As far as the idea of dropping asteroids goes; when you combine the likely political resistance to the idea, with the chance of scattering the unobtainium, and rendering the environment too dangerous to mine in I doubt it. As for nukes; against an entire planet you’d need an impractically large number of nukes; and even if you had them you’d just add radioactivity to the problems with using asteroids.
What about eka-lead or one of the other elements in the transuranic island of stability?
The lemur-analogues we see at the beginning have fused upper forelimbs (and only 1 pair of eyes), so they’re halfway there.
That’s not connecting, that’s merely observing.
The telescopic view thing is interesting. But what I think is more interesting is the question of whether or not Eywa can simply build a giant eye that looks out into space.
But your distributed idea is interesting. Perhaps radio waves echo into space and can be subconsciously interpreted by the megafauna while consciously interpreted by Eywa.
Why? Maybe their refuelling station was the Mother ship that brought them. Though it is made clear that there has been more than one ship to come to Pandora. It’s interesting if you think about it, Jake Sully would’ve had to arrive about ten years after his brother died at sublight.
Heh, I think that’s one of those things that doesn’t need to be explained. It’s just a conceit of the story.
Maybe. We’ll see. I tend to think it’s just the desire of the filmmaker to have sexy anthroporphized smurf cats.
They would have been there for quite a long time. Jake’s brother had time to time, and time for them to recruit Jake.
Yeah. I kind of like the nodal structure though. Where they have to jack in for individual purposes. Though radio transmission jacks could be interesting too. 
I think this is a very interesting point. As a biologist, I was very impressed by the effort that was made to have the larger animals look like they were the result of a common evolutionary origin: six limbs (four wings and two legs in the case of flying creatures), four eyes, thoracic spiracles for breathing, neck frills, scales/plates, and maybe some other elements. The fact that the Na’vi lack all of these elements, but are instead very similar to humans in almost all significant anatomical respects (with the exception of the link tentacle and tail) suggests to me that they are not actually indigenous to the planet. I think the sequels will reveal some biological link of the Na’vi to Earth and to humans, perhaps through some other space-faring race.
I thought it was the anthropologic* principle often seen in Star Trek–that any sufficiently advanced species would eventually grow to be humanoid. (No, that one TNG episode doesn’t override it, as not all the races we saw were seeded.)
*might not be the right word
Anthropomorphic?
Personally, I think it has more to do with audiences finding it easier to relate to what are essentially blue cat-people, than, say, the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal or something that looks like a grasshopper with too many eyes and fur.
Also, it makes the inevitable love story a lot more “believable”, for want of a better word.
You may be misusing the anthropic principle… otherwise maybe you mean convergent evolution, that the sort of role an intelligent species fills in an environment tends to lead to them having similar characteristics, but I don’t see a need for intelligent life to look like people. Nah, it’s just that the audience has an easier time relating to human-looking aliens.
Like giant pillbugs that shit plasma to orbital velocities stupid?
Or maybe create some neurotoxin that causes people to kill themselves stupid?
I don’t really want to see Eywa bioengineering weapons or anything like that.
Of course it is. We can relate to Jake Sully falling in love with a taller, skinnier, blue version of Zoe Saldana. We can’t relate to him falling in love with a six legged shaved gorilla covered in slime.
Or doesn’t exist but has properties that are required for some engineering thought experiment. Like creating a space elevator or mountains that float on the planet’s magnetic field.
The serious answer is that ducted fan engines can produce a higher thrust to weight ration than conventional rotors.
My answer is that in the future, ALL aircraft are tilt-wing VTOLS with ducted fans or jet engines because it looks more “futurey”. Remember the dropship from Aliens and the HKs from the Terminators films (all directed by Cameron).
According to the film it’s used to make paperweights.
It’s also sometimes combined with Handwavium to form MacGuffinite.