Given the gamma rads the Venture Star's drives produce, the Na'Vi problem would have been... solved

[@sigstackfault]

IN THE SEQUEL THEY USE THEM AS LANDERS. LANDERS. (this isn't really a spoiler because it happens in the first five minutes)

[@SacredCowShipyards]

... ...... .......... wat

[@vonfaustien3957]

Didn't the first movie have a dedicated and mostly practical landing craft that they built the entire climax of the movie around trying to destroy?

[@Horesmi]

I mean Honestly that's not completely impossible... The ships have to be sturdy enough to handle multiple Gs for years, and you won't face atmo friction if you slow down in space. Just... I guess that's one way to exterminate the locals. As they say, there is no such thing as an unarmed interstellar ship.

[@entropy11]

It's more like massive skyhooks, and they blast several dozen square miles of forest with nuclear fire in doing so, but, wat

[@WarriorServent009]

@@SacredCowShipyards Yeah, it looks cool and according to the wiki is a specially modified version for dropping off a portable fortress. Also according to the wiki the closest one to the camera is the ISV Manifest Destiny and that each one of them burns away ~20 miles of forest when dropping off those giant pods before detaching them and flying away.

[@mikhailryzhov9419]

The colonel was the most quotable character from the first movie: - You're not in Kansas anymore. - My mission is to keep you alive and I will not succeed. Not with all of you. - Low gravity makes you soft. - How does it feel to betray your own race. I was so disappointed that they've actually made ISVs atmosphere-capable. They were clearly not designed to do that!

[@MrCoolguy425]

The thing about it is, that once earth was kicked off and still wanted to colonize pandora, they would likely invest a lot of time and manpower designing ways to take it back. Thus you have what is literally a orbital insertion of a fortress which if they were desperate enough, could redesign a ISV to do an orbital insertion given enough thrust.

[@boobah5643]

Not sure "You're not in Kansas anymore" really counts, since it's a _Wizard of Oz_ reference.

[@ptonpc]

@@MrCoolguy425 Why not just do orbital bombardment?. You're in their solar system, in orbit around their planet. You're the one with access to their asteroids and moons etc. You can explore and mine those, dropping rocks you've strip mined on the blue people without ever having to enter their atmosphere.

[@mikhailryzhov9419]

@@boobah5643 right, but it’s memorable in the new context.

[@mikhailryzhov9419]

@@MrCoolguy425 that should have been visible in the design. Being atmosphere capable requires fairing, heatshields, reinforced structure to deal with lateral forces of the wind, for example.

[@FelanLP]

funfact, Unobtainium is actually an existing term, used in engeniering for decades. It means a material that has all the flawless features you want it to have in that aplication. For example a frictionless and weightless pully would be made out of unobtanium.

[@alaeriia01]

Unobtainium is any material that has several highly desirable properties, along with the less-desirable one of not existing. Interestingly, this is not the first bad sci-fi movie to feature unobtainium as a plot point. This honor goes to the 2003 disaster flick _The Core,_ which is absolutely a so-bad-it's-good movie.

[@FelanLP]

@@alaeriia01 true, true. But aside from desirable or theoretical applications is unobtainium not unobtainable. Irl can it also mean any material you need for a given task but is not available in the quantities neccessary or at least rare enough so that you can't obtain it in/with a realistic amount of time/money. Means theoretically can any material become a sort-of-unobtanium in any unlucky situation.

[@caav56]

@@alaeriia01 At least in _The Core_ , it's mentioned it's called "unobtanium" because saying actual formula would take around a minute and it costs ungodly money to manufacture.

[@vonfaustien3957]

Historically its been used to refer to Aluminum during the early days of aviation before we figured out how to cheaply refine it. A latter Titanium during the cold war as Russia controlled the supply and the USA wanted it. The SR71 is kind of hilarious given the amount of black ops.shit and fake companies they had to use to get the Soviets to sell them the metal for their anti soviet spy plane

[@Carnefice]

Not only did you say "fun fact," which is despicable in of itself, but you combined it into an even more disgusting compound word.

[@rensin2]

The Venture Star isn't, as you claim, on screen for like 10 minutes. The interior is on screen for 60 seconds, much of which is showing the protagonist inside the cryochamber. The exterior is on screen for 50 seconds including the time we see it through the window of one of the shuttle-crafts. So the Venture Star is on screen for a total of 110 seconds.

[@eeHMFIC]

Did you pick up on the tone with which he said that comment? It was a dismissive overestimate

[@williamhare4456]

“Everything that flies crawls or squats in the mud wants to kill you and eat your eyes like juju beans” Wow I remembered a twenty word quote from a movie I haven’t seen in over half a decade.

[@tonygreenfield7820]

That's the only line I can remember as well. Plus something about Sigourney Weaver telling Scully...Sully?? Can't recall. Anyway telling him if he keeps playing with his ponytail tentacle he'll go blind.

[@CantankerousDave]

* Jujubes.

[@blackc1479]

@@tonygreenfield7820 I always liked her "benign neglect rant" plus the best reaction ever to getting shot "this is going to ruin my whole day" said with a generous helping of FFS...

[@jaythekid4728]

Lol I can recite the whole movie word for word. It’s my favorite movie 😂

[@jmdibonaventuro]

What movie is that? It sounds familiar.

[@gerfand]

being a student of Logistics I felt the pain when you said "350 tons" I was like "wait there must be a mistake here, no way he just said 350 tons"

[@laststand6420]

The faster you go you use exponentially more fuel. The amount of fuel required to push a single Kg to .7c would probably be over a quadrillion Joules.

[@ptonpc]

@@laststand6420 For cargo that is not time sensitive, it would make more sense to use a slower ship that can transport more cargo. The Macguffin doesn't need to come back on the ISVs. Also, with the amount of time they have been on Pandora and the 3d printing tech means they could have built a laser to push automated cargo ships back. If it was the same size as the one based around Earth, then you can do away with a lot of the propulsion mechanism since you can speed up and slow down using them. ISVs could wither be smaller or carry more cargo.

[@laststand6420]

@@ptonpc True, however we are talking about the same humans who lost to a bunch of blue cave men. Their logical thinking skills are questionable.

[@caav56]

@@ptonpc You don't think like a corp executive who'd cut down budget, intended for expanding domestic production capabilities of Alpha Centauri colony to get better infrastructure, for more bonuses to salary.

