated mission under the stated constraints.

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

(Meant Von Neumann architecture machines, which are completely different)

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.

Then use something less complex? You can offload the main processing to Hell's Gate, mostly.

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.

I hope you don't mean "not the case" in the world of Avatar. That'd be circular.

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

I actually looked this up. I do that, despite your insistence to the contrary. I found this:
The Scorpion Gunship was built for use on Earth as terrorists and insurgents gained access to EMP (Electromagnetic pulse) weaponry to counter drones and other combat machines used by militaries and the like, whose combat hulls and external electronics were hardened against EMP weaponry. However, the "soft" CPU remained vulnerable, short-circuiting and leaving the drone both harmless and helpless.

JC is not treating EMPs realistically, so I think we're done with this?

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.

My original point is that by 2154, we will probably have a theory of how superconductivity actually works. With that, studying and understanding unobtanium will be much easier.

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.

Why would it be a monopoly, though? What possible advantage does that bring anyone except the company involved?

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

Imagine you have a planet-building business. Without a Dyson sphere, you can't hope to gather enough energy fast enough to be able to build a planet in the lifetime of your clients, and so you can't run your business. You simply do not have the resources to build a planet economically, despite the existence of a more expensive method that is possible to use; the more expensive method is too expensive.

Same applies with Unobtanium. Mining it is so expensive, that it can't possibly be worth it. In this case, the major reason you want it in the first place is the energy you save from electrical resistive loss. This is, perhaps, as high as 1% or so of the power you pass through the cable. You need an awful, awful lot of energy to go through the cable before the resistive loss you've saved matches the energy value of the unobtanium. (Measured in 1000kgc^2, keep in mind.) Hence, it is uneconomic to gather it without a synthesis process.

WRONG.

<HumanNoMore> if P then Q.
<Clarke> Equivalently, if not-Q, not-P.
<HumanNoMore> WRONG.
<Clarke> Contraposition - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
<Clarke> I assume you don't need something more than a direct proof?
<HumanNoMore> then where the **** did I make a mistake?hang on

Automatically assuming that I am wrong without your own research won't let this discussion get anywhere, unfortunately.

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.

Well, if unimaginably vast quantities of energy are avaliable, I'd have thought it pretty certain people would use it, and there's an awful lot you can do with that amount of energy, especially when coupled with the advanced technology we see. Letting everyone eat steak every night is not out of the question, for instance. Wealth is not conserved, and so on, so forth.

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

I suppose, but then you run into economics issues.

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

So you get a genetic re-build (since it's apparently merging the driver and Na'vi DNA together, not just fiddling with the Na'vi to resemble humans) right, perfectly, the first time you try it? That seems to be what you're suggesting happens.

We have one.

At the time? We aren't given any indication at the time that Quaritch is not to be trusted. Nobody comments about him exaggerating, and this is his first appearance.

[Moco Loco]

This is no longer a physics discussion, but a discussion about everything, and it's very hard to follow

[Clarke]

Originally Posted by Moco Loco

This is no longer a physics discussion, but a discussion about everything, and it's very hard to follow

Well, it's all interconnected. (which makes it all the more annoying when we run into JC saying, "It works that way here! Shush!")

[Moco Loco]

I fail to see how those two statements are connected. Whatever, I'm not saying it bothers me, just that at the beginning I found it highly entertaining and now it is not

[Advent]

Originally Posted by Moco Loco

I fail to see how those two statements are connected. Whatever, I'm not saying it bothers me, just that at the beginning I found it highly entertaining and now it is not

It's not entertaining now, because it's all mixed up. At the start, you could clearly see them throwing points at each other (and a few insults, I believe) and the thread had character.

[Pa'li Makto]

Why is this thread still allowed to be open if it's just 2 people arguing with each other?

[Moco Loco]

It's not hurting anyone, so I don't see why it's necessary that it be closed.

[Clarke]

Originally Posted by Moco Loco

I fail to see how those two statements are connected.

When JC says, either implicitly or explicitly, "this element is a plot device and thus works regardless of real science," it becomes difficult to analyse anything that depends on it. This discusssion is only interesting, IMO, as long as there's the facade of the film working on some set of self-consistent rules, and not simply on JC's fiat.

Originally Posted by Pa'li Makto

Why is this thread still allowed to be open if it's just 2 people arguing with each other?

I notice that all your contributions thus far have been rather negative. Since the only person being insulted here is me, and I don't mind, why should it be closed?

