mace_of_knowledge
Suicidesoldier#1
What you really need to focus on flight since that's the hardest thing to achieve, and the energy source, which is necessary for flight.
They do in fact have exoskeletons, that maybe can carry a few hundred pounds or so, so that could carry around a huge jetpack and some body armor but.
Enough to stop a 40mm armor piercing grenade, or a .50 cal armor piercing round or something, would need to be the equivalent of 2 inches of hardened armor fit cold rolled homogenous steel, which, if you used steel, would be somewhere along the lines of 1750 pounds, way more than current exoskeletons or jetpacks can lift.
So, you'd need three things that don't really exist.
Small, incredibly powerful power sources, ridiculously powerful jet packs, and personal body armor that's really light weight. Current Kevlar vests at 16 pounds can't stop a rifle round. Cop vests can barely stop pistol rounds.
U.S. army helmets used to be pierced by 9mm, common handgun rounds, until recently.
Without something drastic it might not work.
Power could be achievable with a sterling radiostopic pultonium/americurium-238 engine, which has a long life and produces substantial power, and is used in satellites in stuff. They're mostly safe, since they're only weakly radioactive and need mild shielding, and plutonium-238 produces alpha particles, so you could theoretically hold it in your hand without much radiation issues. They're better than RTG's, since you're average RTG is about 3% efficient, and your average sterling engine is like 20-30%.
Better yet using a single, really hot uranium fuel rod, and liquid salt, you could theoretically contain the heat in a series of relatively thick tubes, that could be 200 times smaller than water based tubes, positioned around the suit, that could in theory provide power.
As for a jet pack, idk.
If you could maybe charge rocket fuel of some kind you could use a tiny amount to fly great distances but you'd still need wings of some sort. Idk how it would work. They're still fundamental challenges faced by the military and science today.
Please re-read first post on energy sources i have made a rather large font-ed update.
Please re-read my last post on using armor primarily for crash protection from the outset.
Please re-read my previous post on a progression of technology and not expecting a success with a single build.
Please actually check my sources and subsequent links before asserting that technology I have stated to exist, does not in fact exist.
If you are speaking of a nuclear fission based propulsion system, yes they are the most powerful and efficient that we have created. However, Those projects were discontinued for a number of reasons: financial cost, shielding concerns, and for the terror that nuclear technology carried around like nasty baggage. I would love to see something like that go forward but then, please re-read my first post as to why that is not possible.
On your last point my degree was not in thermodynamics nor mechanical engineering so I recognize that this is not a professional opinion. That being said, there are no feasible means by which it is possible to contain heat indefinably, considering your source, and that any attempt to do so by conventional means would (by weight alone, among other reasons) render your suit incapable for flight.
If you have done all of the above, it is possible that we may come to some sort of understanding.
I'm talking something to power something along the lines of the exo-skeleton.
One kilogram of uranium has the equivalent energy of about 3 million kilograms of coal, or 1.5 million of gasoline. Since molten salt designs don't expand as much as water, they aren't as dangerous under higher heats and stuff; U-235 can be pretty safe if handled properly and the only real problem is when a design overheats and explodes; because the worst case scenario with a molten salt design is primarily leaking, it's significantly safer.
By running it through tubes over the suit, it would be possible to circulate the liquid salt, just as water is, and spin a turbine or some other heat powered device. Even if at 1% efficiency, it would still have 15,000 times the power of gasoline pound for pound.
Flight not be a real option but a few kilos of uranium would likely be fine.
Also, I'm not suggesting that you think they exist, I'm merely pointing out problems.
xp
That being said, with ALON, you could theoretically have good enough armor to stop .50 caliber rounds, and with a radiostopic sterling engine you could have quite a bit of power.
ALON, at around 2-5mm, could stop armor piercing .50 caliber rounds, for about 30-75 pounds, to cover an entire human body. More or less given segmenting plates and general sheets that don't have to cover every nook and cranny. This would be 10's of thousands of dollars but, that's fairly affordable.
The
sterling radiostopic engine, A current design, the Advanced Stirling Radioisotope Generator (ASRG), is based on a 55-watt electric converter. The thermal power source for this system is the General Purpose Heat Source (GPHS). Each GPHS contains four iridium-clad Pu-238 fuel pellets, stands 5 cm tall, 10 cm square and weighs 1.44 kg. The hot end of the Stirling converter reaches 650°C and heated helium drives a free piston reciprocating in a linear alternator, heat being rejected at the cold end of the engine. The AC is then converted to 55 watts DC. Thus each ASRG unit utilizes two Stirling converter units with about 500 watts of thermal power supplied by two GPHS units and delivers 100-120 watts of electric power.
Conceivably, with more units, you could have more power. Since radiostopic sterling engines are relatively safe and used in satellites, producing 80% power for 20 years, with say plutonium-238, which produces mild radiation that can't get through the skin, simple lead shielding and other things makes it relatively safe. Americium lasts four times longer but also requires four times the amount, in terms of mass, to operate. It also is somewhat more dangerous than plutonium-238.
Anyways, I'm just tossing around ideas.
Since this could serve as a decent long term power storage that would be under a million dollars, you could mix it with the rest of your gear and it would be pretty awesome. It could power an exo-skeleton, if powerful enough. Considering stuff like the
HULC system and the XOS 2, all it would really need is to be scaled up. Using technology to monitor movements, like the
HAL suit, you could theoretically just your movements to direct a more powerful exoskeleton, having nerve sensing stuff and whatnot. Being able to carry around a few hundred, maybe a few thousand pounds at best. It would only be a few million dollars.
Couldn't fly but it would be a supah suit.
Theoretically possible with off the shelf technology. A computer system could simply be a highly efficient germanium silicon + gold processor and information storage thingy, which I mean iphones use gold all the time. So that's not so hard in and of itself. Your best idea would be to have some sort of long range transport vehicle, like a cargo plane, and then drop these guys into combat. Instead of using parachutes, which have ridiculously high failure rates, and even at best have you landing at the equivalent of falling off a two story building on impact, you could maybe glide in on landing, with some kind of small plane or something. Would make decent paratroopers; at best, they could fly back on the cargo ship when needed, so they didn't have to make tents and sleep in a combat zone.
Idk.
But again, these are just my suggestions. An iron man suit would be cool but is somewhat impractical on a lot of ways, but a suit of armor would be awesome.
ninja
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