[@MonkeyJedi99]

@@caav56 But what would be cheaper. Refueling, crewing and maintaining the drives on all of those ships, or building one laser at Pandora and using the mass formerly dedicated to drives for cargo?

[@alphaecho3094]

I don't remember any dialog from the movie, but I remember colonel military man having one of the most marine reactions to having a tilt rotor stolen. That aside, imagine being a space faring civilization, and deciding to use an atmospheric bombing strategy like its 1942.

[@Zretgul_timerunner]

Whoever said corpo mercs operated smartly or marines for that matter

[@joshuamueller3206]

All I remember is something along the lines of the Navi girl chastising Jake for killing the "wolf" that just tried to rip his throat out. Like should have just manned up and died bro in her opinion.

[@mirrormonstere113]

Yeah they are a privatized security element. They do not have access to all the cool toys

[@joshuamueller3206]

@@mirrormonstere113 Maybe anything bigger would destroy the giant unobtanium vein?

[@mirrormonstere113]

@Joshua Mueller probaly not since it can conduct heat at enormous levels. They didn't have a dedicated bomber because they were not military. Just a private contractor.

[@pixelitemc106]

Honestly, there's one line I always remember. It's the helicopter girl pilot. "You're not the only one with a gun b*tch"

[@mouseblackcat5263]

"Hot Latina Helicopter Pilot" was the only character anyone cared about I think. O.o

[@stevenscott2136]

@@mouseblackcat5263 I liked the Colonel. Aggressive military types in movies always have amusing lines, at least since "Full Metal Jacket" set the standard.

[@mouseblackcat5263]

@@stevenscott2136 Liking or Enjoying is different than Caring About though. I dont think anyone was Sad to see the Colonel Skewered. Except maybe those rooting for the Smurfs to be blasted into Blue Goo. O.o

[@fredlandry6170]

Michelle Rodriguez was a hottie in that movie.

[@shred1894]

Letty from F&F in spess

[@Horesmi]

You don't need a Dyson sphere that would blot out a star for twelve ships. To fuel a Federation? Maybe. But in Avatar they probably make do with just one lonely station near the Sun that doesn't affect anything.

[@entropy11]

or just fusion with a hugely lossy process, so long as you can make enough in a year to fuel an expedition you're good.

[@Horesmi]

@@entropy11 I mean they're probably using it domestically in all sorts of ways too. But you are right, you can just do it on Earth.

[@kennyholmes5196]

Don't even need a full-on Dyson Sphere. A simple Dyson Swarm would suffice to fuel the Federation.

[@Horesmi]

@@kennyholmes5196 it's the same thing in this context. The video says "partial Dyson sphere", which really only makes sense as a Dyson swarm. My point is that at the scale we're talking it certainly won't dip the brightness of the Sun

[@LordOfNihil]

i seem to recall from the star trek technical manual that there was some magic black box in the ship, somewhere at the bottom of the secondary hull, labeled "antimatter converter". which is wonky when you realize that you need a massive particle accelerator to make antimatter. this was before lhc so it was made on a smaller accelerator at cern and used an even smaller one to decelerate and store the antihydrogen nuclei, the larger of the two is bigger than the enterprise. making antimatter on board would use more energy than the reaction using them and you still got to power the warp drive.

[@gregcampwriter]

Given how Cameron spent piles of cash on one of the most interesting ship stories in history and somehow missed the boat, it's no surprise that he'd write technical manuals and not bother to come up with a story for Avatar.

[@timothygooding9544]

it was a simple story but not a bad/nonexistent one

[@randomly_random_0]

go watch your 50th marvel movie with generic sotry

[@gregcampwriter]

@@randomly_random_0 Meh, I've seen two so far. I wasn't impressed.

[@JohnTrustworthy]

350 tons seems pretty realistic considering the Delta-V needed.

[@BalsapphicVinegar]

Yep, the rocket equation is a cruel tyrant

[@feldamar2]

Yes. Thank you. Honestly, it's REALLY scary that they have that much cargo. What kind of crazy shit is happening in Sol that they are willing to invest 2 dinosaur-killing asteroid levels of energy into a spaceship every year? for 77 years...

[@SacredCowShipyards]

Considering the total mass of the rest of the ship, discounting fuel, they're not playing by usual rules.

[@Juanixtec]

@@feldamar2 It's the sun man. they must have already begun the construction of a dyson swarm at least. That amounf of energy each year is impossible to obtain in any other way

[@carlosdgutierrez6570]

@@Juanixtec scooping the atmosphere of the gas giants for all that sweet deuterium isn't out of the equation too, I mean they are already using ungodly levels of energy and engineering, they might as well should have a way to tap into the energy inside the gas giants.

[@FelanLP]

So TLDR: This is actually a well thought out and through ship. At least as long as we see it as what it is: fiction.

[@kevinshepardson1628]

Tension being cheaper than compression makes some sense: Consider how lightweight and inexpensive high-tensile-strength ropes and cables are compared to what it would take to make a rigid compression member with a similar strength-to-weight ratio.

[@ComradePhoenix]

Also important to remember: not only does Pandora have a literal room-temperature superconductor, it also has naturally mass-produced carbon nanotubes (its literally in the wood!)

[@jefftheriault5522]

A ship going that far out and back needs to deal with tension, compression and at least localized periods of torque on it's structure, to the extent that metal fatigue can be dealt with on an economical basis before the next leg of the journey. This design takes the spindly out of atmosphere school too far.

[@SacredCowShipyards]

Sure, but the reality is that even orbital mechanics involve both.

[@Khymerion]

Speaking of radiators in space, the sci-fi wargame Renegade Legion had massive radiators being rather prominent on almost all the ships. It gave a very iconic fin shape to the tops and bottoms or sometimes in massive radiators that ran along the sides of warships of the setting. So there is at least a few other places that radiators exist in fiction.

[@jmdibonaventuro]

The game Terra Invicta does it too. It seems many Hard-Sci-Fi writers have come to the reality of the radiator.

[@henrikgiese6316]

Thought the radiators in Renegade Legions are actually part of the FTL system. Objects need to bleed off T-space radiation before they can jump again. However I bet there was at least a few people at FASA that was secretly thinking "Our ships got heat radiators!". :-D

[@Khymerion]

@@henrikgiese6316 True, you did have to worry about the T-Space Radiation... but... radiators are radiators!

