Friday Night Physics!

Tonight is short and simple

The SHIELD Wingsuit

and here we go

Jeb Corliss wing-suit demo from Jeb Corliss on Vimeo.

(Copied from the great John Rogers - who surprisingly did not make the Nick Fury connection)

Thanks for dropping by tonight!

Friday Night Physics

For reasons that I trust are obvious to everyone, tonight we'll be looking at the War Machine Armor and some of the engineering that distinguishes from the traditional Iron Man armor suits.

An initial disclaimer however - like the Iron Man armor itself, a lot of this is subject to the interpretation of the artist, so take all of this with a grain of salt.

The most important distinction of the War Machine armor is fairly obvious - most of the weapons systems are essentially modified or miniturized versions of existing military hardware - missile launchers, machineguns, autocannons and so forth. While this happens to be a far more reasonable depiction than the various beam weaponry of the Iron Man armor, it also introduces a few entirely new drawbacks that to consider.

The first drawback has to be the limits on ammunition that you can store on a roughly human-sized frame for that many weapons - I mean, even if the armor were hollow (and it obviously isn't) there's no way to put enough ammo to keep a high cyclic-rate of fire chain gun firing for more than a couple of minutes. And of course, there's only so many rockets you could fire which would limit your long-term offensive capabilities.

Secondly, you'd have to consider the short and long term maintenance issues. Even with low-residue "smokeless" propellants, the weapons would require cleaning. Of course, you could bypass this problem by saying that the projectile weapons use an electromagnetic propulsion system such as a rail gun, but this would introduce increased overheating issues, requiring an even more bulky design to accomodate coolants.

Recoil and balance would also become issues, especially with the rockets and most especially during flight (though, as we've discussed before, the Iron man armor isn't exactly aerodynamically feasible). The force of the weapons firing should knock around a human sized target unless it's anchored to the ground somehow. Now, this could probably be overcome using the propulsion of the repulsor flight system, but having never seen this depicted before, it is something that is clearly lacking. Of course, this problem gets a lot worse when you consider the guns mounted on the forearms of the War Machine armor, and gets much much worse when factoring multiple weapons systems firing at once.

Still, it looks awesome, no?

Friday Night Physics!

Back in High School, a friend of mine used to go on about how once the technology became available, he'd get as many cybernetic/bionic limbs and gadgets as he could, because the idea of living forever in a body made of steel sounded cool.

Now, not to shoot down the transhumanists, but I'm going to take some time tonight to shoot a few holes in your dreams.

• Software: Size is the obvious first problem - software required to map your neurological impulses to the associated motion/action (and that's just limbs - never mind more complicated systems) would be pretty intensive, and prone to bugs - and who really wants to run their bodies and sensory organs on Windows Vista?
• Systems control - So, you're going to control the various extra weapon and sensor systems (Nightvision, enhanced imaging, IR, UV, and etc etc) like you would operate you iPhone, I guess? (Totally unrelated, but if Steve Jobs hasn't gotten the trademark for iBorg, you should steal it - right now). Or are you going to try and operate it using an optical system from your eye. Oh, and what do you do when there's a malfunction? How many redundant systems can you cram into a human shape body?

• Following from above: Power systems - what do you plan on having and how often are you going to have to recharge the systems (again, if it's going to fit into a human-size frame, it's probably going to be pretty small)? And won't it be expensive?
• What about repairs and maintenance? And would that be covered by your health insurance or some other body? And yes, there would be maintenance - see cars, buildings, bridges, tanks, jet fighters - or any majorly expensive piece of hardware designed to last more than 2 years of heavy exposure to the elements.
• For those of you who want to go for the mixed package of flesh and metal - how do the various parts interface? How do you prevent infection?-gangrene sucks. Or, given that the metal parts would likely have a very different weight and center of mass than the flesh and blood components they are replacing, you'd need a very good gyroscopic system (probably similar to what the F-22 uses) to maintain your balance and stablity while in motion. And you'd need to reinforce the non-metal bits so they can move the metal bits.

I'm sure they'll figure out solutions to these problems eventually, but here are some of the technical questions I have - and I hope you share them.

Review: Two Fisted Science

A frequent lament I have about my generation is a lack of interest in items not directly related to their career interests and a few narrow hobbies. What this says about us as a civilization I leave to men smarter to myself, but it still saddens me how frequently I end up educating my peers on something I only half-learned about mythology or history or politics or philosophy or some other arcane subject.

