Quote: Star Ranger4 wrote:Indeed, I had actually been thinking of that. It seems to me that these independents would be staging a raid the likes of which has not been seen
Theorem: Another of the reasons that the RDA is at least quasi governmental is that they have control over the ships.
therfore you have to figure out how this 'crew' of willing independants are going to get their hands on it since I'm sure that the RDA will be
trying to control access to them out of fear of loosing such a valuable asset, especially after the Na'vi 'incident' if not before....
since the days Piracy ran rampant in the age of tall ships.
As for multiple ships being used on the same route... Well, I would imagine that Radio would be somewhat effective as it's traveling at c and the
ships do 0.7c. I also imagine that with the time delay in messages and the amount of time it must take to decelerate one of those monsters, at least one is
gonna be caught unaware. I also don't see these guys slaughtering the marines once they hit the dirt - the Na'vi don't strike me as the type to
stoop to their level.
The others I can imagine they would sit and wait, keeping everyone frosty in cryo. They'll need all the additional personnel if they want to get the place
up and running again (it's not just the marines that rotate out).
Finally, there's one other thing I don't believe we've covered - what the RDA would do once they got their ducks in a row. Currently, they
aren't allowed to possess WMDs. However, I don't see that stopping them from dropping rocks on Pandora - a cheap and effective weapon for wholesale
destruction. After all, they've shown that they don't give a rat's ass about the other treasures of Pandora - all they want is the unobtainium,
which won't be anymore difficult to get at once you've turned the place into a smoking cinder. (The atmosphere was already toxic to begin with - mostly
CO2 with a bit of ammonia and some other things.)