[@henrikgiese6316]

@@Khymerion Exactly. And it doesn't hurt that the TOG capital ships are really neat looking!

[@LordOOTFD]

@@jmdibonaventuro Have you seen Children of a Dead Earth? It even lets you design your own radiators and nuclear thermal rockets.

[@sharpfang]

"One can not fill a vessel which is already full." "My vessel is empty. I'm not a scientist, I'm a soldier. From the jarheads clan." I'm pretty sure I didn't get the quote exactly but I got the gist.

[@theyeetus1428]

It was just cup not vessel.

[@BoraHorzaGobuchul]

The traitor f*k had no right to sully the name of the jarhead clan like that.

[@tarmaque]

My truck-trailer combo generally hauls between 20 and 25 tons. At 25 tons I'm overloaded, but try to tell the loaders that. The ships we load generally (every one is different) can carry between 30,000 and 38,000 tons of cargo. An average ship is 30 meters wide by 180 meters long, but due to differences in hull shape that doesn't always equate to the number of tons it can haul. Bulk hauling freighters are fairly fragile, and most of them are retired after about 15 years. The ship we're starting to load tomorrow is a tiny one, at 175m x 29m and can haul just under 32,000 tons. (All scrap steel. About half shredded sheet metal and the other half heavy metal scrap which is stuff that won't go through the shredder easily.) It's 14 years old and ready to be scrapped itself. I hope the cranes work.

[@boobah5643]

"Bulk hauling freighters are fairly fragile, and most of them are retired after about 15 years." _looks at the Great Lakes fleet, where most of the bulk haulers are pushing fifty_

[@MonkeyJedi99]

@@boobah5643 There is a difference in wear between sailing in fresh water on large lakes and salt water in oceans. As the Dockmaster has stated in another video, salt water is liquid hate.

[@tarmaque]

@@boobah5643 Difference between salt water ships and fresh water ships. You should see a 10 year old salt water bulk hauler ship. Six layers of paint, yet still mostly rust brown stains right down to the water line. They tend to break in half if they get much older than 15.

[@vyneshindenmc6181]

The Sky-crane performing ship in the sequel is called ISV MANIFEST DESTINY

[@SacredCowShipyards]

You have to admit that's at least a little funny.

[@ChaserYohmoi]

Interesting note that on the way back they are actually missing some weight, in the form of the 2 shuttles, those get left behind. Which makes the question why would they need to keep bringing them 🤔, and why hasn't an orbital facility been constructed at this point either it's been 77 years

[@michaelpettersson4919]

Exactly. There is no way those shuttlecraft are going to function as lifeboats in an emergency halway through the trip anyway.

[@nobodyimportant2470]

The lack of infrastructure when they have been doing this for 77 years is laughable. Build a big honking laser in the system to send the ISVs home with and the massive anti-mater engines can be replaced with cargo capacity. Add a refinery in system for the unobtanium and the value of the shipments goes up yet again as you are shipping refined metal VS impure ore.

[@caav56]

There's an orbital facility - a fusion-powered antimatter factory in orbit of Polyphemus, to which end-of-life shuttles are assigned to to serve for gas-scooping, until they fail from overuse. That's also why each ISV brings replacement shuttles - gotta keep the factory that makes interstellar-grade fuel goign.

[@hurmangaines7858]

You would need a planetary type one civilization on Pandora to produce heavy solar industries. We haven’t even done it yet two centuries after industrialization. Also 77 years is less than a blink of an eye in civilization time. They basically just got off the boat.

[@jaythekid4728]

@@hurmangaines7858 also keep in mind that Hells Gate is a mining colony. It has a 3D printing factory but lacks the ability to manufacture complex components like circuits and electrical wiring and mother boards which get delivered from earth.

[@NinJestre]

Every time this man says, "but THAT's another story" I want him to tell that story

[@noahdoyle6780]

I can forgive a lot for radiators.

[@SacredCowShipyards]

[deleted] right?

[@Glitch_Online]

i want a movie about the 1st ship to make the trip.

[@dohnjoe9211]

"This is Papa Dragon. I want this mission high and tight. I want to be home for dinner."

[@detritus23]

Te shielding is based on the Whipple Shield concept used by NASA comet probes. It is a multilayer multi material shield. The mass issue could be explained by the design of the ship, which couldn’t really support extreme masses and perform all the required maneuvers unless the mass was somehow separated from the hull during maneuvers. Ironically, it seems that a better option would have been for the ships to be oscillators, with the engine and sail only being used to restore lost velocity during system transits at either end of the oscillation. Oh, btw, “unobtanium” was the nickname given to titanium during the Cold War. The major source was the Soviet Union and getting it in quantity literally required CIA involvement. The term is now used for any hard to get material.

[@noahversusacat9855]

(correct me if i am wrong here) James Cameron once had musical expert or something and had them to make the most *alien and exotic type of music that literally nobody has ever heard of before* and so that music expert did *EXACTLY* just that with millions of dollars poured into achieving this into making *alien and exotic type of music that literally nobody has ever heard of before* and they did this by getting inspiration from cultures outside of the usual western styles of music, when James Cameron got to listen on to the final product he found that the music was not to his liking and had some other people to make music more familiar because to him that music that was presented to him was too *alien and a exotic type of music that literally nobody has ever heard of before*

[@caav56]

I wish we could hear this original music anywhere.

[@SacredCowShipyards]

And he never released it. The dick.

[@jameson1239]

Yep

[@brz757]

The story is eerily similar to Call me Joe by Poul Anderson. A paraplegic scientist controls a remote artificially made alien body and ends up imprinting on the alien body and abandoning his human husk. Its a really interesting story, read it in some kind of old sci fi short story anthology decades ago.

[@baahcusegamer4530]

“You are not in Kansas anymore. You are on pandora.” - literally the only quotable line of the film.

[@vyneshindenmc6181]

There are plenty full lol

[@hughtonne1775]

I feel the movies presence could have been improved by the presence of a second culture of Na'vi, possesing flying Meso-American Pyramids. Because we see floating islands on the way in, imagine an advanced cutlre shaping those stones into flying fortresses and using the weird Dragon birds as cavalry to dominate and enslave the earthbound primatives below. Worshiping the Unobtanium as metal from the gods and using it to perfom magic rituals to call down thunder and lightning. Eat my shorts James Cameron, You spent millions developing a modified musical stlye for the Na'Vi, which earned several music theorist and anthropologists their Phd's fortheir efforts, And only used ONE SONG out of the entire thing, but couldn't be bothered to think about the impact Flying Mountains would have on a culture living beneath them.