One thing that I find especially perplexing is that people like me, who like, know science and technology and stuff, are often pretty clueless about the historical context about where it came from and the personalities of the people who developed the basic framework that the rest of us deal with daily. It's in that spirit that I want to talk about Two Fisted Science by Jim Ottaviani and a host of contributing artists.

Unlike other works such as Fallout and Suspended in Language, this early work is an anthology that tries to bring science down to earth in much the same manner as say, Action Philosophers does for that subject. The book starts out with perhaps the strongest and most popular story: Galileo and his lifelong struggle with the Roman Catholic Church which repressed his work and his writings (fun fact; the Catholic Church finally forgave Galileo for saying the earth moved around the sun, in 1992. Real big on the forgiveness there, those guys). From there, the stories touch on Isaac Newton, Niels Bohr (which Ottaviani would later expand on in Suspended in Language), Einstein, Heisenberg, and several others.

However, the majority of the book focuses on Richard Feynman, physicist, and eccentric, who was instrumental in both the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb and in developing some impressive work in quantum mechanics. It's easy to see why this choice was made; from his generally good natured attitude to the heartbreaking story of his first marriage, Feynman obtains a depth of character that immediately trashes all the stereotypes of science-types. However, while the emotional resonance here is strongest, the rather non-linear nature of showing these facets of Feynman's life detracts from any chance of a longer deeper narrative. A pity, given how much interest the author has in Feynman's life and humour.

I have little to say about the art except to say that it never takes away anything from any of the stories, and it is all very clear and competent. Something that is rare to find at say, Marvel or DC.

So, if you're looking for a light, entertaining read that gives you some insight into some of the most brillant minds among us, you could certainly do worse. But if you're looking for more depth and a stronger sense of narrative, check out some of Ottaviani's other work (I especially recommend Fallout, which features some work by some guy named Jeff Parker).

(Final note: I apologize for not posting. Between travelling home for the holiday weekend, and my birthday this past Monday, things have been hectic. Due to various work issues, I suspect that my posting will not become daily again until after Christmas, but I will continue to try my best)

Friday Night Physics

OK, so tonight we're going to talk about Batman and his toys. Now, in order to keep things as simple as possible, we're going to go over some of the equipment as featured in "the Dark Knight", because judging by ticket sales, pretty much everyone on earth has seen it by now. So let's get to it.

THE ARMOR

Plausible. The material science is (mostly) there, but this stuff is a cut above in terms of being more lightweight and compact. than anything that's known to be in development. That said, it's probably the most "grounded" bit of technology in here.

THE GLIDER CAPE

Plausible but with technical difficulties. Again, memory cloth isn't too far off, the problem would be keeping it stable and preventing it from shorting out if it got damp, among other things.

THE EXPLOSIVES LAUNCHER RIFLE

Plausible but with technical difficulties. Explosives are aren't exactly aerodynamic because of weight distribution, and because it's a gel explosive, you end up using a lot more explosive material then you would with a smaller shaped charge. Oh, and as a purely nerdy caveat, Batman with any kind of rifle seems wrong somehow.

THE BATMOBILE

Barely Plausible. The whole "rocket-assisted leaps" seem more of a hand-off to the idea that the Batmobile must always have a jet exhaust than anything else. You really don't want that kind of a propulsion system in any land vehicle because it's so difficult to control. Nevermind that all the computer settings shown in the first scene ("Intimidate", etc.) indicate a level of software sophistication that is well beyond even most combat robots currently in development.

THE BATPOD

Plausible, but technically unsound. I just don't buy the idea that a team of designers would be able to put in a redundant "transformation" system to allow for only one person to escape the vehicle (remember, it's meant to be a two man vehicle, so that transformation automatically means that one person will die when the autodestruct goes off). Nevermind that the additional cost, complexity, and weight penalty makes the concept more than a little impractical. Simple explosive bolts to pop the canopy would be much more common.

BALLISTICS ANALYSIS

Not Plausible. Short version is that you can't determine shells that way, but instead you would have to run some really complex statistical analysis to determine the type of shell. And a fingerprint? No chance.

THE SONAR SYSTEM

Wrong. There are major issues with power for a sonar system that would work in real time in air with any kind of range. Sound doesn't travel fast enough in air, and furthermore, the imaging and processing power required to pull this off are MASSIVE.

Friday Night Physics

Potpourri Edition!



#1: What about the Sentinels?



