AngryTurtle

As with pretty much everyone else in the universe I watched Avatar the movie, going in I knew that most of the movie I would spend shutting off my brain to James Cameron repeatedly socking science right in the groin. What I didn't expect was a near carbon copy of the script of pocahontas with millions of dollars worth of cgi facelifts done to the indians and a "everyone lived happily ever after" ending slapped on for good measure.

I thought it would be fun to make a thread dedicated to Avatar and "If i was the director" changes in the plot or just blatant scientific blunders or grievances you have. If you loved it go ahead, I understand the movie wasn't designed for us nerds and was supposed to just be a thrill ride but who cares.

Major Grievances:

-Na'vi are indians + 3 feet + tail - finger, the horses hammerhead rhinos dog/wolves dragons and giant jaguar are all mock up copies of stuff that exists on earth already and yet he apparently made it from scratch and is a creative genius. (I mean it was a same gravity more or less same atmospheric density planet for god sake)

-Humans forgot how to use Missiles and decided low altitude civilian crafts ferrying in palettes of plastic explosives is an awesome idea.

-Everything in the future is apparently designed with giant, house-window strength, glass panes right in front of the pilot that would make any flashing weakspot N64 boss green with envy.

-Mechs use knives... enough said.

Favorite LoL point:

-He totally defiled that main character chick, before he knew their tree could poof him into his blue guy body, even though they can only have one mate and that pretty much stripped her of any importance when he left for practical purposes.

How would I redo the plot?

-The Humans would show up like normal

-Humans would send the avatar guys into the blue tribe like normal but unknowingly too the main character would have purposely infected the avatars with a bio-engineered disease to subtly get rid of them (new age small pox blankets anyone?)

-Plot advances like normal with love story developing and learning to be a native american... i mean Na'vi montage

-When the Humans arrive at the tree to bulldoze it and all that shinanigans goes down it gathers the attention of a PETA type humanitarian militant group to come help the Na'vi against the corporation humans (arming them and rudimentary training on how to use RPGs and shit much like the United States helped the Mushahadeen against the Soviet Union by supplying them with stingers and such)

-Battle breaks out and the Corp humans can't use missiles, not cause they are retarded but rather because the militia humans assaulted their satellites used to guide them and the blue guys can actually realistically kill off the attacking force armed with a good bit of crappy RPGs and Guns instead of that "i blew up a helicopter with my spear" bullshit (I mean **** we might as well take advantage of the fact they look exactly like humans) shouldn't be hard one future M60 killed like 10000 dudes

-Battle is won and as the Blue dudes sweep in to celebrate their hard fought victory the plan that was set in motion by the militia unfolds and they were actually just a puppet organization of another Mining Corporation that wanted to get their hands on the planets minerals without getting their hands dirty attacking another company and it dawns on the Na'vi that the cruel humans they thought aided them in ousting the badguy humans actually just played them like a flute.

-Main character avatar guy realizes this when meeting with the former militia leader who now stands along side the new mining leader head honcho and goes into an emotion fit and gets gunned down and back up main character blue chick runs over to cry on his shoulder so everyone can be sad, maybe slap a 300 style martyr death to show him whos boss before getting turned into ribbons herself.

I think thatd be better than "and then the cowboys lost and the indians lived happily ever after"

I know you have a rant of your own and i'd love to hear all of its comical juicyness! POST IT

a laser dumping copious amount of energy into it would hopefully losen it up a bit and on the weight issue, it could be reasonable on a larger missile, but obviously this was just a fun thought and clearly has holes of practicality.

Since this whole flippin scenario is "farse" there really is no arguement anyone can make to this exquisit idea of yours, but I will still attempt to throw a question or two your way.

 

Question how #1

 

Since your mystery compound can absorb the energy from the laser and burn off, how long of a blast can the compound of a diety take? Is it for a one time use application and no longer good after the initial blast? I would think like most other defense systems there are counter counter measures (CCM) like a second blast or a second laser tracking the same target as a back up.

 

Question how #2

 

Most missiles have an optical seeker head on them working from heat, ir or negative uv. Will said super mystery compound cover the seeker head? If so will the compound be transparent enough to not impead the seeker head (that is not in that totally awesome ms paint pic) ? Will it block out some of the heat signals coming from the dreaded dragons?

 

Question how #3

 

With your compound from the drippings of King Midas's nut sack being heated by the exhaust of the missile, how long will it take for the compound to reach the magic temperature to make it liquid? Also with it being a liquid and traveling at speeds that most missiles travel, atleast mach 1.5 will there be no rippling in the compound to make weak spots, refering back to how #1 taking the length of a blast that it can take and making it shorter?

 

Let me know what the angryturtle has to say back, laters.