[@caav56]

God damn it, that sounds awesome.

[@hughtonne1775]

@@caav56 I know right?

[@sellerim6847]

Why does everyone thing they are better than James? Give the man a break,jeez.

[@hughtonne1775]

@@sellerim6847 I'm not better than him, I'm just very angry with his work right now.

[@Taronyu_SVK]

Building from stone is forbidden for the Na'vi. By Eywa. Don't worry, he think about it a lot. You just don't have a full picture.

[@fredlandry6170]

“In cryo you don’t dream at all it doesn’t feel like six years more like a fifth of tequila and an ass kicking”.

[@TalenGryphon]

I remember a couple things watching it. The Colonel because he was a tenacious badass, Sigourney Weaver because she's a badass. Those two being the only ones who had any decent lines, eg:"They're just pissing on our heads without even the courtesy of calling it rain!" And I remember nerding out over some of the technical details, and going back through movie documents to verify my guesses. The Venture Star's glowing radiators at the start of the movie truly impressed me because as someone who has created ships for sci-fi stories I'd already heard about and thought extensively about the heat disposal/ radiation problem since before Avatar came out The other being the atmosphere of Pandora contains Hydrogen Sulfide and that's why it kills you (Figured out that one based solely on it's effects and my background In water treatment.) Impressed the heck out of my then girlfriend

[@HereticalKitsune]

Avatar was visually stunning and beautiful, but that's about it.

[@rowangallagher4579]

It’s decently well thought out around the peripherals and then just… a boring story.

[@kicksanddude]

That's pretty harsh I thought the character development was great for a TV show especially Zuko. Oh, are you talking about that movie with the blue guys? That looked cool.

[@shadows4400]

Might be a stupid question but would it make sense for the crew to request a large amount of food items when around pandora so they can "Bulk up" on easy(ish) to access food so that when they are returning to earth they have a larger body fat content to rely on when traveling for the next 7~ years?

[@bryancorrell3689]

Given that the main limiting factor is 'cargo' mass, not really. Calories could be stored more densely as some sort of nutraloaf than as human fat. You'd actually want your crew to be on the small side so they'd be less mass themselves and require less mess devoted to calories.

[@stevenscott2136]

@@bryancorrell3689 Smaller crew also require less oxygen, water, etc.

[@realhorrorshow8547]

I have to wonder if it's really necessary to have only four flight crew and euthanise the passengers in case of emergency. It sounds dramatic, but almost anything that could go wrong in interstellar space is going to make euthanasia redundant.

[@LordOOTFD]

@@realhorrorshow8547 Most of the things that can go wrong at .7c will result in an energy release that makes the Tsar Bomba look like a firecracker, so that's an understatement.

[@SacredCowShipyards]

With only 2-4 people awake at any given time, it's probably easier just to have ridiculously dense foodstuffs for them. Not necessarily pleasant, but easier.

[@lordhefman]

I only remember Avatar 1 because I figured I could have taught the Navi about defense in depth given the equipment the humans have. I would have been the classic evil alien at that point but it would be fun.

[@deusexaethera]

The story "Humanity Lost" is probably right up your alley.

[@natesmodelsdoodles5403]

honestly I only remember it for three reasons. 1. I never understood why they needed the avatar bodies in the first place (and I didn't like them anyway, the whole idea just never worked for me) 2. I always thought the na'vi were WAY too attractive for nobody to have thought of "relations" for literally decades 3. Considering the situation we see on Earth (including mass extinctions, overcrowding, and a crematorium with capacity only surpassed by facilities intended to handle a mass genocide) and reason #2, HOW THE HELL DID PANDORA NOT HAVE A PROPER REVOLUTION FOR SO LONG?!

[@ghost4144]

@@natesmodelsdoodles5403 1. The avatar bodies were more of a way of negotiations. A negotiation works better if the people have a common trait to latch on too. This can be as simple as the color of your skin. 2. There almost certainly were "relations" but they probably didn't last long and most likely resulted in some form of corporate punishment, maybe a rotation back to earth or an execution. Also, the vast majority of the time the two spices were separated making it difficult for those interactions to happen. 3. Its actually a reference to General Custer and his last stand at the Battle of Little Bighorn. There were many "revolutions" that happened before General Custer's last stand, but none were successful. This is almost certainly the case for this universe as well. Many small attempts but none were successful.

[@Neuttah]

Regarding the antimatter production: I think it's another off-screen thing like the solar sail, but they ditch the shuttles before the return trip, and use them to scoop charged particles trapped in the gas giant's magnetic field.

[@BalsapphicVinegar]

Yep, that’s what I read as well.

[@Syngraphaeor]

Oh, you want a quote? "You are not in Kansas anymore. You are on Pandora. Respect that fact, ladies and gentlemen, every second of every day..."

[@joemck74]

The best thing about Avatar is that a person called Proximal Flame used the Na'vi as the inspiration for a much cooler race, the Verrisha, in his awesome 'Last Angel' books.

[@dennnx]

TLA FAN SPOTTED LETS GO

[@Sorry_2026]

My brother!

[@dennnx]

prox is a god,my best 3d work is my rendition of nemesis

[@joemck74]

@@dennnx Any links? I've been trying to do some sketches of Nemesis, the Fates, and Allyria in Krita but my skills aren't good enough yet.

[@joemck74]

@@dennnx BURN WITH US

[@toptiergaming6900]

If I was in change of re-taking Pandora I would take that photon lazer on a comicly large ISV and use it for glassing

[@Coldwater-sw6me]

Now, that was way more positive then I expected. Sad thing about at least the first avatar was the enormously huge amount of background worldbuilding Cameron just dropped in the process of making the movie. To use a metaphor, if a stone mason would have worked this way, he would have used a rare block in size of the Madison square garden in order to craft something in the size of a cup of coffee. In addition to it, he forgot the coffee altogether… Just from a visual perspective, I really like the design of the ship… until they used it for in atmosphere flight in the sequel… sad story for something that would have been a masterpiece on paper.

[@EGRJ]

I'm pretty sure those were different or modified ships designed to act as skyhooks.

