A near indestructable metal?

[TransformerRobot]

Do you realize that even if you made a suit that could survive a 700km/h impact the wearer would not survive the 700 km/h impact they would have inside the suit when the suit comes to a sudden stop?

 

I'm trying to figure out how to prevent that from happening. What if there was some kind of gel padding on the inside of the suit.

[Realitycheck]

Basically, the same effect of a bloody brains cocktail, shaken, not stirred. Happens all the time within the sanctuary of your vehicle. Skull hits steering wheel, brain hits skull at same speed, nighty nite.

[TransformerRobot]

Okay, then what would need to be done about the helmet so that we don't end up with brain and blood smoothies?

[Xittenn]

Okay, then what would need to be done about the helmet so that we don't end up with brain and blood smoothies?

 

You would have to equip the helmet with inertial dampeners, but these don't exist so . . . . .

[TransformerRobot]

What if the suit had lead in it's boots? Or something heavier? Then again that would require it to have something that helps lift the feet up, like small pulse jets, but that would be awkward somehow.

 

Or how about the suit being buckled onto the vehicle by the feet, like the foot bindings of a snowboard? And just in case, the rider has an ejection system that launches them off the vehicle so they can parachute off to safety.

 

I guess if nobody else has any responses to that idea then my problem's solved.

[Xittenn]

The acceleration from 0 - 700km/h is quite high, on the order of 6.5 g. Regardless, to ensure survival of a spill from a vehicle under the conditions given, the best approach would not be to design a suit that absorbs direct impact. The conditions given suggests that the initial velocity, post falling from the vehicle, will be parallel with respect to the ground. This means that you will not be approaching the ground perpendicularly at this incredible velocity, and so immediate impact energies will not reflect such a hypothetical condition. In this case you would be best to design a suit that maintains temperature and integrity as your mass is slowed by the friction with the ground as you slide across it.

 

Have you ever watched the show Ridiculousness?

Edited December 23, 2011 by Xittenn

[TransformerRobot]

No, but something tells me I'd like it.

[Realitycheck]

Oh well, yeah, you could always just hook up a good ole regulational transducer force field to your suit and if anything gets to close to it, it just eliminates all atomic bonds associated with its structure. Basically just turns everything into a little bit of neutronium that evaporates in about 15 minutes. Standard stuff, but you'd also have to have a nuclear power pack as well.

Edited December 23, 2011 by Realitycheck

[TransformerRobot]

Has anything like that even been attempted before?

[Ben Banana]

Unless they didn't research the metal, the writers at Marvel Comics named one of Iron Man's enemies Titanium Man. Just like Iron Man, Titanium Man's suit makes him much stronger and more durable.

 

Power Rangers used the same sort of idea in their eighth season, with a new Ranger named the Titanium Ranger. As you can imagine the Titanium Ranger was much more powerful than the other 5 Rangers of his respective season, and had an even deadlier arsenal with him.

 

Are you kidding me? Fiction writers (or comic artists ) mostly never do any thorough research, if any at all. And any thorough research to them would usually mean lousy research to a real scientist.

Edited December 23, 2011 by Ben Bowen

[TransformerRobot]

I just want to be accurate is all, except in the case of aliens or time travel.

[InigoMontoya]

I just want to be accurate is all, except in the case of aliens or time travel.

Then figure out a way to tell your story without the suit.

[TransformerRobot]

I can't tell the story without the suit. If I did, people would call it impossible, and tell me I'm just a cynical Aspie journalist creating his ideal world away from all the cynicism seen in today's society.

 

After all, years ago people said things like "Powered by steam? That will never work." or "A human being gliding through the air like a bird? Impossible.", but eventually we got steam locomotives and hang gliders, so who's to say we won't have deflector shields?

 

Speaking of which, look at what they did in 2009 for Israeli tanks:

 

 

If the suit had something with the same function it just might give the rider extra protection.

 

The vehicle I described before resembles this kind of design:

 

[Iggy]

I want it to be a metal... I was thinking a suit of armor...

I can't tell the story without the suit.

It sounds like a story Marvel already told

 

After all, years ago people said things like "Powered by steam? That will never work." or "A human being gliding through the air like a bird? Impossible.", but eventually we got steam locomotives and hang gliders, so who's to say we won't have deflector shields?

 

Speaking of which, look at what they did in 2009 for Israeli tanks:

 

 

If the suit had something with the same function it just might give the rider extra protection.

The problem, as I'm sure people have already explained, is that a suite no matter how strong, doesn't protect you from inertial forces. If you jump off the empire state building wearing a strong suite of armor, the armor could survive the impact intact, but that wouldn't do the person inside any good. You'd still need a mop to get them out.