What about them? Up until Grant Morrison's first arc on X-Men, the Sentinels were pretty much the most ineffective giant killer robots EVER. Outside of alternate future/reality stories (i.e. Days of Future Past), there had been more on-panel mutant deaths due to random hate mobs than due to these billion-dollar taxpayer-funded murder machines, and ever since Morrison, they STILL aren't very effective (i.e. Sentinel Squad O*N*E* - the Colonel Klink of the Marvel Universe). That's not a reputation I'd want to uphold, really. On the other hand, that's fairly well in keeping with how military contracts work in real life, where something is designed and promoted as incredibly badass while being anything but.

#2 Iron Man Variant Armors

I'll probably deal with these on a more case-by-case basis as time goes on, but so far all I really have to say about Iron Man's armor I've said here.

#3 How the hell was Iron Man ever able to fit his armor into a briefcase?

Short answer: He really couldn't. But certain parts of it aren't as insane as you might believe. If you believe that the material of the outer shell is a type of memory metal (similar to the memory cloth depicted in Batman Begins), then you could compact it fairly well. On the other hand, as Warren Ellis correctly pointed out in his Iron Man Extremis arc, the control systems (the sensors, the hydraulics and mechanisms that allow motion, the weapons, etc.) would be impossible to do in such a manner.

#4 Where's my Goddamn Flying Car?

Trust me, unless you want the sky to be filled with 300 mph fiery metal deathballs hurtling towards you, you really don't want this. As I've stated here (again). Short version: Cars don't generate lift, and you really don't want to trust the same people you don't trust on the highway with what amounts to small missiles, unless you want your hometown to start looking like Baghdad.

Friday Night Physics

It's Friday Night! Time to get your techno on!

Ok, note to self: Get better intro.

Let's move on; Tongiht we'll be discussing that staple of sci-fi and comics....

TELEPORTATION

Generally speaking, there are two types of telportation used in comics. We'll take a look at both of them, and what the technical problems are with them.

1) Matter Transportation - this is the method best known for its use in Star Trek. The basic concept is that you break down something on the sub-atomic level, store that information, and recreate it somewhere else by transmitting the energy you've converted the body into.

OK, now, here are the problems with it;

-On the basic conceptual level, this is murder. Imagine a photocopier that after making a copy of a document, shreds the original. Now pretend that instead of documents, we are talking about human beings. That's what the transporter does. It breaks down the original, and then creates a copy somewhere else based on the information it took while putting you through the atomic meatgrinder. Sounds fun, no?

-The Heisenberg Uncertainity Principle: Short version; you can never be 100% certain of the position of a sub-atomic particle at an exact point of time by observation. So, yeah, you can't actually do an exact re-creation of someone because you can't actually get the exact data.

-Data problems: Ok, remember what I just said about all the particles you are storing as information? That's a lot of information. We are talking enough for a stack of PC hard drives from earth to the moon.

-Energy problems: Because the transporter converts matter to energy, we have to use e=mc^2 to determine how much energy is in a human body. Oh, and it turns out? The human body has the equivalent energy to a megaton nuclear bomb. So, not exactly the amount of energy you just want to push around willy-nilly, is it?

-Signal problems: Oh, and you have to transmit that data and energy as a signal through whatever medium (Space, air, etc.) that exists between the two points. And you better sure that channel is clear of any other signals, so as not to disrupt or scramble your signal, otherwise it will corrupt the data, and whatever is recreated could be very messy if say, the data for how to reconstruct the heart or skin is lost.

So, who here suddenly feels sympathy for Dr. McCoy for hating the damn transporter? That's what I thought.

2) The Wormhole: This is the "Door" technology that the Authority uses, as well as Kirby's New Gods. The concept is that you create a bridge in space (either by folding it up somehow or by detouring through some form of "subspace" such as the Bleed) to get from one point to another.

Overall, this technology overcomes most of the problems of the matter transporter, except for one: POWER. The only known (or even theorized) object that can bend space to the degree we are discussing here is a black hole. Not something you can really toy around with. Bending space is even more massive in terms of magnitude than the mass transporter. and you better know exactly where you are throwing that energy around, because if you don't, well, bad things will happen.

So, there you have it. Teleportation: Don't try it at home.

