The resource being extracted on the avatar planet was unobtanium.
It was only available on that planet, precisely so intelligent people like you can’t say “why not mine barren rocks instead”?
This annoyed me also.
If the Avatar universe has physics like ours, which it looks like it does from the way things move etc…
The protoplanetry disk that the planet formed from, must have had the unobtanium, since it is so evenly spread around the later formed planet.
Yes, there are higher concentrations in various places, which could have come from impact events in the past; if this is the case the impactors are likely from the local asteroid belt or equivalent.
The unobtanium must be available, in a much easier to extract form, in asteroids in the soloar system or the moons of Pandora.
Either way, a mineral is a terrible maguffin for a space faring civilization.
In the second movie, the whale brain juice is a much better maguffin, but still kinda stupid for a technologically advanced species.
Assume that to get interstellar travel, with the suspended animation and brain beaming tech we are shown, humans are a good 200 years ahead of where we are now…given that they can also make fully functional alien bodies from scratch, that can breed and pass on genetic material to what look like viable offspring. The level of synthetic biology expertise must be insane, and they can’t make this brain juice…it is just stupid.
There are exactly zero minerals available inside planets that are unavailable on asteroids.
Sci-fi will be sci-fi but can we go back to the time it was at least well thought? Can’t hurt. If the objective of the movie was to make social criticism, it didn’t need to go to such lenghts.
And it was a boring movie; failed to captivate me.
You’re intelligent. Or at least, well read/educated.
I didn’t say it was a good plot-device. The entire movie was hamfisted from the world building through the dialog, the character development, and those hamfists evolved into bulldozers to bring the moral home.
The only thing it had going for it was the CGI… which was obsequious.
Regardless, it’s their fictional world. They designed it to be stupid and boring so they could make some sort of moral superiority bullshit statement about capitalism while grossing 2+ billion.
Also, I’m just gonna say it. It wasn’t even sci fi. sure, sure. it had ships and stuff. but that’s not what makes sci fi sci fi.
Aliens, Mech suits and remotely controlled vat-grown body doubles aren’t enough to make it sci Fi?
There are exactly zero minerals available inside planets that are unavailable on asteroids.
Crystallised urea
Nice to cross paths with you again!
I’ll grant that but what use for crystalized urea is there? Urea I know a few. And if we already know how to cultivate diamonds and other artificial gems, why bother mining for that?
That depends. Although massive deforestation throughout the planet, tree farms are a thing. So…
But haul wood over who knows what expanses of space? It would be cheaper to build greenhouses on barren planets and moons. The biggest challenge would probably be to prevent the oxygen in those enclosed habitats to eat away the building materials.
I remember following the advances on an experiment, during the 90’s, where a team of scientists designed and built a fully self contained habitat, with only plants inside. I think the objective was to measure if the plants could/would survive in very limited resources conditions. Well, the plants survived. After an initial shock, the plants self regulated and the habitat stabilized into a fully enclosed ecosystem. Things became weird when the oxygen levels rose to a point where the ciment of the walls started to come apart. They had to hastily coat the walls with very thick rubber paint to prevent more damage.