[@Coldwater-sw6me]

@@EGRJ If they haven’t invented any anti gravity tec between 1 and 2 these things will plummet to the ground in the moment the planets gravity gets a hold on them.

[@caav56]

@@Coldwater-sw6me Not as long as their engines keep firing

[@sellerim6847]

???

[@Coldwater-sw6me]

@@sellerim6847 !!!

[@anamericancelt6534]

"You're not in Kansas anymore. You are on Pandora." "Shut up and bank right!" "We are mated before Eywa." "It is very hard to fill a cup that has already been filled." "Hey, check it. Meals on Wheels." "Aw man, that is just wrong."

[@soleenzo893]

A few bits of info: -There is or are a spare sail stowed in the cargo section in case the first is damaged. It can also be deployed manually by the crew in case of emergency, in that case, the 2 other crews (3 crew rotates during the 5ish year apparent journey time) are awoken from cryosleep. Deploying such a fragile and large sail "by hand" sounds crazy but i supose they would have some robotic help. normally sails are deployed/ stowed by bots. Funnily enough, the fact humans can make such a powerful laser array necessary for this sail makes the antimatter ship look ultra low tech ahaha. - Radiators, not heatsinks (the heatsink is the liquid inside the radiators) glow for up to 2 weeks after the half year arrival or departure burn. - Concerning the "low" cargo capacity, you have to understand it's not just carrying 350t of cargo, this is in addition to : 200 passengers + 3x 4 person crew shifts and artificial gravity pods + 2 VALKYRIE SHUTTLES. this is just on the way to pandora, on the way back it only carries Unobtainium and people that have finished their rotation or execs that need heavy medical attention. your points of comparison on earth like trucks or boats make no sense. Space Travel, met alone Interstellar travel is orders of magnitude harder, more expensive and more dangerous than on earth, therefore carrying capacities are orders of magnitude lower. the ship is a kilometer long but it's volume is tiny since it's litterally a few pods on a string, and everything has to be protected agaisnt radiations, micrometeorites, temperature controlled etc. 350t per ship plus passengers, shuttles etc sounds like a good deal to me. If you want more info on the ISVs look at their page on Atomic rockets, the reference site for anything Aerospace (scroll down to find the ISVs): www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/slowerlight3.php Oh my, wait to see these things land and torch pandora as they do it lol. Then the whole Gamma ray problem becomes even more weird.

[@rensin2]

One of your numbers here is wrong. It would appear that your source naively calculated the acceleration time using Newtonian physics and assumed that acceleration time is equal to final speed over acceleration (t=v/a). This doesn't work well when relativistic speeds are involved. If a ship were to accelerate at 1.5Gs to 0.7c the Proper Acceleration Time (acceleration time as measured on the ship) would be 0.56 years, and 0.63 years Coordinate Time (time as measured on Earth). Not 0.45 years. Obviously, the same applies to deceleration time. The whole trip would be 6.77 years Coordinate Time (time as measured on Earth), and 5.05 years Proper Time (time as measured on the ship), so that part is about right.

[@smiddlehurst1]

Having to deploy the reserve sail with a handful of crew sounds like one of the worst gigs in space travel outside of the Warhammer universe! No pressure lads but if you mess this one up we're basically reduced to trying to flag down the ISV We Brake For No-One that's around a year behind us....

[@soleenzo893]

@@rensin2 ah, my bad, i just wrote the number off the top of my head, its been a few days since i read the atomic rockets page lol. maybe u was mixibg up the nimbrrs of the ISVs with the Original Valkyrie concept.

[@michaelarreola4201]

@@smiddlehurst1 You'll probably end up rear-ending the ISV The Closer You Get The Slower I Drive in front of you first.

[@stevenscott2136]

@@rensin2 Do you just multiply by the relativity factor (1/sqrt(1-v2/c2), if I recall correctly), or is it more complex than that since the speed is constantly changing?

[@Ocean_Man_]

One thing i find absurd in Avatar is that humans make such bad tactical decisions. Like, instead of performing orbital bombardment on the moon, which will cause no human casualties whatsoever, they were like: "Nah, i think ground assault is cooler, it might be more expensive and more risky, but still, its way cooler." JUST FREAKING BOMB THE POLES OF THE MOON WITH THERMONUCLEAR BOMBS AND MAKE IT FLOOD ITS NOT THAT HARD. But they even screwed up the whole ground assault. Instead of laying several different bases on the Pandora, they simply chose to concentrate on ONE SINGLE FREAKING BASE. They even said they came for Unobtanium right? Well, Unobtanium is underground so they could have just obliterated whole surface of Pandora and start digging underground. Well i mean the movie was great, but it seems to me that Navi are having too big plot armor.

[@andrewcoulthard-clark]

Spacedock did a magnificent job covering the ISV and its design, with some valuable insights. Hope that helps.

[@wolfcraft484]

the whole photon sail thing is actually the plan for humanity's first interstellar probes (well probes specifically launched with interstellar travel in mind) though only hauling a small cubesat not a giant vessel and i think the antimatter drive is an actual theoretical drive in the real world might have since been defunkt in terms of the math and physics

[@Zretgul_timerunner]

Ah yes the laser guided plasma engine transport ship turned to landing craft using planet destroying amounts of energy to power itself. And this is one of the saner parts of this universe

[@SacredCowShipyards]

Unfortunately.

[@mowgli2071]

9:30 "I'ma firin' ma lazer!" Cue Vexare - "Firing". Yes it's dubstep, but I have warm memories around the time when it was produced

[@raabaddler5802]

there is something about a morning safety brief that always sets my mind at ease

[@JinKee]

3:18 "I will blow a hole in their racial memory so deep that they will not come within a thousand clicks of this place." James Cameron writes bad guys best.

[@merafirewing6591]

Would've been very simple to just Vietnam/Iraq War the whole planet, then no Na'Vi. Besides low tech doesn't usually win against high tech.

[@elitemook4234]

The fact the humans didn't just push a rock at the planet and pick the element from the ashes demonstrates extreme restraint on their part.

[@vonfaustien3957]

To qoute a good James Cameron movie I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit it's the only way to be sure

[@merafirewing6591]

@@vonfaustien3957 and then the Na'Vi will get the message that the "Sky People" ain't here to screw around.

[@mementomori7825]

Meh, rods from god.

