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.