[Moco Loco]

Well anyway, regardless of what you think, I don't see how any of JC's motives are related to how this thread has degraded (and by degraded I mean split into several independent discussions).

[Pa'li Makto]

Originally Posted by Pa'li Makto

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

Originally Posted by Pa'li Makto

Why is this thread still allowed to be open if it's just 2 people arguing with each other?

Originally Posted by Clarke

I notice that all your contributions thus far have been rather negative. Since the only person being insulted here is me, and I don't mind, why should it be closed?

So wait: those posts are negative? How so? I just pointed out what I saw and made no negative comments about anyone's post or the topic...
I'm actually insulted now..

To be honest, I'm surprised because I had a thread which was similar to this about GM crops with Tsyal and Isard posting as well and HNM closed it for no reason.

[Advent]

Originally Posted by Pa'li Makto

To be honest, I'm surprised because I had a thread which was similar to this about GM crops with Tsyal and Isard posting as well and HNM closed it for no reason.

HNM is involved in this 'discussion' so he obviously isn't going to close it so quickly.

[Human No More]

Originally Posted by Clarke

So feeding a few billion people shouldn't be that hard. You have tons of energy, after all.

Exactly where did it say there is a food shortage?
Oh wait, it didn't. That's just you making crap up again.

Pretty unlikely, IMO, but this is not a sociology thread.

Well, the point that you reading background is 'pretty unlikely' aside, I KNOW that you hate Avatar and you don't need to go on and on like some hipster in every single post, especially not when you are actively denying canon.

But they're also not (apparently) scientific or rational thinkers. Nobody with no astronomy knowledge would look at the moon and suppose it's an object largely similar to Earth; they'd look at the moon and think "god," or "spirit" or whatever other notion fits into their beliefs, which are most likely mystical. At that distance, a Jupiter-like object looks like a flat disc with a fluid moving across it.

At that distance it has observable features, for about the 5th time. The existence of other ****ing moons well within visual range is another point. Humans had none of that.
...Oh, and no, it isn't going to be considered something mythological, because we we can see if you would ever do any research at all, there isn't mythology.
Again, you're trying to perpetuate your own belief they are stupid. All you are doing is embarrassing yourself and demonstrating your blatant lack of even basic knowledge from the film itself.

IMO, it's simply a bad idea for Uncanny Valley reasons. It doesn't really matter if the Valley actually applies to the Na'vi; you don't really want to take the risk.

IT DOESN'T APPLY TO LIVING BEINGS. It's a discredited theory even today.
You just threw 'uncanny valley lol' out there in desperation when every single other point you had was defeated, and you were contradicting yourself in your beliefs about first contact. There is no magic bullet argument here, certainly not about someone who knows far more than you about the film's canon.
It's not 'uncanny valley lol' that humans react better to humanoids (indeed, if you believed in it, surely they would react more negatively to them...) - it is the simple fact that a humanoid being allows humans to see them as 'alive' more.

EMPs are more energy-hungry than short range lasers, especially if they're omnidirectional. (You'd have to actually do the math if you wanted to tell if they're more energy-hungry than long-range lasers.)

Yet the EMP can be delivered by a missile weighing hundreds of kilograms. Can a person carry one? (The answer you are looking for is no). An EMP is one shot, while your ridiculous space marine laser fantasy is not.

Not sure why you're fixated on the arbitarary number I picked out of the air to demonstrate the difference between energy and power.

Because even that low a one is impossible from a human portable source. The higher the current, the higher the voltage of the source must be for a battery. The physics of engineering them for such a discharge is different again,

Well, yes, but 1) I never said it was unlimited, just large compared to the current being drawn, 2) the current involved is very small, because it doesn't need to be large.

By definition, it must be a large current, or it's going to be useless, not just at ionisation, but at delivering the energy in a short enough time. See above.

1. Isn't it? It involves less major adjustment than removing fly-by-wire, as is mentioned elsewhere.
2. If you breach the cage, you might as well be using an ordnance warhead, not an EMP. The explosive is more reliable at actually destroying the craft.
4. What do you add to the craft then? Because, if you look up how a faraday cage works, you'll see that any conductor will suffice. The airframe itself is conductive, ergo the airframe will work as a faraday cage for anything that is inside it but not electrically connected to it. You can re-arrange the internal wiring so that only heavy-duty things are eletrically connected to the airframe surface; voila, one EMP-proof vehicle.