[@michaelpettersson4919]

@@elitemook4234 That is the thing, unless Pandora continue to produce unobtainium for that chain of ships to pick up they may just do that. As such, the ore must flow. Since Hometree was destroyed they may as well mine the deposits under it. And why do they not have a refinery on Pandora? Refine the material locally and you save half the weight!

[@theyeetus1428]

22:41 No, 40 tons is correct. That is how much weight is *legal* in a lot of places, the limit of what a semi tractor is capable of pulling far exceeds that.

[@madrabbit9007]

The tiny cargo capacity does seem silly. The only way I can make sense of it is perhaps in the rotation phase its the most mass they can stabilize with their existing engines going at .7C? With more cargo they may need larger maneuvering thrusters which would throw the math of everything else into chaos. Astrophysics is hard.

[@nobodyimportant2470]

Adding to this they are taking raw ore back to Earth. The value doubles when you refine it which means that it's mass is likely greatly reduced by the process so set up a refinery on Pandora and send the finished product in the tiny cargo capacity.

[@boobah5643]

@@nobodyimportant2470 It's possible the 'refining' process requires materials that mass much more than the unobtanium and that they've yet to source in Alpha Centauri.

[@caav56]

@@boobah5643 Or a fuckton of energy, which is not exactly in high supply around Polyphemus (most of harvested fusion fuel from gas giant is burned to make antimatter, that'll get used to refuel ISVs for the trip back).

[@massimocole9689]

The main factor is the absurd amount of fuel you need to slow down *and* speed back up to 70% the speed of light. Even with really efficient antimatter engines you're luck if the ship is less than 90% fuel. Add in the engines, the radiators the structure etc and having 350 tons left over for cargo is frankly incredible.

[@Stogz]

Just saw the Battleship Texas fundraiser link. Thank you so much for supporting the effort!!! Been following your channel for several years but just now noticed. Thank you also for your sense of humor and covering all the current plus future technology.

[@SacredCowShipyards]

Thank you for reminding me to do a follow-up on that. Managed to raise a fair bit.

[@SSand4]

The ship itself probably has a much greater raw cargo capacity, but I'd imagine most of that being taken up by the fuel it needs to propel itself back to Earth from Alpha Centauri. And the economic impact of that much valuable metal being dumped into the economy might be exactly why they never built a laser on the other side of the trip...because if they did, then the ship wouldn't _need_ fuel or even engines, and would be able to carry just that much more Unobtanium on every trip.

[@StormClaw2]

"If there is a Hell, You May want to go there for some R&R after a tour on Pandora" - Miles Quaritch

[@mikehenthorn1778]

If I remember from a earlier SCS video quote " if you are not cheating, you are not trying"

[@blackc1479]

iirc also the motto of MHI....one of em at least

[@tssteelx]

I'm just waiting for Cameron to cross over avatar with aliens.

[@michaelpettersson4919]

He could if it had not been established that they had not encountered anyone else before.

[@warblerblue]

Sigourney Weaver would be playing dual roles if there was Avatar/Aliens crossover.

[@mshort7087]

Have Rob Zombie direct it and I’ll buy tickets for everyone I know😂

[@tssteelx]

@@mshort7087 done and done. You know i bet he'd make a good alien universe movie.

[@blackc1479]

@@michaelpettersson4919 or the company won't ADMIT they've ever had contact lol. It is an interesting idea, xenomorphs vs essentially a sentient planet? Gotta give it to eiwa on that one.

[@LoneCoyoteSkip]

As an avid science fiction reader I always wondered why you want to put troops on the ground when you have the orbitals, just drop rocks till nothing is left.

[@Staladus]

I mean its like immidiately escalating the conflict to nukes when a conventional invasion does the same thing at a lower cost without escalating the war to world ending scales. Also I'd imagine any interstellar civilization you attack would have pretty good asteroid defence capabilities.

[@robertblume2951]

@@Staladus as Afghanistan proves ground invasions are not cheaper.

[@Staladus]

@@robertblume2951 That is different, Im talking about the equivalent of 2 nuclear nations flinging nukes around like its nothing. You have to start lower on the escalation ladder before going straight to using WMDs

[@robertblume2951]

@@Staladus You think ground invasion of an installer power isn't akin to starting a nuclear war? You think if China occupied California we wouldn't nuke Beijing?

[@Staladus]

@@robertblume2951 No?? Thatd still be a conventional war. Nuking beijing would be stupid since theyd nuke the us too. Its a lose-lose situation when nukes are involved.

[@timothy705]

“Who’s got my goddamn cigarette? Guys! What’s wrong with this picture!.. Thank you.”

[@EnigmaverseElysium]

“Everything that crawls, flies, or squats in the mud wants to kill you, and eat your eyes for jujubes” - quartich 😂😂😂 not sure if thats the exact line, but I remember my brothers and I laughing when we watched it as kids.

[@richardscathouse]

So like earth then

[@musicalaviator]

Cameron: So we're gonna have these awesome almost realistic spacecraft for interstellar travel. and gonna park it in orbit. It can carry about the same amount as a C-5 transport, and it is very delicate, tethered tractor configuration along a long spindle with the engines pulling at one end, and dumping waste heat into a heat sink radiator. ... AWESOME SHIP DUDE! .... and 13 years later we're going to land one in an atmosphere and gravity well. WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK

[@SacredCowShipyards]

This. All of this.

[@christophermitchell7001]

An Aldrin Cycler is a really neat idea and one that NASA and a few others are considering for a realistic way of moving cargo back and forth from Earth to the Moon and/or Mars. I suppose this would be an example of a Pandora Cycler.

[@CantankerousDave]

The difference is that the "space hotels" in the Aldrin Cycler concept don't stop. You accelerate to match its speed, dock, and undock to decelerate when you're approaching Mars or whatever. That won't work at relativistic speeds.

[@Neuttah]

@CantankerousDave Cyclers are just for the volume. Crew/passengers, cargo, and consumables still have their energy cost with one.

[@absalomdraconis]

@@Neuttah : Most cargo doesn't belong on a cycler, it takes a slow boat instead. Consumables mostly should be recycled on cyclers. Basically all that should be moved on and off of cyclers is crew/passengers, personal belongings, resupply (to compensate for what crew & passengers _aquire,_ not for simply used consumables), upgrades _to_ the cycler, and the various vehicles used to support all of that. The bulk of "things that aren't fastened down" on a cycler will none the less stay on the cycler.

