Wait, bending is tied to the spirits of the world, so would bending even work off planet?

>>110614
>would bending even work off planet?

If it doesn't, then Amon missed out on some good old fashioned "follow me to the Promised Land IN SPAAAAACE!" rhetoric.

But let's assume it does. I think OP's points miss the major advantages offered by bending in space: colonization. A single earthbender alone would be able to shortly carve a whole base out of Moon/Mars rock. A firebender could provide electrical power to said base. A waterbender could extract ice water from the regolith, and help to capture water vapor lost by respiration.

The biggest advantage is in the Avatar. If their powers work on another planet, they could use the Avatar State to spur terraforming. On Mars, for example, they could melt the ice caps, rip open the crust to form Moholes, and reawaken volcanos to spew greenhouse gases. An Avatar probably couldn't single-handedly terraform a planet, but their contributions would save a crazy amount of money and time.

On other question, tangentially related to the space race: if the Avatar-verse ever colonized other planets, would those planets spawn their own Avatars? Some of the fluff talks about the Avatar as the "World Spirit" incarnated as a human. Is that 'world' in the sense of 'Earth' or in the sense of 'Life, the Universe, and Everything'?

>>110614

What supposed 'non' benders haven't had the chance to realize yet is that, infact, they *are* benders of the fifth element, 'Void' and that the stars ultimately belong to them...

The real question is what happens when they actually get to the moon. Keep in mind, waterbenders draw their power from the moon. Just having the thing completely visible in the night sky allows them to perform some of the most powerful forms of bending outside of the Avatar State. Now imagine what would happen if they were to stand on that moon. Or if they brought moon rocks back, so they could hold a piece of the moon in their hands?

Unlike in our world were the race to the moon was the byproduct of an arms race, here getting to the moon IS the arms race.

>>110615
We might actually get a usable answer from Book 2's History of the Avatar 2-parter in terms of if the Spirits are JUST Earth or more. But purely speculative I would say that another Avatar won't just be born from the planet as it's bridge to the Spirits.

The Spirits from Avatar aren't exactly like something out of Umineko where if you can rationalize them away then they stop existing nor do they seem to be similar to the ones in Fate/Stay Night's creator's other work Angel Notes (or something) where they lie dormant in their respective planets and communicate somehow.

The Spirits here don't seem to care about the humans aside from the Moon spirit, I doubt they would throw a party and elect a new non-corporeal entity to inhabit a new host in a cyclic lifespan just because the humans finally made it off their rock. For all we know the planets could be like the Moon in Final Fantasy VIII and be full of monsters.

>>110619
If they stood on the moon they would either need a spacesuit or an atmosphere. And then they would need water. But as for chipping off pieces of the moon to sell to waterbenders to increase their bending? Oh boy, I'm glad Sokka's at peace because if he found out someone was playing with Yue's rocks...

>Book 2's History of the Avatar 2-parter

Wait wait wait, do we have confirmation on this? Mike n' Bryan said there's going to a very flash-back heavy two parter but I'm pretty sure they didn't say it was actually going to be about. Do you have a source for this or is this just speculation?

>>110636
iirc there's no confirmation the 2-parter is about the origins of the avatar, but that is one of the things that will be brought up in season 2.

>>110636
>>110635
>>110637

http://www.avatarlegends.net/t483p15-san-diego-comic-con-sdcc-2012-korra-panel-info

Bullet format points #18 and #20 and stuff.

Granted this can end up being like probending where we are told and shown something amazing and make up fan theories about how the triads are rigging it and it's a draw for money but also acts as bread and circuses for the masses. So the history may end up causing the rest of the fans to either leave, completely reject the canon and substitute their own, or place all hopes on character interaction and development only to be shot down like so many planes over Yue Bay.

>>110640
i can't imagine people being so upset over the origins of the avatar that they'd actually leave the fandom, considering we've had no real leads about it.

i mean, unless bryke make the first avatar the only white person to have ever existed.

>>110641
If it did, good riddance.

Anyway, this spacey-thing is interesting so let's keep talking about that ^_^

>>110642

Agreed.

But I'm kind of worried about the whole "Use the Avatar to terraform Mars" bit, though...

>>110653

Man, Lavanya Six had a micro-fic that was exactly that. The Avatar, now super powerful after millennia of reincarnation, having a casual meeting with the new Avatar of Avatar-verse Mars, an ordinary young schoolgirl on a colony, and he's there to terraform the planet.

Just thinking of some useful bending utilities in space...

Build some chunks of rock into the framework of a circular space station. Place a few Earthbenders onboard, have them rotate the stones, and blammo, inexpensive artificial gravity.

Waterbenders and Firebenders would be a vital part of atmospheric controls and temperature regulation, keeping anything in space hot where it needs to be and cold where it needs to be. Heck, you could also just use Firebenders (no need for lightning, even) as a thermal power source, or have them team up with waterbenders to generate current though hot/cold thermocouples.

Airbenders could provide extremely precise, highly controlled attitude control- if your attitude jets are pressurized gas, an airbender can regulate the flow of that gas with far greater intuitive control than a computer.

I'd also like to think that Benders would be extremely useful in the launch process, too. I mean you could use Earthbending to easily transport a vehicle from where it is assembled to where it is launched, Airbending to regulate the weather...

I have this vision of several hundred Earthbenders raising an entire Saturn V launchpad, with the rocket in place, high into the atmosphere to save on launch costs.

>>110672

>attitude control

DAMMIT CHEN, I NEED ZEN, AND I NEED IT NOW!!

>>110615
>The biggest advantage is in the Avatar. If their powers work on another planet, they could use the Avatar State to spur terraforming.
Sci-fi AUs usually bore me, but that sounds GREAT.

>>110680
That actually seems like the perfect platform for which any one particular nation could start about its domination over the others while the current Avatar was occupied off planet.

It also opens the possibility of more than one Avatar existing for each planet. If Mars gets terraformed, is there then an Avatar for Mars and one for Earth?

>Metalbenders in charge of building space ships

>>110685
>Metalbenders in charge of providing security for the people building space ships.

Fixed that for you.

>>110673
Heheheheheh

But seriously,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attitude_control_%28spacecraft%29