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James Cameron Begins His Deep-Sea Dive
James Cameron is on his way down. The director's long-planned trip to the deepest spot on Earth — the Mariana Trench's Challenger Deep — is in progress; by the time you read this, if all goes well, Cameron will be navigating around in depths unvisited since 1960. National Geographic's coverage of the dive is excellent as well, as is the BBC's (with video).
I can't decide if I hope it all goes well because of Terminator and Aliens, or if it's a complete failure because of Titanic and Avatar.
One of my "If I was a billionaire" fantasies was a documentary trip back to the trench. Amazing that it's taken this long to get back.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I personally think that deep trenches are at least as interesting as outer space, if not even more so. There is a rich flora and fauna which have evolved to adapt to the high pressure and lack of sunlight and oxygen at such depths, it almost makes them seem like species that are alien to this planet.
Unfortunately, travelling and exploring the the murky depths are prohibitively expensive for the average guy. A small excursion itself would cost about $40,000, so I would imagine that James Camerons trip is going to cost several hundred thousand dollars. Ah, I envy the rich. :)
Anyway, here's to hoping that he gets excellent clips.
Forget Avatar and Titanic... this is the kind of stuff he will be remembered for.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
As far as rich guys hobbies go, this is way cooler than buying a fighter jet or trying to get a monopoly on fighting HIV in Africa.
lucm, indeed.
Couldn't do it; I have a pretty severe phobia of pressurized things. That scene from 'The Abyss', where the villain's ship goes down too far and... *shivers* Everyone at work pokes fun at me every time we have to change the fountain soda machine's carbon tanks, because I take off to the side room to steer clear. I came close to whaling on the bosses' son for taking a nearly-empty one, bring it over where I was and spurt out at me.
You want to know how to help your kids? LEAVE THEM THE F*&K ALONE. --George Carlin
Can he take George Lucas with him, and leave him at the bottom?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
The rich men are at it again. Some are going into outer space. Some are going under the ocean. I can't wait for the earth explorers, digging down deep into the crust.
He made a movie that had a lot of elements that the masses enjoy. (action, etc)
He created a sci fi world with at least some effort at plausibility. (not all of it, but some details were there, for instance Jake suffering muscle weakness after prolonged time in the tank)
The reason the "indians" won was because the entire planet was a biological entity that could defend itself, by mobilizing all resources against the human invaders. It was never actually an underdog story : the planet has vastly superior technology and numbers to the human invaders (the brain transfers shown at the end of the movie were obviously extremely high tech), but the humans couldn't perceive it.
Anyways, sure it ripped stuff off, but compare it to the competition. And, the film did use some of the best visual effects ever seen. Stop being a snob : would you rather all movies were some low budget indie film that tries to "make a point" but it's hard to figure out what it is because the movie was made in someone's garage? To make a movie with an enormous budget, an enormous number of people have to watch it, and you have to make the story accessible to them.
He tweeted it about 45mins ago. https://twitter.com/jimcameron/status/184036733959143425 An amazing achievement!
The reason we didn't send a manned mission back is that there's really no point - a realization they came to on the first trip. The people in the sub can't directly interact with the environment in any way. They have to look at the world through cameras, and all work is carried out by robotic arms. Essentially, all you've done is take the control room for a remote vehicle and send it down with the robot. It's a lot of engineering work and no small danger for basically zero gain.
Does this mean that Titanic is no longer the lowest point in James Cameron's career?
Kinda interesting, but I understand he chose the spot of the seafloor he's visiting simply on the basis of it being the deepest point in the ocean, not because of something that's there and that's worth seeing/exploring. So chances are that all he'll find is... um, a seafloor, made of a lot of sand. I hope I'm wrong.
...the movie was made in someone's garage?
Wayne's World! Party on!
Without those shitty movies he wouldn't be able to do things like this...
He created a sci fi world with at least some effort at plausibility.
Oh, c'mon! Where the frig in the Periodic Table does one find "Unobtanium"? Seriously? I heard that, and gave up on the flick from that point on.
