Prometheus: Immortality of David?

Question

I am trying to think how his makers know that or even could know that David (and other androids) are immortal. The fact that androids have sort of messy and complex insides suggests to me that they could easily wear out. Is the idea explored? Is it suggested because they can continually repair David that he is effectively immortal or that his mind can be implanted in another body?

When Weyland is, in hologram form, talking to the group on the Prometheus, he says David will never die:

Here David himself says he will not die: Interpretation of the dialog between David and Weyland

I am a little surprised at the downvotes. It is clear that weyland thought david would not die -- he said exactly that. I would like to know why he thought so.

Answer 1

Weyland never uses the word "immortal". He appears, clearly aged, and announces that by the time the message is played, he will be dead. The next thing he says is:

There's a man sitting with you today. His name is David.

And he is the closest thing to a son I will ever have.

Unfortunately, he is not human. He will never grow old... and he will never die.

The contrast is clear: unlike Weyland, his "son" will not suffer from ageing, and almost any damage he suffers can be repaired.

That doesn't mean that David will live until the heat death of the universe, just that the problems of human biology (evidently still unsolved) don't apply to him.

Also relevant is that Weyland is speaking from a position of envy, not explaining cold facts: he desperately wants a cure for whatever he's dying of, at any cost, but none is available. (You mention in a comment about uploading his brain to another body, but reading a human brain is a completely different technology from creating an artificial one, and clearly it isn't an option that's available.)

Answer 2

Presumably, they could replace and repair parts.

Robot parts can be replaced more easily than human parts, so theoretically, a robot can be immortal better than a human. At the end of the film David's just a head, and in the next film he's re-atached to a body. The robots are clearly very flexible in their repair abilities.

That said, a large part of this is arrogance. David is an experimental model, and it's certainly possible that he might fail to live long. Weyland was very arrogant.

“Do you see this man? (…) I made him, and I made him in my own image, so he would be perfect, so he would never fail. I deserve this, cause you and I, we are superior, we are creators, we are gods. And gods never die”

He had an over inflated sense of personal ego, which made him (wrongly) overvalue his intellect and his creation.

Then he got murdered by an engineer.