1. Why would it need to be removed if it isn't present? That is the entire point. Idiot.
2. ...because aircraft are made of explodium, right? Oh, wait, this is real life, where you can shoot AN ENTIRE WING OFF without it suddenly exploding (and even landing).
4. Then you have a lack of external connections, meaning that even if you can somehow make flight surfaces work, you are flying 100% blind. It MAY be plausible as a crippled proof of concept but not as something expected to actually be useful.

It's an example of the physics involved.

An invalid example.

Well, they'll still be significant if you want a decent muzzle velocity for the bullet. It's almost precisly the same force responsible for both, after all.

Not insignificant, but no force associated with launching a chunk of metal at around the speed of sound ever is, including chemical propellants - but railguns still have their own, very unique, problems.

I don't remember questioning this.

Your entire line of reasoning has been "they should have lazors! and exoskeletons! and power amour! and orbital weapons! and nukes! and this bull****! and nanotech! and ninja pirate zombie robots! and replicators! and more lazors!"
Avatar is not the film you wanted to see. Stop trying to internally rationalise it into your own thing.

(Meant Von Neumann architecture machines, which are completely different)

That's completely different. If you didn't mean a von neumann machine as in the theoretical nanotechnology, then you end up using kettle logic.

Then use something less complex? You can offload the main processing to Hell's Gate, mostly.

What part of the size, scale and cost of a chip fab do you not understand?!
Centralising all processing is not only a stupid idea, but also irrelevant to the problem of getting electronics there, as well as doing nothing in terms of capacity - that's like saying 'centralise all car traffic in the country to a single road'.

I hope you don't mean "not the case" in the world of Avatar. That'd be circular.

...no, it wouldn't. Vulnerable systems are potentially vulnerable to EMP. Newer aircraft as actually found on Earth have shielding. The scorpions do not, as in their design it was not necessary, while hitting a Reaper drone with one will cause it to crash.

I actually looked this up. I do that, despite your insistence to the contrary. I found this:
The Scorpion Gunship was built for use on Earth as terrorists and insurgents gained access to EMP (Electromagnetic pulse) weaponry to counter drones and other combat machines used by militaries and the like, whose combat hulls and external electronics were hardened against EMP weaponry. However, the "soft" CPU remained vulnerable, short-circuiting and leaving the drone both harmless and helpless.

JC is not treating EMPs realistically, so I think we're done with this?

Done with what exactly?
This is destroying your own argument here, that aircraft should somehow have faraday cages made of pure fiction that somehow don't affect flight at all. Now YOU are explaining that they don't need them

The scorpion is still an older-generation aircraft, and still lacks any direct EMP protection because it is not needed - that was always my point.

My original point is that by 2154, we will probably have a theory of how superconductivity actually works. With that, studying and understanding unobtanium will be much easier.

Your original point was that that would allow it to magically be synthesised without even knowing of it. Have you finally admitted that was crap?

Why would it be a monopoly, though? What possible advantage does that bring anyone except the company involved?

Others obtain the resulting resources that would otherwise not be accessible?
Derp.

Same applies with Unobtanium. Mining it is so expensive, that it can't possibly be worth it. In this case, the major reason you want it in the first place is the energy you save from electrical resistive loss. This is, perhaps, as high as 1% or so of the power you pass through the cable. You need an awful, awful lot of energy to go through the cable before the resistive loss you've saved matches the energy value of the unobtanium. (Measured in 1000kgc^2, keep in mind.) Hence, it is uneconomic to gather it without a synthesis process.

I've already explained that. Not only is that NOT the only application, but it is also the only method of running ISVs economically in the first place.
If you're incapable of remembering previous points, this thread has run its course.

Automatically assuming that I am wrong without your own research won't let this discussion get anywhere, unfortunately.

I've already pointed out that you are using an appeal to consequences here, not to mention appeal to probability - you have personal beliefs about what might happen in the future, and are arguing based on the fact that they are not seen in the film but you believe they should be present, while ignoring the possibility of the actual premise.

[Human No More]

Well, if unimaginably vast quantities of energy are avaliable, I'd have thought it pretty certain people would use it, and there's an awful lot you can do with that amount of energy, especially when coupled with the advanced technology we see. Letting everyone eat steak every night is not out of the question, for instance. Wealth is not conserved, and so on, so forth.

ONLY if you have a replicator. If not, there's no way to effectively utilise it in such a manner. It's a bit like your earlier 'nanotech lol' fantasy - if it was present, Earth would, by definition, be in a far better state.

