Avatar Unobtainium Cheaper Than Dune Spice Melange?

James Cameron’s Avatar Movie 2009 is somewhat of a twisted Frank Herbert’s Dune in the jungle…

Let’s see:
Arrakis aka Dune (sorry, I meant Pandora) is a world unique in itself, being the only known source in the Universe for the invaluable ‘spice melange‘ hmm… Unobtainium! Expensive, resistant…interesting!

So there comes a presumably unstoppable army of invaders to spoil the native Fremens (I mean The Na’vi) of their wealth, regardless of their feelings, beliefs or sacred things.

During the process, the Fremens (err… the Na’vi people) will recognize the hero, Paul Atreides (Muad’Dib for the Fremens) – Jake Sully in Avatar – as one of their own.  Furthermore, the hero will lead the battle against the invaders and in the end, it is transformed for real into one of them (physically).

I rest my case…

That being set and said, let’s see what would be the more expensive commodity:

Dune Spice Melange or Avatar Unobtainium?

Which is the more expensive antimatter? Let’s leave no stone unturned (apparently this is extremely cool technology)!

Research

Here are a couple Dune quotes (collated from Dune 1984 motion picture directed by David Lynch, NOT from the Sci Fi novel Dune by Frank Herbert):

“He who controls the spice, controls the Universe! [...] The spice must flow.”
- Baron Vladimir Harkonnen

and from another source…

“Not without reason was the spice often called “the secret coinage.” Without melange, the Spacing Guild’s heighliners could not move. Melange precipitated the “navigation trance” by which a translight pathway could be “seen” before it was traveled. Without melange and its amplification of the human immunogenic system, life expectancy for the very rich degenerated by a factor of at least four. Even the vast middle class of the Imperium ate diluted melange in small sprinklings with at least one meal a day.”
- Children of Dune, Alia Atreides

In the days of the Corrino Empire the spice melange was the absolute rarest and most valuable commodity in the known universe – hard stuff to obtain. It was so valuable that one briefcase full of spice would be enough to purchase an entire planet. This material is a hard act to follow.

But to be clear, this is not handwavium, I mean, in our world of physics, this stuff is possible to create, based on our universe and everything we know.

Question for you: Anyone know about the tensile strength of unobtanium?  Leave a comment!

Let’s take this extreme comment and compare the technology with some Avatar Movie Quotes:

The Search for Avatar Unobtanium

“This is why we’re here, because this little gray rock sells for 20 million* a kilo. This pays for the whole party.”
– Parker Selfridge (Avatar movie character – head administrator of the RDA operations on Pandora)

* Blogmaster’s Personal Note: as per our world here, this one decision allows trade to happen regardless of whatever the currency would be…

Conclusion

Now there’s no more proof needed.

Levitating unobtainium

Judge yourself: one suitcase from the Avatar movie universe would carry say… 20 kilos at max of Unobtain-
ium material (maybe even 30 or 50 if you want – if you could carry it)…

Would such a value buy a whole planet?  I mean, c’mon!  What would it be like, 1 billion of whatever materials?
No No No!  A planet, ANY planet should be more expensive than that…if such a commodity could exist!

I want to compare this to Tolkien’s mithril, and its eery similarity to titanium, although much more expensive.  And it makes me wonder which wondrous substances are we, mere mortals (and aliens, it seems), to discover in the future.  I’ll avoid some elemental trope now, before I go too tangential.  I think that’s a Pandora’s box we should keep closed for now…

StevieVee, bones filled with adamantium, longing to read a good Dune novel…