Will the Humans Return?

[Human No More]

Originally Posted by jujubees

Car engines burn air, the fuel is only to make the air more volitile. If you install a supercharger or a turbocharger, which will pump more air into the engine, it can go twice as fast- maybe three times as fast.
I get that there may be some work to do to make this happen...but given that human science has a pretty good handle on Pandoran biology (enough to clone a Na'vi), I think it's a possibility.

Yep, and CO2 is not the only factor in photosynthetic rate. Thanks for exending my analogy against your own point (and, no, speed tends to be limited by mechanical/aerodynamic constraints and diminishing resturns, there is no such system designed that would double speed, or even power). In any case, as it stands, a plant is 'good at absorbing carbon' if it could survive in a low-CO2 environment, as it is making more efficient use of resources, while absorbing more in quanitiy is just rapid growth (the point of the value of rainforest), while Earth's problems seem to be pollution and overpopulation rather than atmospheric gas balance.

Keep in mind that the mindset of the populace will be very different. Most of the Earth will be quite upset at the RDA's attacks, and if they're not, they don't deserve to be saved.
It could be possible for a non-RDA group to send an expidition to Pandora if a handful of idealistic, mega-rich donors stepped forward to fund it.

Exactly.

Originally Posted by Clarke

I don't think that's a safe assumption to make, either for ideological or technical reasons. For one thing, there's no guarantee its easy for Hell's Gate to get a message back to Earth in such a way that the RDA can't intercept and read it beforehand. If it's not possible, the game's a bogey before it's even started. Another thing is that, as far as I know, we're shown that the majority of Earth doesn't care that strongly about the state of the ecology. Even if they did (which, as mentioned, is not a small if) then they may not be in a position that they can protest. Cameron is very much going for a grimdark-megacapatalist-impoverished future, and so it's very unlikely that corporations like the RDA don't have significant hold on the people, and they could use that to stop any protests. (Look at OWS for an example of how it doesn't always work.)

Normal broadcast. Absolutely anyone can pick it up, and it travels at c. Of course, it doesn't mean every random on Earth could, but it's still accessible enough, and will get disseminated quickly enough to do the rest, especially when media pick it up.

Originally Posted by Clarke

Sending a signal across 42 trillion kilometres (26 trillion miles) is an entirely different task than playing radio tag with (manual?) jammer stations. There's also the fact that the infrastructure on both the transmitting and receiving ends of the setup are still under RDA control, since HG most likely does not have the resources for space-walks. (Unless you want to be completely bonkers, and transmit from within an atmosphere. That'll lose you several factors on your SNR.) It's also entirely possible for said infrastructure to encrypt the signal, since they wouldn't want their competitors reading it. That encryption would mean that there's no hope for anyone except the RDA decoding the message, and it may not be possible to turn it off, without space-walking equipment.

The ability is there now for much more distant (and therefore weaker) signals - they just haven't got any data yet. I thought you of all people would know that . It's even easier when a system is KNOWN to be inhabited, since they'll expect it.

Who is HG?
Infrastructure - Pandora: Nope. All the marines are gone, as you would know if you had ever watched the film. Earth: So there are no other dishes in the world? . As for encryption, a transmitter is a transmitter, encryption is implemented in layer 6 (OSI), a transmitter is not incapable of sending clear data even if it's set up that way in the presentation/network layers, even if those need to be reimplemented.