Alternate applications of Avatar technology

[Serafina]

There's also the hitch that, apparently, you need Eywe in the loop for an effective mind transfer. Is she going to want to do that on command?

One of the newly arrived avatar-commanders already had hundreds of hours of practice without ever being on Pandora.
So it is not necessary to have Eywe, or it can be replicated with technology.

[Shroom Man 777]

She was talking about permanently transferring a person's brain to the "avatar" body like what they tried to do to Sigourney Ripley and Sam Sully.

[Cykeisme]

Sitting on magic MacGuffin ore that comes in at "twenty million dollars a kilogram", I think the Na'vi, and Eywa by extension, had better have a damn good plan to avoid the RDA coming back, glassing the planet and mining unobtanium out of the (floating) debris.

If there's something that's even more valuable than unobtanium, it's got to be immortality.. offer a service that transfers aging rich people into new young clone bodies. If Eywa and the blue folk start putting out, they're pretty much offering a unique service that gives them very heavy bargaining power.. at least enough to get the humans to stay off their lawn.

That's only the case when making use of the Pandoran tree-internet. Simple extrapolation on stuff which appears in the film shows that it should be possible to replicate the process technologically (probably sooner, rather than later). There's nothing actually mystical about Eywa, after all.

I don't know.. it's supposed to be a sentient planet-sized biocomputer. As Serafina pointed out, there's 10^12 trees with 10,000 connections per tree, and all that. Might be something going on within each individual tree, as well.
So while it seems "psionics" is an applied science with mysticality stripped away (e.g. driver to avatar connections), the scale and complexity of Eywa may be orders of magnitude out of reach of the humans building one of their own for convenient perusal.
The original is right there for exploitation, anyway. Just need to strike the right deal.

[adam_grif]

Question.

Is "twenty million dollars a kilogram" factoring in the no doubt enormous cost of transporting everything by relativistic space craft? It seems to me that "20 million dollars a kilo" would be the price of any old lump of rock if you had to ship in in from Alpha Centauri.

[Silver Jedi]

The fact remains that people were willing to pay that much for it once they'd hauled it back.

[Shroom Man 777]

Question.

Is "twenty million dollars a kilogram" factoring in the no doubt enormous cost of transporting everything by relativistic space craft? It seems to me that "20 million dollars a kilo" would be the price of any old lump of rock if you had to ship in in from Alpha Centauri.

It's in space dollars.

[PeZook]

Generally, there is nothing special/extraordinary in the other techs, only the avatar-tech is extraordinary.

SSTO transport spacecraft with vertical take off and landing, plus enough delta-v to easily make trips to the upper atmosphere of Pandora's gas giant and back are not extraordinary? Rapid prototyping technology that allows construction of bipedal mecha and gigantic mining rigs on site from local materials is not extraordinary? A fleet of 12 relativistic spacecraft built and operated by a private US corporation is not extraordinary?

What the hell? You must be really hard to impress

[adam_grif]

Compared to most SciFi it's positively mundane.

[Shroom Man 777]

Yeah, compared to stuff like Doctor Who where the guy can use his timeship that looks like a police box/phone booth to travel through time and drag a kidnapped planet Earth halfway across the universe back to its proper position in space and time, or the Metabarons where they had a bomb with a radius of three universes and where women can transform into helicopters, it's pretty mundane.

But still, you gotta admit, stuff like single-stage-to-orbit aerospace craft that can hover and interstellar fleets of vessels that can reach c-fractional speeds are kind of extras that are a bit out of the ordinary.

[PeZook]

Compared to most SciFi it's positively mundane.

Good point. From a modern perspective, the mining shuttles alone are godtech though.

[adam_grif]

Yeah, compared to stuff like Doctor Who where the guy can use his timeship that looks like a police box/phone booth to travel through time and drag a kidnapped planet Earth halfway across the universe back to its proper position in space and time, or the Metabarons where they had a bomb with a radius of three universes and where women can transform into helicopters, it's pretty mundane.

But still, you gotta admit, stuff like single-stage-to-orbit aerospace craft that can hover and interstellar fleets of vessels that can reach c-fractional speeds are kind of extras that are a bit out of the ordinary.

