We all know Iron Man and Robert Downey Jr.'s incredible portrayal of him on the silver screen but Iron Man has been around alot longer than his recent 2000 blockbuster debut. Iron Man came about in the era of comic book heroes, billionaire Tony Stark was delivered to the world in March 1963. Ever since that day, nerds everywhere have at one time or another had the debate of would it be possible to have a real Iron Man suit? Well it may not be exactly like the superhero philanthropist's artificial intelligence powered armored flight suit but we have something in development fairly close to it now.
Before we get to the suit itself lets talk about the Armored Avenger's cool toys. Besides flight and bulletproof armor Iron Man has his trademark Repulsor Rays housed in his breastplate and his gauntlets. Now on a small scale like that it isn't possible yet but the Marvel Wiki describes the rays as "Muon beams" which are plenty real. They're subatomic particles that function like electrons and neutrinos and can be focused into particle beams. The DoD has actually considered making a particle beam at one point but the enormous amount of energy required to power it made it too impractical.
How about the rockets and tracking and the artificial intelligence and...and...woah, woah, slow down now. We have guns that shoot around corners and scopes that see through walls. I'm sure we have miniaturized laser-guided rockets that could theoretically be implemented into a fully functional Iron Man suit. As for Jarvis? While A.I. research is underway all signs point to us being decades from the kind of tech found in his suit and lab's brilliant computer program.
But what about the suit? I said the suit might be real right? Well it is...sort of. It's not nearly as advanced as Mr. Stark's [But his fictional capital is more than most foreign nations, he has more resources ;) ]
Control your nerdgasm's people. And I don't want to get your hopes up too high but I have read that these may become commercially available (for a steep, steep price of course). The suit probably won't break atmosphere and be able to put you up against the likes of Norse Gods and alien hordes, but it will have rocket boots, yaw, pitch, and roll. You don't need much more than that folks to live out your fantasy. If you want to read more about this amazing suit head over to the website From Quarks To Quasars and check out the full article by clicking the link.
So there you go guys. Maybe someday I'll be able to report that becoming a New York City webslinger or a WWII time traveling super soldier is possible but those two are probably a little more unlikely. Who knows though? This world's a crazy awesome place sometimes. :)
-Ryan Sanders
No comments:
Post a Comment