Chapter 38: Chapter 38: The Humans Beyond the Gate
Ruins Base.
The two-story command center, built on the north side of the altar.
"According to the data transmitted by the advance team, the environment on the other side of the space gate is an extraterrestrial planet."
"This planet has a sufficiently strong magnetic field to protect its atmosphere from direct radiation, and with an atmospheric pressure of 0.9, our personnel do not need pressurized protective suits to operate on the planet."
"Currently, the technical team is about to cross the space gate to conduct more detailed exploration and testing."
"The engineering team is also ready. They are expected to cross the space gate in an hour to begin constructing the forward base."
As a command center equipped with numerous screens and control consoles, various reports were constantly flowing in. The Atlas employees at their respective posts were closely monitoring the alien conditions.
In the front part of the second floor of the command center, near the windows, a central control station was set up, generating holographic screens and 3D images to provide the base's director with firsthand information.
The director, who was also the owner of the entire Atlas enterprise, Samuel Young, remained silent, his expression neither joyful nor angry.
This left the employees in the command center unable to guess what their boss was thinking.
As for Samuel, he had no negative emotions and would never relieve his stress by venting at his employees. At 150 years old, he almost never had any extreme emotional fluctuations. It was just that his deep thinking inevitably brought invisible pressure to those around him.
His thoughts were focused on the world beyond the space gate.
The abundance of blue-skinned flora and fauna, the breathable atmosphere and gravity environment without the need for pressurized suits, and the gas giant in the sky all pointed to a milestone movie from his past life—**Avatar**.
The alien world on the other side of the space gate seemed to be Pandora, located about 4.37 light-years from the solar system, a sister planet to Earth in terms of mass and volume.
As the technical team conducted exploration and testing, more detailed information began to appear on the holographic screens in front of him.
Everything indicated that the alien world was indeed Pandora.
There were many admirable aspects in *Avatar*.
For example, the human forces in the movie had achieved a certain degree of interstellar travel. The spaceship *Venture Star* took only 5.9 years to travel from Earth to Pandora.
Although it sounded long, converting it, the *Venture Star* reached 0.74 times the speed of light, just 0.16 short of the threshold for near-light speed.
The closest distance between Earth and Mars is 0.0000058 light-years. At the *Venture Star*'s fastest speed, it would take 37 to 38 minutes to reach Mars from Earth.
Even though the *Venture Star* needed to accelerate continuously in space with its photon sail to reach 0.74 times the speed of light, its related fusion and antimatter engines were sufficient to allow humans to colonize within the solar system or extract rare minerals from the Moon, Mars, and the asteroid belt.
Additionally, the *Valkyrie* airspace transport, resembling a large space shuttle, could reach the first cosmic velocity and enter near-earth orbit without rocket boosters, significantly enhancing the transportation of personnel and materials for humans.
In **Avatar 2: The Way of Water**, the *Venture Star* demonstrated its ability to enter and exit the atmosphere, despite its seemingly "fragile" appearance. The *Valkyrie* transport, made of extremely strong non-metal composite materials, had high tensile strength but weighed only a quarter of old space shuttles.
This indicated that the humans in *Avatar* had broken through many material limitations.
Aside from interstellar travel and colonization technologies, there were numerous mechanical exoskeletons and large vehicles, and one particular interest for Samuel was bioengineering.
The so-called "Avatar" was a unit developed by the human's largest unofficial organization, the Resources Development Administration (RDA), to facilitate the extraction of rare minerals on Pandora.
Pandora contained room-temperature superconducting minerals. The "floating mountains" witnessed by Xiaoqiang and Soap were due to this special mineral, making it not only incredibly valuable but also enabling further technological advancements.
However, besides the animals and the intelligent humanoid species, the Na'vi, any human exposed to Pandora's surface without a breathing mask would faint within 20 seconds and die within 4 minutes.
To create a workforce that didn't rely on breathing masks, could work and mine, and sustain themselves on Pandora's local food, the Avatar project was born.
The movie showed that human twins, or humans and hybrid animals sharing common DNA, could establish sensory and consciousness connections.
RDA used the genes of participants who donated their blood and tissue samples to create hybrids with Na'vi genes, successfully producing the Avatar "new species."
Although RDA also used cloning technology and Avatars in amniotic tanks exhibited dream-like behaviors, each Avatar was merely a shell without a soul or personality, only inheriting the appearance and physique of the gene donor.
Using sensory linkage technology, human consciousness could transfer to the Avatar's brain, completing the control process.
Each Avatar could only be piloted by its specific gene donor, but if the genetic similarity was high enough, others could still unlock and control it.
The movie's protagonist was temporarily recruited by RDA because his twin brother, the original pilot, died unexpectedly.
However, with each Avatar costing over $50 million, RDA abandoned the idea of using them as miners and instead employed them as communication bridges between humans and Na'vi, attempting to peacefully persuade the Na'vi to relocate for easier mining of the superconducting minerals beneath their homes.
Through cultivating Avatars and creating new species, Samuel was certain that the humans on the other side had highly advanced bioengineering capabilities.
Therefore, everything from aerospace, bioengineering, special materials, to individual equipment and vehicles, should be immediately introduced to Atlas in the main universe.
Samuel's deep understanding of *Avatar* stemmed from his pre-travel research and analysis of its plot and settings.
Despite the theoretical superiority of the human units in the movie, in both appearance and setup, the humans were still disastrously defeated on Pandora.
Besides plot demands and the protagonist's betrayal, the most crucial factor was that Pandora itself had its own consciousness.
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