Friday Night Physics

Tonight's edition will be short and to the point. It also features Iron Man again. It's becoming readily apparent to me that most of my Engineering rants will focus on Tony's engineering works, because if we break down the various comic book universes (at least the ones that I follow), we see the following pattern

DC Universe - Very little technical content, focusing mostly on "cosmic powers" and silver age science that is sometimes incredibly dodgy. More mythic and cosmic stuff than down-to-earth actual engineering

Wildstorm Universe - There's a bit more science here, what with everything Warren Ellis contributed to that corner of the universe. Plus Astro City and Ex Machina, which occassionally feature some material worthy of addressing. But it takes a lot of dragging through all the "Bleed-tech" this and "Kherubim-tech" that in order to find the meat.

Dark Horse - Pretty much no science and all magic here.

Marvel Universe- Tony Stark does build everything. Oh, Reed and Doom have higher technology, but at the level where we consistently see their developments, and to the extent that the technology is basic to apply and at least understandable, the Marvel Universe Earth's technology is 9/10ths Tony Stark.

By the way, if there are any contributions, you the reader, would like to suggest for future Friday Night Physics, put'em in the comments.

With that out of the way, let's move on to our subject, pictured below:

Iron Man's Power-Generating Roller Skates

OK, yes, this would work. Sort of.

Let's get the first line out of the way: A Transistor is not a power source, it's a means ot controlling the flow of power. The phrase "Transistor-powered" only really makes sense if you take it as similar to the idea that your computer is powered by "Intell Centrino Duo Core". If that works for you, fine. But your processor doesn't power your computer, and as long as you understand that, we can leave it at that.

The biggest issue here is the idea that he can use the rollerskates to recharge his armor The answer is yes, but only under certain circumstances. First, you have to realize that in order to generate actual energy, the wheels would have to be outfitted with a power generation mechanism (not unlike those toy cars kids that you could rub on the ground until they got enough power in them to take off on their own). The problem with this is that this mechanism would make it harder to turn the wheels, and Tony would thus have to push much harder in order to move. Which is fine if he isn't in a hurry to get anywhere, but it's not so helpful if, say, there's an Avengers emergency going on. In other instances where he's used skates, they've had rockets on them (one assumes a solid fuel mix, as that would be the most efficient in terms of space) in order to propell himself forward, which would solve this particular problem.

Another issue to consider is whether he could generate a significant amount of power from the skates. Consider that according to Tony's thought balloon there, he can recharge his entire armor by skating around town, and we are talking about 200 lbs of armor with repulsor rays, a uni-beam, jet boots, and whatever else Tony has crammed in there (one assumes a mini-bar, at the very least). That's a lot of power he needs, and when you consider that you need a fairly large wind turbine to power an average house, I'm less than confident that he could recharge after a 20 minute stroll. On the other hand, one imagines with all that skating he's done with the extra weight and resistance from the power generation mechanisms, he'd have some serious buns of steel. So, I guess Tony's willing to suffer in order to give the ladies what they want.

Cheers!

Friday Night Physics

OK, just under the wire here, but this counts for Friday, right?

THE SHIELD HELICARRIER:

I'm actually a bit torn in doing this, because the SHIELD HELICARRIER is just one of those things that are JUST THAT AWESOME. I mean, it's Kirby, right? And Kirby is Awesome, no? Look athe posters here, you know why there are no posters featuring the Helicarrier? Because no mere poster can contain the sheer awesome of that image and do it a lick of justice. NONE. But just because something is a cool visual, doesn't mean it's great sciences, as you are about to see.

OK, let's get the first bit out of the way: Newton's Third Law of physics: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. So, those four Helicopter blades (or Fan jets, depending on the model) are pushing against the ground with a force equal to the weight of an AIRCRAFT CARRIER. Those things ain't light, which means that anything under those jets would get smushed. Nevermind any unlucky burds that would shredded to chicken grease if they fly into the engines.

There's also the question of design. Aircraft carriers are designed in such a way that...well, there aren't a lot of guns and whatnot at the bottom, and you would think that would be a major sticking point when designing an aircraft. Now, there's definetly a great deal of evidence to suggest that SHIELD has long since addressed this flaw and added some weapons to the underbelly. In addition, they would have had to make significant if not major structural changes to the frame, as Aircraft carriers are meant to be picked up like that (or at all really).

Then of course, there's the fact that the Helicarrier seems like a bad idea on the conceptual level:

-why does a SPY agency need to have a flying aircraft carrier? Seems that something that would attract that much attention really defeats the whole "stealthy spy" thing.

-Really, does having a slow moving aircraft carrier in the air really any better than having one in the water? I mean, it can't be that fast, or else there'd be a whole other ton of problems with aerodynamics and drag.

-In motion or not, the Helicarrier would be AT LEAST as hard to land on as a water-based Aircraft carrier.