The reason the "indians" won was because the entire planet was a biological entity that could defend itself, by mobilizing all resources against the human invaders
Entity, meet biological warfare (easily possible, given the ease with which the DNA was replicated) and a gaggle of large asteroids being flung at the surface just for good measure (also possible, given the massive energy require to go FTL (or was it near-light?) speeds in the first place). There's at least half a dozen ways, given that story's tech, in which to destroy the inhabitants without harming the material, endangering a single human being, and basically turning the place into an airless rock that can be strip-mined.
Seriously... good visual effects (easily give it that), but the story had more holes in it than a sieve.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Mr. Cranky Pants. There's no reason to keep going back to the peak of Everest, either. It's his money & his life, and if finds a new monster, he can call it Cameronzilla, and wouldn't you be all jealous that you don't have a supermonster named after you?
Who knows, maybe he will find something interesting. Slim chances, but we never really expected to find life in/on/around undersea volcanic vents, either.
Cheers!
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Honestly, I found the name "Unobtainium" no less plausible than a number of the heavier elements in the periodic table. Comparing "Unobtainium" to, say... "Promethium", "Ununoctium", "Berkeluim", "Californium"; not to mention a number of the proposed names for the current temporary ones... How does "Unobtainium" defy logic any more than those do?
Or are you claiming that because we haven't discovered it yet, it doesn't exist? In a science fiction movie. Really? Really?
As for orbital bombardment... That's probably the part the Cameron didn't show. Humans go down to the surface and try to strip-mine politely because of politics. Think of the PR win that it would be for the (then current) administration if they can convince these primitive creatures to live/act like humans! But now that we're kicked off planet, time to warm up the nukes.
Reminds me of one Michael Caine's most brilliant ripostes. When asked about what he thought of Jaws 4, he replied "I have never seen the film, but by all accounts it was terrible. However I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific."
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
sci fi world with at least some effort at plausibility. (not all of it, but some details were there, for instance Jake suffering muscle weakness after prolonged time in the tank)
'Cause a culture capable of interstellar travel couldn't eliminate muscle weakness or fix nerve damage.
The reason the "indians" won was because the entire planet was a biological entity that could defend itself, by mobilizing all resources against the human invaders. It was never actually an underdog story : the planet has vastly superior technology and numbers to the human invaders (the brain transfers shown at the end of the movie were obviously extremely high tech), but the humans couldn't perceive it.
I remember writing that story in the early 90s and everyone who read it told me it was cliched back then. I seem to remember it was also a Star Trek episode in the 60s?
The best I can say about Avatar was that the last hour was really funny. I just wish we hadn't had to sit through the previous six hours to get there.
'Cause a culture capable of interstellar travel couldn't eliminate muscle weakness or fix nerve damage.
They could. Jake was going to get taken care of when he got back. If you remember, it was just a matter of cost. He couldn't afford it on his pension.
Oh, c'mon! Where the frig in the Periodic Table does one find "Unobtanium"? Seriously? I heard that, and gave up on the flick from that point on.
I figured Unobtainium to be some sort of ClarkeTech-level meta-material, much like the Cavorite in A Deepness in the Sky. In that story, Cavorite was a mineral discovered by the native Spider civilization, possessing miraculous anti-gravity properties Yet it was composed of nothing more than common elements, mostly diamonoid carbon, that should have yielded an unremarkable pile of dust. In that story, it was insinuated that the material was not naturally occuring, but the legacy of some hyper-advanced intelligence or civilization.
The implication being that the Na'vi were not a primitive pre-industrial society -- but a primitive post-industrial one. The planet-wide bio-net and cooperative defense system doesn't make sense from a Darwinian evolutionary standpoint, but it might have made sense if it was designed that way. And those Unobtanium "ore" formations? Perhaps the remains of some ancient server farm or energy storage-facility... or garbage dump.
Entity, meet biological warfare (easily possible, given the ease with which the DNA was replicated) and a gaggle of large asteroids being flung at the surface just for good measure (also possible, given the massive energy require to go FTL (or was it near-light?) speeds in the first place). There's at least half a dozen ways, given that story's tech, in which to destroy the inhabitants without harming the material, endangering a single human being, and basically turning the place into an airless rock that can be strip-mined.
In the aftermath of Avatar's release, I found similar viewpoints all too common among my fellow nerds. It bothers me to think that we can consider genocide to be the "obvious" solution, and that not resorting to total war at the get-go as being the mark of a plot hole.