I suppose, but then you run into economics issues.

NOT THE POINT. It's possible to do if people wanted (and the 'economics issues' are related to supply anyway).

So you get a genetic re-build (since it's apparently merging the driver and Na'vi DNA together, not just fiddling with the Na'vi to resemble humans) right, perfectly, the first time you try it? That seems to be what you're suggesting happens.

Stop making stuff up.
Nobody has EVER mentioned success rates (or, for that matter, compatible humans) in any source, at all, ever.

Until your post her,e you WERE discussing some kind of misconceived idea about creating new organisms from scratch - now you've suddenly jumped back to avatars? Kettle logic at its finest.

At the time? We aren't given any indication at the time that Quaritch is not to be trusted. Nobody comments about him exaggerating, and this is his first appearance.

If you think that was his first appearance, you blatantly have not watched the film.
Selfridge is even telling Quaritch (and other marines) what to do both BEFORE and AFTER that point.

[Clarke]

Originally Posted by Human No More

Exactly where did it say there is a food shortage?
Oh wait, it didn't. That's just you making crap up again.

I mean feed well. Algae probably doesn't provide all the nutrients people need to sustain themselves.

At that distance it has observable features, for about the 5th time.

Unless the Na'vi ahve incredibly good eyesight, or Polyphemus is far too close, they appear flat because of the optics involved. Do you want me to prove this to you?

...Oh, and no, it isn't going to be considered something mythological, because we we can see if you would ever do any research at all, there isn't mythology.

...That should be impossible. Assuming that the Na'vi operate on the same anthropomorphization humans do, (which are basically required to recognise sky people as "people") mythology of some sort is pretty much inevitable unless Weird Things Happen. (like Eywa explicitly talks to them enough to bootstrap the scientific method. AFAIK, that hasn't happened.)

Besides, they quite clearly have a mythology of some sort. Jake spends about half of the 3 month montage learning about it, as well as the rather bizarre example of having the clan plugged into Eywa and doing the body swap.

Again, you're trying to perpetuate your own belief they are stupid.

I'm trying to argue that they are unscientific. Considering it took us a fair chunk of civlisation to develop the scientific method properly, and the Na'vi haven't got through that chunk, isn't that a fair assumption?

IT DOESN'T APPLY TO LIVING BEINGS. It's a discredited theory even today.

...Really? Source? I'd be really, really surprised if you disproved that effect, considering I've had the reaction myself.

It's not 'uncanny valley lol' that humans react better to humanoids (indeed, if you believed in it, surely they would react more negatively to them...) - it is the simple fact that a humanoid being allows humans to see them as 'alive' more.

Presumably you mean we see humanoids as more like us, not more 'alive'?

And yes, if you get it wrong, the avatars might invoke the ucanney valley effect, but I assume you've done your research, right? If not, why not?

Yet the EMP can be delivered by a missile weighing hundreds of kilograms.

That has to be an awfully cheap missile, then. (And thus, the technology inside it, like the high-voltage supercapacitor, is also cheap...)

The higher the current, the higher the voltage of the source must be for a battery.

Which is what a transformer is for. They allow you to swap current for voltage, in either direction.

By definition, it must be a large current, or it's going to be useless, not just at ionisation, but at delivering the energy in a short enough time. See above.

In the electrolaser design, you fire a laser at your target, which forms a channel of plasma. How much energy that requires is going to be quite easy to calculate, but ATM I have no idea. (The calculation being approximatewly the volume of the cylinder * ionisation energy of one "air" molecule * density of air.) The second step is to drop current through this channel, and that current can be measured in milli-amps, because if you can avoid it passing over the skin, (come back to me on that) milli-amps are all you need to do critical damage to major organs.

1. Why would it need to be removed if it isn't present? That is the entire point. Idiot.
2. ...because aircraft are made of explodium, right?
4. Then you have a lack of external connections...

1. In terms of the difference between the Scorpian and whichever predecessor still kept fly-by-wire. Did you know that modern military jets are not aerodynamically stable and so cannot possibly be flown normally? You have to rearrange all of that if you want to remove the computer's ability to fly the plane for you.
2. Sure you can land an aircraft with only one wing, but 1) it's not going to be able to keep fighting, 2) an EMP delivered in the same method will do zilch to either an armoured or fly-by-cam (opposed to fly-by-wire) vehicle.
4. You insulate the important external devices, as you're doing anyway because they're drawing significant amounts of power. Only "computing" components are vulnerable to EMPs; more basic devices will survive fine. This includes, if we are bizarrely pressed for resources, valves. Very small valves, if need be.

