This is kind of a techno-geek thing but what if Iron Man was real? Can we build it?

The strength enhancing exoskeleton already exists. Suits that permit flight exists but for a short duration. What does not exist is the technology to make the sack of salt water inside the suit keep its integrity when subjected to the high G forces seen in the movies. In the movies Tony Stark can ram into a wall at 200 mph and stop within 5 ft. That is about 1000 Gs ! Current pressurized flight suits in fighter planes can handle 6–8 Gs.
It does not matter how strong the exoskeleton is. After a 200 mph crash into a brick wall the wearer will leave the suit when it is hosed down for cleaning.

Bob the builder, can we fix it?
Bob the builder, yes we can!

@LuckyGuy is correct, and you can’t forget that we are nowhere near the power source or propulsion system technologically speaking.

Nope. You have nothing even close to the power source necessary to, well, power the suit.
You do not have the propulsion either.
Neither do you have the inertial dampers to make the kind of shit Stark does survivable, or the materials that can withstand the forces the suit has to deal with while being paper-thin.
The aerodynamics and stabilisation systems are also sketchy at best.

They are working on it

This kind of thing amazes me. Thanks for the input all. So… Wnen do you guys think they’ll be an “off the shelf” regular model?

TALOS is a far cry from Iron Man. I read enough sci-fi and have played enough RPGs to know more types of armor than you could think of, and TALOS barely qualifies as Powered Armor. Gareth McKinley needs to get out more if he made the comparison between TALOS and Iron Man.

Lets look at what TALOS offers:

- Exoskeleton : Not much of one, really. It will counteract it’s own weight with enough excess strength to allow a soldier to carry an M-60 as easily as they carry an M-16, but it won’t be ripping the hatches off of tanks and throwing buses.

- Google Glasses : It has a wearable computer with a HUD. Big woop! Anybody with a little cash could get similar peripherals for their smartphone.

- Sensors : I’ve worn night vision goggles and (like most Navy electricians) a thermal imager before. There are people who use those things all the time without TALOS.

- Magnetohydrodynamic armor : Some high-end cars use this stuff in their shocks. It’s basically variable-viscosity oil. Those cars use it to adjust their dampening on the fly; TALOS will use it to try to do in a complicated, power-intensive way what cornstarch and water do. D3o already has something similar, and cheaper.

@jerv Wow, you like… Know stuff! :)

Gaming for a few decades does that.

One thing that isn’t mentioned is logisitics.

While it’s fairly pricey already to give a soldier an assault weapon, some kevlar, and all that, it’d be a bit more to give all soldiers full body armor like the Rifts Coalition Dead Boy armor. Of course, some theaters may demand that sort of protection, and it’s cheaper to send a thousand trained guys in full armor than to train 20,000 guys to try and keep up with attrition.

The fact that many of our current soldiers already wear kevlar (often with optional trauma plates) compared to Vietnam where they had little more than their boots and helmets shows that we are already going that route to an extent, but it’s still rare to full-on SWAT gear.

However, the sort of armor more comparable to what you are thinking would be more like Coalition SAMAS power armor which does fly, mounts a gun about as powerful as an A-10 attack aircraft, and has the exoskeletal enhancements to wield it or to lift a car.

Well, that SAMAS suit is far bulkier, and weighs more than a motorcycle, making it harder to transport. It costs about 1,000 times as much, further limiting it’s deployment. And it also requires far more training to operate whereas the Dead Boy infantry armor only requires the basic motor skills of a four year old, the computer literacy of the average citizen, and enough strength/endurance to be fit for military service in the first place.

I am more of a fan of the Tau XV88
Though that is probably closer to a full on mech than a suit.

@ragingloli Yeah, once the limbs of the operator are not in the limbs of the armor, it’s more of a vehicle than a suit.

@ragingloli Well heck if we are going anime I want the super badass one from Strait Jacket.