The corporate managers in Avatar weren't actually evil, but merely self-serving and cynical. They told themselves it was ok because they weren't really doing anything evil -- just moving some stubborn natives somewhere less inconvenient. I'm sure after the orders were given, they told themselves that it was the natives who forced them to act as they did, their superstitious and ignorant natures prevented the savages from listening to reason.
In any case, we often forget that the humans were employees of a corporation, not a sovereign military force. The soldiers were the equivalent of some Blackwater mercenaries. Regardless of how powerful corporations sometimes seem, it is government who still holds the leash, being jealous entities that hold the best goodies (like WMDs) for themselves.
He created a sci fi world with at least some effort at plausibility.
Oh, c'mon! Where the frig in the Periodic Table does one find "Unobtanium"? Seriously? I heard that, and gave up on the flick from that point on.
Unobtainium: well, why not call it Carbon, formed in large quantities into some kind of useful room-temperature superconductor (or other highly valuable commodity) by processes unique to the formation of Pandora. Sure you could synthesize it, but it's cheaper to go dig it up. The miracle of Unobtainum was irrelevant to the plot beyond the fact it was valuable and they had to take down HomeTree to get it. Any time wasted explaining what Unobtainium was good for is just pandering to a very small percentage of the audience, a small percentage with relatively little influence over ticket buyers, apparently.
The reason the "indians" won was because the entire planet was a biological entity that could defend itself, by mobilizing all resources against the human invaders
Entity, meet biological warfare (easily possible, given the ease with which the DNA was replicated) and a gaggle of large asteroids being flung at the surface just for good measure (also possible, given the massive energy require to go FTL (or was it near-light?) speeds in the first place). There's at least half a dozen ways, given that story's tech, in which to destroy the inhabitants without harming the material, endangering a single human being, and basically turning the place into an airless rock that can be strip-mined.
Seriously... good visual effects (easily give it that), but the story had more holes in it than a sieve.
Yeah, and the U.S. could have nuked Afghanistan and Iraq into oblivion, as well as any upstarts like Iran or North Korea who would have chirped about it. Maybe, just maybe, there were political implications back home that prevented waging all-out war on obviously sentient beings that are absolutely no threat to us, and whose only crime is sitting on something valuable.
Your point is valid, but elements are one of the things we can experiment with fairly well here on Earth, and after a certain point atoms get too large to be stable and break apart almost immediately. Right now, some suspect that there may be some "islands of stability" out there on the periodic table, but after a certain point, while an element is possible, it usually breaks down in a very, very short period of time after creation because nuclear forces start becoming too weak to hold it all together.
So, point is, it's unlikely that an element we haven't heard of exists in large deposits on a terrestrial world. It would have decayed to other elements very quickly after formation, let alone surviving long enough to be part of planet formation.
On the other hand, no one said "unobtainium" needs to be a new element. It could be one of the newly discovered ones we have right now that they just nicknamed because it was very difficult to find or produce.
Unobtanium is a physics/engineering joke, and placeholder term for a material with highly desirable properties but doesn't actually exist. It's a rather common term, and I found it an appropriate and amusing name for the movie's MacGuffin. If you pay attention, it's obviously a room temperature superconductor (Meissner effect), and it's rather common to call such a material unobtanium. Also, it's a literary device, since it proves to be unobtainable.
In the movie, the humans never wanted to exterminate the inhabitants. They just wanted to mine unobtanium, and were likely just equipped for that. They hired mercenaries to protect the miners, but were not affiliated with any military, and thus unlikely to have access to weapons of mass destruction. I also doubt they were permitted to do much against the navi, and likely suffered legal consequences when they returned to Earth. That said, since it's obvious there'll be a sequel, the humans will be bombing the navi again for some contrived reason.
It seems the dive is complete http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/03/120325-james-cameron-mariana-trench-challenger-deepest-returns-science-sub/ and he is back on the surface. A little quicker than expected.
From http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/03/120325-james-cameron-mariana-trench-challenger-deep-deepest-science-sub/ ..."is to jettison steel weights attached to the sub and shoot back to the surface."
Can't we go anywhere and follow the "Leave No Trace" ethos? What effect will those weights have on the local ecosystem?
- Jasen.