Not insignificant, but no force associated with launching a chunk of metal at around the speed of sound ever is, including chemical propellants - but railguns still have their own, very unique, problems.

Not sure how the railgun example is relavent; I was talking about coilguns. Also, the chemical explosion is supposed to divert most of its energy to the bullet; the twisting/expanding force on the magnets is a lot harder to divert.

Your entire line of reasoning has been "they should have lazors! and exoskeletons! and power amour! and orbital weapons! and nukes! and this bull****! and nanotech! and ninja pirate zombie robots! and replicators! and more lazors!"
Avatar is not the film you wanted to see. Stop trying to internally rationalise it into your own thing.

You said I was saying coilguns didn't exist in universe. AFAIK, I didn't.

That's completely different. If you didn't mean a von neumann machine as in the theoretical nanotechnology, then you end up using kettle logic.

Yes, my mistake. I meant the Von Neumann architecture computing chip, because they could easily be swapped around for entirely different functions.

What part of the size, scale and cost of a chip fab do you not understand?!

Then don't use sillicon chips? Use, say, circuitboards? (Though there are metal 3D printers that could probably build an approximation to an integrated circuit.) We're not forced to use the most up-to-date technology when it's inappropriate.

Centralising all processing is not only a stupid idea...

Given teleporters... ...You know that that is basically what Apollo did, right? They did all the hard math in mission control, and beamed the results back to the Apollo capsules. The reason you might want to do that is because you want to simplify the electronics you have to shift around.

(When did capacity come into it?)

...no, it wouldn't.

The post I was responding to said that EMP shielding can't work, because that would mean EMP weapons won't be effective, and this isn't true because EMP weapons are effective. (BTW, this is an example of the proof by contrapositive thing you argued was incorrect earlier.) If that was, "EMP weapons are effective in the context of Avatar," that's not really valid in the context of discussing whether or not EMP shielding works in Avatar, is it?

Done with what exactly?

Done with debating how effective EMP weapons are. They are, but they shouldn't be; JC is delibrately bodging the physics to make it work for the story.

Your original point was that that would allow it to magically be synthesised without even knowing of it.

Well, with a physical theory of superconductivity, you could. If you don't have one, (how unscientific!) then yeah, you'd need a single sample to take home with you, probably. You could therorectically do it if you gathered sufficient data on the moon, but it'd be annoying.

Others obtain the resulting resources that would otherwise not be accessible?

...That doesn't require an enforced monopoly? It only requires one company to set up and nobody to challenge them?

I've already explained that. Not only is that NOT the only application, but it is also the only method of running ISVs economically in the first place.

What other applications would you use them for, other than power lines and ISVs? (See previous posts for the actual figures required for the ISV. Where's my Dyson mirror? ) And where you going to get energy savings of 4900kgc^2/kg from?

...while ignoring the possibility of the actual premise.

The actual premsie relies on economics which are impossible. The devices required to make it possible do not appear anywhere in the various sources, and, Doylistly, it's unlikely that JC would use them at all, because he does not write that kind of sci-fi.

Originally Posted by Human No More

ONLY if you have a replicator. If not, there's no way to effectively utilise it in such a manner.

Every chemical and biological synthesis process ever? Replicators aren't the only way to utilize energy.

Nobody has EVER mentioned success rates (or, for that matter, compatible humans) in any source, at all, ever.

Attaching the driver's DNA into a completely alien genome is "simple engineering?" was the original point I was trying to make.

Until your post her,e you WERE discussing some kind of misconceived idea about creating new organisms from scratch

My point to do with the non-Avtar organisms, which got lost down the sofa, is that you don't need Pandoran biology to use them on Earth. You know enough about how genetic chemistry works to just build your own designer organisms from scratch. The only reason you would study Pandoran biology is to steal ideas from it.

Selfridge is even telling Quaritch (and other marines) what to do both BEFORE and AFTER that point.

Selfridge hasn't appeared at that point. It transitions directly from Jake disembarking the shuttle to Quaritch's speech about "not in Kansas anymore."

[ahoragi]

(unsubscribes)

This thread no longer entertains me. The back and forth argument of each other's EVERY sentence is...........an eye sore.