Or Star Wars, or Stargate, or even SQUAWK. 99.9999% of Science Fiction on TV is on par with the scientific credulity of most comic books. So when you try to do something fairly realistic, it usually ends up coming off as totally underwhelming by comparison.

Good point. From a modern perspective, the mining shuttles alone are godtech though.

No doubt. But you can understand why people might not be all that impressed with it. Most people aren't at all familiar with rocketry. Or any science for that matter. Just the other day, the topic of dinosaurs somehow came up in my family and for some reason most of my family genuinely thought that you could pull a Jurassic park with modern tech if people wanted to. I was gobsmacked.

[Shroom Man 777]

If we're gonna compare stuff to most sci-fi, Avatar's avatars are also positively mundane when we've got two recent movies that have Bruce Willis remote controlling remote robot bodies to live his life, and Gerard Butler/Leonidas getting his body controlled for a videogame which involves teenage nerds using nanomachine-slaved convicts to kill each other in frickin Counterstrike.

Or Star Wars, or Stargate, or even SQUAWK. 99.9999% of Science Fiction on TV is on par with the scientific credulity of most comic books. So when you try to do something fairly realistic, it usually ends up coming off as totally underwhelming by comparison.

Fucking SQUAWK!

Underwhelming, blah. The presentation of Avatar's future technology, like most of Cameron's other future tech in Aliens and Terminator*, while relatively "realistic" or not as all high-end compared to other sci-fi, still matches those of the more overwhelming sci-fi shows. Particularly when those sci-fi are fucking stupid, like SQUAWK.

*Hmm... scratch that. Time travel, nuclear-powered robot killfuckmachines, liquid-metal murdertrons, pew-pew plasma peashooters, Terminator is pretty high-end actually.

Point is, Cameron knows his hardware.

[Sarevok]

Cameron's chief mistake was not including a 5 minute intro to the world of 22nd century. Because that mistake most peoples impression of the Avatar universe is to be the crappy RDA military hardware on the ground. They saw Vietnam era like weapons shooting at Star Trek ranges and bipedal mecha with exposed glass cockpits. The point that this was a private base operating on extremely limited cargo capacity improvising stuff on site needed to be highlighted more. I know the time budget was extremely limited but I could live without 300 extra seconds of pretty forest CGI.

[Shroom Man 777]

What thematic or movie point would there be if Cameron showed us "the rest of the universe"? Even if the rest of the Avatar-verse resembles something like WALL-E where everyone's a morbidly obese slugman, it's got nothing to do with the story set on Pandora at all and is just extraneous and superfluous. What's the purpose? "To show the tech-level of the rest of the Avatar universe" isn't really a valid one, because the rest of the Avatar universe has nothing to do with this story.

Yeah, Vietnam-era weapons (gasp, primitive gunpowder that explode and propel... bullets!) and bipedal mecha with COCKpits! But the fact is that it's very clear that the operation in Pandora was working with some resource limitations and hardware ones as well. Because, uh, they didn't have tanks or jets or even smart bunker busters and even had to jerry rig a bomb that could explode and blow up and detonate with a blast.

[Sarevok]

I am talking about something like the intro to Serenity. I had never seen Firefly before yet the few minute sequence was enough to estlablish the verse for an uninitiated like me. Avatar could have benifited tremendously from something similar. Maybe like the classroom lesson in Serenity Avatar could have started with a RDA briefing video for new recruits.

[Gramzamber]

It's a story about colonial assholes in SPAAAAACE, I'm not sure what purpose is served delving deep into the history and politics of this world.
It's all about the noble savages kicking the arse of the big bad corporation. I'm glad Cameron didn't rub the whole future dystopia in our face.

[Coyote]

Oh, I don't know, I felt that the opening shot was sufficiient; the Venture Star with a lot of latticework, the solar panels and sails, the almost-Shuttle-like-shuttles with clear design lineage... all did a great job of setting the the backdrop for the tech level we were working with. They went further by reinforcing the need for cryosleep while underway. Clues like that were all we really needed, I think.

[Gramzamber]

I think it's Cameron's style to trim the fat as it were, give us the information we really need and not dawdle on specifics.
Take Aliens, we see Ripley in the station but she and by extension the audience never go to Earth. We see all we need to about Earth's situation and why we're going where we're going right there.