-What is the strategic advantage of the Helicarrier? Making the supply lines for their aircraft shorter? Easy to pick up agents in the field? Or just to terrify the beejus out of everyone?

That last goal is accomplished very easily when you consider that the Helicarrier(s) are CONSTANTLY FALLING OUT OF THE FUCKING SKY! Seriously, it took one small superbrawl to initiate the whole SHRA, but a few dozen crashes of a nuclear-powered billion-ton trillion-dollar piece of machinery and everyone's cool? Seriously? WTF?

Just listing the most recent Helicarrier failures here:

1. Crashed when Starktech disabled (Secret Invasion)
2. Crashed in Ultron Attack (Mighty Avengers)
3. Crashed when hacked by Amadeus Cho (Incredible Hercules)
4. Crashed when attacked by Hydra-Hand alliance (Wolverine)
5. Near-Crash when attacked by Hydra (New Avengers/Civil war)
6. Near-Crash when attacked by Red Hulk (Hulk)

So, there you have it. Four crashes and two near-crashes in the last 3-4 years of comics, which is about...let's see...I'd say about 6-12 months "Marvel Time"? Yeah, real success there.

Friday Night Physics

You know, it's almost pain ful to discuss this one. But I'll do my best.

SPACE STATIONS

The Picture above, here's why it wouldn't work, in short:

1) Fire consumes oxygen. Being in space, there isn't much of that to go around, unless you have some way of renewing it really really fast. Also, space stations tend to be a bit rich in oxygen, so fire would spread rapidly, destroying your space station and everything on it; including you.
2) Where does the smoke go? I mean, venting it into space means that you'd be exposing the fire to vaacuum, so it would extinguish, so that can't work. The only way this could work is if you had a separate "Smoke Storage" container that would occasionally open to space, creating a barrier between the fire and space.

Now, looking at the shot below, you see the Justice League deciding to leave bits of Red Tornado floating around in and around their orbiting space station. Aside from being slightly weird, this is also insanely dangerous. In order for something to be in what is called a Geo-Synchronous Orbit (approximatel 22,600 miles above the Earth, which is what the Justice League Satellite is in), means that it has a relative velocity of...about 22,000 mph. This would also be the velocity of Tornado's remains. What this means is that should another satelitte or space vehicle (say, the Space Shuttle) veer too close, it could be hit by, say, a glove, at several times the speed of a rifle bullet. Now, while this doesn't seem like it would be harmful, consider that a paint chip travelling at this velocity has been known to cause serious shuttle damage...and then think about what Red Tornado bits at multiple-Mach Velocity would do to some poor astronauts, and it really makes the Justice League look like complete Assholes.

This has been another proud installment of Friday Night Physics. enjoy and feel free to leave your comments.

Friday Night Physics

OK, I'm really hoping to take a break from talking about Tony Stark after this one, because this is turning into an Iron Man Blog, and to be honest, I've never been THAT big a fan of the guy. However, so much of Iron Man is based on the concept of high-tech, so he's probably the best example to use for a lot of these things. At least for the moment (Anyone who wants to make requests for future Friday Night Physics topics, put it in the comments, and I promise to make a fair attempt. No biology please - we'll leave that to the experts).

Tonite We'll be discussing Tony Stark's heart assist device, and to make this easy to newcomers who might not want to know about Tony's long history of various armor-related health problems, we'll just stick with the "damaged heart" scenario and solution as depicted by the movie, ok?

So, as depicted in the film, sharpnel is either imbeded in or approaching the Left Ventricle of Tony's heart (It's never made clear to me, and I think the writers are trying to keep it deliberately vague). The Left Ventricle is the main blood pump to the rest of the human body, and as such, it is the strongest and most vital part of the heart. Now, in the movie, Yinsen makes a simple electromagnet (using iron and some wire in a coil configuration) and hooks it up to a car battery. Yinsen claims that the magnet will keep his heart beating, although how this works is really unclear. My guess here is that the magnet is cycling to act as an assist to the damaged ventricle muscle tissue by actually moving the the shrapnel. Which wouldn't be a bad idea in theory, except that since the metal fragments are embedded, each time the magnet pulls on them, it actually shreds more muscle tissue. If the fragments are just reaching the heart, then I'm not sure how the magnet "keeps his heart beating". Suffice to say, that the magnet probably just prevents decay, and so be it. And we won't discuss the "arc reactor" because, well, there's no such thing.