[@DJXelto1997]

Man I hope nobody tells him about the Hail Mary and the wonders of astrophage. Because he’d go crazy.

[@SacredCowShipyards]

That is... a story.

[@penelopeskaggs5563]

Quote from memory: "I was a marine. a...uh...warrior! of the.......jarhead....clan..."

[@beastboy0078]

Professional Trucker here. 40 Ton or 80,000 LBS combined. truck + trailer + cargo. without permits. there are special trucks with alot of upgrades and additional equipment that can Haul extra weight. without getting to indepth in this. I've heard and seen a truck Combination upto 1 Million LBS. With special permits (Duhh)

[@sawney_bean]

Despite the science thing going freaky i cant deny this vessel has a fucking beautiful design

[@SacredCowShipyards]

Certainly captures "near future humie".

[@unclestone8406]

"The king is dead, long live the king..." /deletesys32 ... wait, that was "Dances with Wolves." Goddammit.

[@almirria6753]

Ok, then I just call up the NSEA Protector [paging Mr. Tim Allen...paging Mr. Tim Allen, you are being summoned]

[@CMacK1294]

"Sophont" My Traveller senses are tingling.

[@noahjacoby-twigg6488]

"that's one big damn tree" "or what, ranger rick? you gonna shoot me?" "I could do that" I also half remember the speech the colonel gives before the big attack, because it involved the phrase "blow a crater in their collective memory"

[@ace_ofchaos9292]

If made a lot of money was enough to say this movie was good than Michael Bay is the next Spielberg.

[@chriswhite3692]

The VS exhaust aimed at the N'avi would have been like dropping nukes on them every second.

[@MrViki60]

the final response to the na'vi question

[@Jackelmandingo]

The 747- 400ER weighs 455 tons full. The ISV have two Valkyrie SSTO (Single Stage To Orbit)-TAV-37 B-class shuttlecraft..... that each one is four time the size of the old Space shuttle. The old Space shuttles could loft 50,000lbs of cargo to orbit. The Valkyrie cargo rating is 25 tons! That's 50,000lbs lol. And it runs on fusion power. Also the Valkyrie is way bigger that the 747-400ER. Oh and I used to have this 70's SciFi short story collection book the Na'Vi come from, but don't remember the name of the story. But you can never forget a Vietnam war allegory story about big blue monkey cat people with bows and arrows fighting the bad earth men.

[@leightonkekuewa1545]

I had to think about it for a second but, “You are not in Kansas anymore.”

[@spectreandromedus8661]

"Oh no Papa Smurf! What are you doing to that poor flying horse thing?!" Oh wait that wasn't a line in Dances with Smurfs or Avatar whatever. That's what I was yelling at the screen

[@sachafriderich3063]

quaritch: "you might wanna go get some R&R to hell after you come back from Pandora"

[@26th_Primarch]

I kinda hope that you do a video on the abjectly absurd idea of the Bolo "tank" if you could call a literal self-aware mobile megastructure of starship grade guns, armor, missiles, repair drones that also has the capability to fucking fly with anti-gravity tech.

[@boobah5643]

Hey, Bolos don't carry starship-grade weaponry. It's too short-ranged for that. Mind, they do hit harder than most starship weaponry, their specialized transport barges allow them to fire at anything in range during transport, and any mainline Bolo past a Mark XX _does_ have the range to hit targets in orbit...

[@caav56]

@@boobah5643 Mk 34 even has a dedicated Hellbore derivative (Hellrail) with 90MT TNT yield per shot _specifically_ to deal with orbital targets.

[@Daniel-wy2kx]

Tbh my whole issue with the movie is if humanity is really in that dire of a spot, why not just drop chemical weapons all over major population centers? Like that home tree

[@motokid6008]

I believe using the ISVs as landers is them working towards that. Hoping Avatar 3 explores more of the human side. I want to see the status of Earth.

[@captainstroon1555]

The thing about Avatar is that it's a worldbuilding first movie and not a storytelling first movie. Everyone forgets the story, but everyone remembers various details about the world. The Na'vi, the mind transfer thingy, the funny spinning lizards, and so on. That's also the reason why the Venture Star is so incredibly fleshed out and maybe the most realistic interstellar spaceship in any sci-fi blockbuster. And as a fan of worldbuilding, I'm absolutely here for it. Literature and cinema class has always thought that the story should come first and everything else, the plot, the visuals, the dialogue and of course the worldbuilding is secondary. This lead to there being far more movies, series and books with decent stories than with notable worldbuilding. But Avatar shows that fleshed out worldbuilding can draw just as much of an audience as amazing storytelling can. Not that I don't enjoy a good story. Of course I do. Let's hope the sequel delivers on both fronts.

[@taragwendolyn]

True... but the world building has aged like milk. The room-temperature superconductor, unobtanium? Since the movie came out we've come up with superconductors that work at temperatures that humans live at. It's not room temperature yet, but the hottest superconductor we have in 2022 is at -23'C (about -10 in Freedom Units). Given how quickly the material science has advanced, we're likely to see an actual room temperature superconductor well before the year that Avatar takes place in, which removes the main maguffin from the story. :)

[@vonfaustien3957]

@@taragwendolyn thats why the sequel is about hunting space whales. Wait that's worse. I mean once you get a sample of Whale brain stuff you'd think synthesizing it in a lab would be cheaper than a decades long space mission and whaling operation on a hostile planet

[@captainstroon1555]

@@taragwendolyn Good old Zeerust has always been the bane of trying to predict the future

[@absalomdraconis]

@@taragwendolyn : We actually do have room-temp superconductors now, but they have to be kept inside a diamond vice or the like to maintain that property.

[@taragwendolyn]

@@absalomdraconis I like living in the future, most of the time. :)

[@glitterboy2098]

design wise it is pretty probable. the main issue is the exhaust.. there really needs to be some sort of radiation shielding between the rocket exhaust streams and the passenger and cargo area. or the entire crew would be dead the moment they fire up. a shadow shield would probably be the best bet.. hang a thick bit of radiation locking material on the string near the the engines, then move the passenger and cargo area way back so that small block creates a large conical gap in the emitted radiation. so yeah, the main issue is the fact the thing should be a good 10x longer, most of that being tether.

[@rifleman2c997]

I can quote the Warhammer 40k crossover fan fiction.

[@SacredCowShipyards]

I've not read it, but I guarantee it's better than the movies.