 

McLuvin Science

Since this whole flippin scenario is "farse" there really is no arguement anyone can make to this exquisit idea of yours, but I will still attempt to throw a question or two your way.

all compounds obey the laws of physics so for a compound to exibit one set of required properties it will sometimes be mutually exclusive with other properties, so while you might think its a farse its actually just a dynamic idea rather than a set of numbers, like if i said my compound expands when it freezes to do _______ it no longer can shrink if it freezes. or if it melts at a low point it can no longer remain solid when exposed to tons of heat. now onto your questions.

Question 1:

would depend on the amount of energy put into the shell, the more it took the more would vaporize and the thiner the coat would become, and yes i do believe it would be one time use, so you can't use it for your reusable missiles.

Questions 2:

Valid point, but you could probably do something like mounting magnets of the opposite polarity in the end of the nose to repel super mystery liquid away from the necessary electronics.

Question 3:

a conductive metal fuselage would transfer heat remarkably quickly, but however for some reason you think all liquids are as viscous as water, which they are not. When a highly viscous more rigid liquid encounters the impact of wind it wouldn't be massively effected however while being pumped full of energy by a laser it would become far more fluid as necessary to fill in gaps so i don't think kind midas would really bend the mind to imagine a extremely nonviscous liquid that can reach a vaporization point relatively low possibly even a nonnewtonian liquid if we really wanted, i mean ****ing cornstarch and water can do it.

Warning: This thread will contain the dreaded "mystery compound that fits what I need" scenarios and will have MS paint diagrams. Most of this stuff is just thoughts in their development stage so have fun and don't bust out your torches and pitchforks if something is wrong.

<this part is pointless but kinda fun>

Preface: I was watching Avatar and as many of you may have noticed there was a mind blowing number of situations that made me squirm with nerdy disgust. Many of these logical holes aside (due mainly to the fact many of them would have ended the movie many many minutes/hours early, such as "hey lets fire a cruise missle into their holy tree rather than ferrying a pallet of explosives in with a shuttle) one made me think. The helicopters and gunship couldn't hit a damn dragon bird for their life, which made me think if there really was future humans trying to wax some dragons how would they do it. the coolest most movie worthy answer i found is some crazy future version of an MTHEL (google it, its basically an anti-missile laser system) which would turn some blue dudes into roast duck in a split. that aside the real thought begins when I started thinking how exactly would one get away from getting turned into ribbons by anti air lasers.

<now onto the meat of the thread>

The actual thought: How could someone defeat an anti-missile laser without reinventing the wheel in missile technology (no hand-wavy plasma shield arguments or cover the missile in mirrors dude... arguments are valid) The idea I thought up while sitting around was, that basically you cover the missile in a material that would basically create a void between the missile and the outside and stay in liquid form so it could rapidly equilibrate to keep large holes from forming.

How? basically coat the fuselage in a substance that wouldn't transfer its energy back to the fuselage very well, something that has a leidenfrost point attainable by the outside of the missile that would allow a liquid (or mostly liquid could possibly have inlaid objects that absorb large amounts of thermal energy quickly) to more or less encase the missile in a layer that would be held in tight by a magnetic attractive force. when the directed energy from the laser strikes the missile it would be dumping its energy into the liquid shell that being vaporized off wouldn't compromise the missile because it wouldn't be in direct contact with the fuselage.

How#2 how do we heat the fuselage? moving the propellants to the front of the rocket and channeling the exhaust along the inside of the fuselage could be used to transfer large amounts of thermal energy to the surface to melt the substance and make it reach its leidenfrost point.

quick sketch to make that confusing statement make a little more sense.

Summary, Mystery substance would be used to encase a missile in a liquid shell while being kept off the surface so that when a laser strikes the conductive outer liquid shell it would disperse the energy and evaporate off leaving the missile fine and ready to go destroy some blue aliens.

I want your thoughts on if this even makes sense or if theres any materials that might be the luckily lady to fill the mystery substance candidate. Unfortunately i think if you have it being able to reach its leidenfrost point it wouldn't have a high enough evaporation point to tank a laser for very long and of course if it was a high mass substance it would add a substantial amount of weight to the rocket, so this would have to be a pretty slick substance were talking.

Basically a fun thought, lemme hear your opinions: still no "just coat it in mirrors" statements allowed.

Merged post follows:

Btw, this was all thought up in less time than it took me to draw that picture so don't chastise me for really round about answers to problems like "apply magnets here" its just quick thoughts.

I would say B. You seem more to be fishing for answers that understanding though.

I would give it to thermite but that will lay the hurtin on anything, so i'm going to go with the nice crisp shatter of the frozen pumpkin. Fire color loses, nothing cataclysmic happened to mr. pumpkin.