In real life, a damaged heart would normally be assisted with a transplant, or if a transplant wasn't immediately available, a Ventricular Assist Device (actually, this is my primary area of research) would be used. Now, the problems with this kind of a device are many; powering it, using it to match the heart rate at different levels of activity (Sleeping, standing up, sitting down, running, etc.) but the major ones are the formation of clotts and possiblity of infection. because the blood is going through an unnatural type of flow (and this is especially true of VADs that don't use pulsatile pumping), there is a high chance that the blood cells will be destroyed by the various stresses the device subjects it to, this cell death then triggers the mechanisms in the body that create blood clots, which then cause more strain on the heart, which sorta defeats the purpose of the device in the first place. Thus, patients with VADs are often on blood thinners, in addition to immunosuppressants (so the body doesn't reject the device), which then increases the risk of infection. So it's probably not the most elegant solution either, but the technology is advancing. We may not be able to get it to power hyper-sonic powered armor anytime soon though. Such is life.

And that's it. Enjoy and write in your suggestions for future Friday Night Physics!

Friday Night Physics!

Ah, proof that I am both an Engineer and a nerd: Mixing comics and science.

Before I go in further, I must give props to Dr. Jim Kakalios, Author of The Physics of Superheroes. This is a great book that goes into a lot of super detail about the science of various superpowers, without being so complex that you need a degree to follow it. Of course, if you have a degree, it makes it that much more fun. here's a sample video




Neat, huh? Now go buy his book!

Tonite, in anticipation of the upcoming Iron Man Movie, we will take a look at how Iron Man's suit allows him to fly...and how, it would probably end up with him driving himself into the ground like a tent peg.

Looks cool, no? I mean, just suit up, take off and leave all your earthly worries behind. Apparently, gravity would have to be one of these worries.

OK, for those of you who don't feel like taking a course in fluid Mechanics or Aerodynamics, here is the short version...when something moves through a fluid (Gases and Liquids are both considered fluids, albeit with vastly different properties) or a fluid moves over and under a surface, a pressure difference is created, and this force is known as Lift, which, as you can imagine, allows things to fly. The lift force is usually a product of the following elements: Surface area to generate lift, speed, and the properties of the object to generate lift. With aircraft,they have a huge surface area dedicated to generating lift, and that's the wings.

Do you see any wings on Iron Man's Armor? No? Oh, well would a humanoid body be able to generate lift? No, the human form is tremendously crap at that, otherwise skydivers wouldn't fall down quite so quickly. What about speed? In theory, but the problem there is that in the time it would take to get to that speed, you probably would have already crashed, unless your take off point was say, a really tall building. The other alternative would be to accelerate to ridiculous speed, and that would probably cause you to black out, and then crash. By the way, a crash of about 400 lbs going at several hundred miles per hour? It ain't going to be pretty, and once you get the can opener to open the armor, the pilot is going to be not much more than really chunky salsa due to the force of impact. Nevermind poor pedestrians and anyone who was on the ground when he impacted. This, by the way, is why you should be glad there aren't a lot of flying cars and jetpacks, because a midair collision would result in a rain of fiery bits that would look like the opening scene in Armageddon (the movie). Most of us can barely handle maneuvering in two dimensions at several dozen mph; adding another axis, gravity, and multiplying the speed will only worsen things.

None of these seem like good ideas. This leaves with an Iron Man who could only fly straight up and then slow his descent down in giant arcs like the Golden Age Superman, which is still sort of cool. Of course, just to keep himself balanced would require some really advanced gyroscopes capable of near instantaneous self-correction, which would be really neat, but hey, Stark's smart, so I can buy that.

Ah, but there is a way he could achieve flight; point a set of repulsors or engines down. This would give him a means of staying aloft the way a Harrier Jet does when it is performing a Vertical Take-off and Landing (VTOL). Of course, the problem here is that, using Newton's Third Law, for every action there must be an equal and opposite reaction. So while he's providing himself at least 400 lbs of upward thrust, that means whatever is below him is being hit with 400 lbs of force. While at high altitude this might be mitigated, I'd hate to be directly below him when he's flying in the city as the force of his repulsors pointing down would turn me into a human accordion, nevermind crushing mailboxes, fire hydrants, pets, and denting vehicles and other property.

So overall, while the armor is nice, it's probably something that you should be glad doesn't exist in this exact form.

But always remember: Just because it's not realistic doesn't mean it's not fun. I don't know about you, but I'm jacked about going to see this movie.

Cheers.