[@giacomomadini7244]

we are not in Kansas any more 10/10 best frase of the film history

[@breadm8101]

Honestly they would've fixed the problem of the Navi by bombing the planet from orbit. They would've probably fixed the air too by getting rid of excess oxygen and put more CO2 and nitrogen in the atmosphere. The humans are the good guys 🗿

[@skyeplus]

"Put a human on the Moon tones" were metric tonnes. Design was in metric, computers used metric. Reading panels were in imperial.

[@SacredCowShipyards]

Yeah, and then the same (naturally governmental) organization was so busy converting their units they hit Mars when they were supposed to miss it.

[@skyeplus]

Yes, indeed.

[@KellyWu04]

Despite some of the strange parts of the ship, still one of the best designs in 10 million+ USD Hollywood.

[@extra_crispy4958]

"You're not in Kansas anymore" - General What's-His-Face

[@SacredCowShipyards]

Colonel One Of The Two Good Characters In The Movie.

[@carminedesanto6746]

Great visuals ..and a WTF story line

[@jackal_loaf7232]

"So here I am. . . Doing science" relatable

[@atomicskull6405]

Those ducted fan gunships were totally unrealistic even if you could build an articulated fan assembly that large that could change it's thrust and vector fast enough to stabilize the aircraft it'd still be massively outperformed by a cyclic collective pitch controlled rotor. Because cyclic and collective pitch mixing requires far less mechanical leverage for the same amount of thrust and vector and a single larger slower rotor is more efficient that two smaller higher RPM ones (which is why tiltrotors are less efficient in hover than a helicopter) Also, even tiltrotors use CCPM in hover though only in the longitudinal axis in the lateral axis they use collective pitch difference like a CH-47 but flipped 90 degrees. It might have been possible to just say they were using a CCPM system with a ducted rotor, except the FX artists actually show them tilting the fan assemblies when maneuvering. I suppose they might have some collective pitch system for longitudinal maneuvering, but that still doesn't make any sense to tilt the fans for axial stability. It might make sense for fast forward flight to tilt them both forward a little for improved efficiency. However they show them moving back and forth for stability during hover which means there's clearly no longitudinal cyclic control of the blade pitch, they wouldn't need to move like that if there were.

[@SacredCowShipyards]

I have so many words about the vertibirds that supported that nightmare WIG craft that... well, that's going to be an episode, isn't it?

[@xzardas541]

It's an ugly planet. A hippie planet! 3 seconds after arriving: Pilot, you see those savages?? Yes Sir! I don't want to. Yes Sir!

[@phalanx3803]

the cargo might just be limited by how much there mining. the mine might no produce more then 300 tonne of UT a year so there isn't really a need to upgrade the cargo capacity the ship may be able to pull more weight but theres no sense in putting in more cargo hold space if you can't fill that space with product. its like Australian trucking you not gonna hire a road train with 3 trailers if you only gonna fill 1 of those 3 trailers.

[@SirFloofy001]

6:30 which is ironic as it also states that the magnets/superconductors used to funnel the beams of radioactive death out of the engines to create thrust in a relatively safe manor without blasting every inch of the ship with radiation, are made of unobtainium. Where did they get the unobtainium required to make the engines to power the ship to bring humans to pandora to discover unobtainium?

[@ashleyhamman]

The point about tensile strength being useful and producing a tractor configuration makes sense in my head. It's the difference between the metal and/or concrete tower on a suspension bridge, and the cables holding a road up.

[@SacredCowShipyards]

While that makes sense for static loads, given the dynamic stresses involved in even just orbiting a planet...

[@IRMentat]

never cared about the plot in avatar, it was a CGI 3D festival with combat, explosions and some mopey traitor who decided he liked blue catgirls with USB ports more than he did saving the entirety of humanity. the HISHE said it best, corpo-guy "didn't you tell the smurfs about our great need for unexplainium?" dumbass "no i kinds hooked up with the catgirl and uuuuuuh"

[@MarcWeavers]

"killed for the paper in his wallet" or "his life was ended for the paper in his wallet", been a while since i watched it ive never watched Fern Gully, or Pocahontis, (or any other movie with a similar story that i can remember of the top of my head), so it was new to me, with the exception of knowing about the native american land/assets theft thing, we as humans generally take what we want when we can.

[@alexandremagalhaes1774]

How the fuck does the structure not hold up compression????? One large impact on the shields during transit and that thing will crumple like the worlds most expensive crouton

[@SacredCowShipyards]

This is probably why the shields were wholly disconnected from the main structure, and basically functioned as really expensive, large ablation systems.

[@alexandremagalhaes1774]

@@SacredCowShipyards fair, although just from the flip and burn the trusses will come under pretty big loads of both compression and tension from the lateral forces

[@taitano12]

Given how expensive it is to make and safely contain antimatter, I imagine a lot of that $14T would go right back into the program. In the meantime, we'd need hundreds of kilotonnes of the, probably sarcastically named, Unobtainium to revamp Earth's infrastructure. From fusion reactors to maglev vehicles, such a substance would potentially rescue Humanity and the Earth. So, even as the economy colapses, it would faded in importance. It would still be absolutely essential, but its collapse wouldn't lead to the nightmare it does now when economies collapse.

[@neves5083]

"because that thing cos something something million dollars a gram" everything I can remember

[@barrybend7189]

In what way the humans being both frozen and microwaved or a massive radiation storm in Alpha Centauri B?

[@Coldwater-sw6me]

How do you want your human? Rare, please…

[@SacredCowShipyards]

* waves manipulators * Magic!

[@IshijimaKairo]

The 2nd movie awakened my dormant Xenophobia, and now I will purge Xenos on sight.

[@Lizardsareprettycool]

”It all changed when the fire nation attacked”

[@SacredCowShipyards]

I'll allow it.

[@ShuRugal]

I don't think I can put together a 5-word-or-longer quote from memory from any movie i've watched.

[@SacredCowShipyards]

... huh. Not even "Paint me like one of your French women"? Or "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn"?

[@ShuRugal]

@@SacredCowShipyards when you mention them, I remember them, but I am absolutely horrible at coming up with pop culture trivia on the spot.

[@SacredCowShipyards]

Fair 'nuff.

[@ShuRugal]

@@SacredCowShipyards but yes, your point that Avatar was more memorable as an immersive *experience* than as a masterful screenplay is well received.