[Shroom Man 777]

I am talking about something like the intro to Serenity. I had never seen Firefly before yet the few minute sequence was enough to estlablish the verse for an uninitiated like me. Avatar could have benifited tremendously from something similar. Maybe like the classroom lesson in Serenity Avatar could have started with a RDA briefing video for new recruits.

We saw a ship descending from orbit, just like the intro of Serenity. We also saw Jake getting taught by Ripley on the fundamentals of Avatars, and we saw that Marine McBadass lecture them on how Pandoran lifeforms will killfuck them if they fuck around. We even had Jake monologue for a while about the circumstances that motivated him to go to Pandora.

I really think that an exploration on the state of the Earth is unnecessary, particularly when the story's about a bunch off greedy corporate assholes and a bunch of noble space cat people. Earth's not part of the story at all, so why bother with it? That's like having A New Hope talk about the state of the Earth when the story's about a bunch of evil corporate Empire assholes and a bunch of noble space cat people rebels.

There's really no need to establish a "verse" for the uninitiated. ANH didn't do it, Alien didn't do it, Aliens didn't do it, Avatar didn't do it.

[Crazedwraith]

ANH did. Its called the opening crawl but Avatar was fine the way it was. It pretty much establishes everything it needs for the story while implying everything else is like now but more so.

[Shroom Man 777]

It just said "blah blah blah, space princess, senate, death star, rebels" and Worthington's monologue and other dialogues in Avatar gave the same amount of information in Avatar. ANH still didn't show us the rest of the Earth, nor did it have Robot River in a classroom with padawans learning about the history of the Alliance.

[Coyote]

It is a period of conquest on PANDORA.
BLACKWATER spaceships, striking
from an armored base, have
carved out a niche against
the evil forest creatures of PANDORA.

During the battle, AVATAR
spies managed to steal secret
plans to the COMPANY'S
ultimate goal, the death of the
LIFETREE, a vast living village
sitting on a lode of Unobtanium
with enough net worth to
purchase an entire planet.

Pursued by BLACKWATER'S
sinister agents, JAKE SULLY
races to the LIFETREE within his
AVATAR, to reveal the secret
plans that can save the NA'VI
people and restore
freedom to PANDORA...

[Shroom Man 777]

Coyots, you're the best. I don't know if that's supposed to mean anything, but I think it kinda proves my point since ANH's opening crawl and that... yellow thing... establishes as much context about "Earth" and the "verse" for the uninitiated as the scenes and dialogue seen and heard in the Avatar movie.

[Sarevok]

I am not talking about mundane day to day life on Earth. Avatar glosses over some very important information like.

- What do Earth people think of the Naavi ? We know from other material they will never tolerate atrocities but the movies do not shed light on this.
As silly as the nuke the naavi debate has gotten it begun in the first place because of lack of background information. The reason for why RDA is potentially willing to destroy itself rather than take appropriate measures to defend a very expensive project is never explained.

- Is Earth truly facing a dire situation with respect to unobtainium and environment ? Or are they a very advanced automated society where private companies can own 0.7 C starships and make battlemechs with self contained factories. So for them unobtainium is a value added luxury ? Again this is a crucial information on which rests a pivotal piece of the movies theme and underpinning - it reinforces the gravity of Jakes choice. Is he dooming humanity or is he just a disgruntled worker taking revenge on his unethical company ?

[Junghalli]

Or Star Wars, or Stargate, or even SQUAWK. 99.9999% of Science Fiction on TV is on par with the scientific credulity of most comic books. So when you try to do something fairly realistic, it usually ends up coming off as totally underwhelming by comparison.

Not necessarily; hard SF has plenty of room to compensate for the lack of 9999 G fusion drives and 9999 gigaton lasers in non-spaceship, non-Big Fucking Gun technology, which tends to be pretty unimpressive in pop SF. If Avatar had personnel being transferred to Pandora by having their minds uploaded and sent in a comm laser and downloaded into a cloned body at the other end, or their army consisted largely of killbots, their technology would look quite impressive compared to most sci fi. And yet that stuff is probably more conservative than thousand ton ships capable of reaching Alpha Centauri in five years if anything. Of course, those capabilities might not work with the story...