 

Falling off a bike going 700 km/h and hitting a wall is the end of the rider. Unless the suit breaks the laws of physics, it's the end of the story. Fade to black.

 

 

The IDF tank system shoots scatter-shot at an incoming missile. It detonates the missile prematurely. That would work great for a personal anti-missile system, but would serve no other purpose. It wouldn't help with bullets or impacts or falling off a bike, as examples.

 

If you have to break the laws of physics to accomplish what you want, and it sounds like you do, then you might as well give the wearer inertial dampeners. EDIT -- > inertial negation would have the added bonus of making the bike faster (the rider would effectively weigh nothing) and allow the rider to undertake unrealistic maneuvers without feeling any g-force <--EDIT

Edited December 23, 2011 by Iggy

[TransformerRobot]

The problem is I don't want to defy the laws of physics if it's a realistic story (In the sense that technology has gotten like this by the 2130s). If it was something light-hearted and ridiculous like My Little Pony or Super Mario Bros. I wouldn't mind at all.

 

Yes, the suits I'm describing we're indeed inspired by Iron Man and tokasatsu (Space Sherrifs and Beetle Fighter). I'm trying to apply real world physics to such an idea in order to impress viewers, I don't wanna be a sensationalist like Roland Emmerich.

[Iggy]

The problem is I don't want to defy the laws of physics if it's a realistic story (In the sense that technology has gotten like this by the 2130s).

Ok...

 

2130...

 

If I fell off a bike going ridiculous speeds, I would want an airbag system to deploy like spirit and opportunity had when they hit the surface of mars...

 

[skip to 0:50]

 

 

Or you could put some maneuvering rockets on the suit that act to quickly decelerate the rider before he hits something.

 

Bullets and missiles could be handled with a futuristic version of the IDF video you found. Darpa is working on something similar for RPG's that you could google.

 

As far as being hit by a fighter jet going some high mach number... the only realistic solution is to get out of the way. The radar system that detects incoming missiles could also serve to say decide if something really big is on its way and fire maneuvering thrusters to move out of its way.

[TransformerRobot]

Well I guess a jet pack would be helpful in rocketing the rider to safety.

 

Hasn't Honda introduced motorcycle airbags yet?

[Phi for All]

Xittenn already pointed out that the acceleration you want yields about 6.5 G's, and average humans start blacking out around 5 G's. Without some kind of inertial dampening, you're going to need something that slows the wearer down without the abrupt ending and nothing above 5 G's.

 

A parachute works to slow a fall, but needs a lot of distance and time to be effective. If you could project some kind of force field ahead of you that decreased your speed by 50% every second, you could get down to about 11 kph in 6 seconds. You'd still need something to push against, though, and it shouldn't be the ground.

[TransformerRobot]

If only we knew how to make force fields, like in The Incredibles or Sonic the Hedgehog, instead of the early warning interceptor defenses on those tanks.

[dimreepr]

I want it to be a metal so hard that it will be hit by fighter plane at top speed, without a scratch on the wearer. Yes, I know it seems like a stretch, but I was thinking a suit of armor that survives impacts from incredibly fast objects, and makes the wearer almost invincible to the deadliest blows. Would it need to be chemically altered to achieve that level of hardness tensile strength (Such as if it was pulled apart by g-forces or knocked off the wearer)?

 

This would result in a suit of armour containing human soup. You would not only, need a material to withstand the impact, but you would need a way to dissipate the engry without impacting the wearer

[Iggy]

TransformerRobot, you can calculate yourself the distance needed to safely stop. If you square the velocity (in meters per second) and divide that by 19.6 and divide that by whatever g-force you might like to inflict on your hero, that will tell you how many meters it should take him to stop.

 

For 700 kph (that's about 200 m/s), feeling 10 gees, it would come out at about 200 meters.

[TransformerRobot]

This would result in a suit of armour containing human soup. You would not only, need a material to withstand the impact, but you would need a way to dissipate the engry without impacting the wearer

 

Can you think of a way to do so? What if the padding inside the suit consisted of liquid filled sacks, like water? Water's softer than pavement at least.

[InigoMontoya]

Can you think of a way to do so? What if the padding inside the suit consisted of liquid filled sacks, like water? Water's softer than pavement at least.

If you filled the suit with saline solution to take out ALL air pockets, Pascal's Law would protect the wearer to an extent.

 

That is to say that he'd have a nice corpse. He would no longer be human soup. He'd be intact.... But he'd also have collapsed lungs and would die of suffocation almost immediately after impact. 'Cause when I said you'd have to remove ALL air from the system I meant ALL gas (including the air in the wearer's lungs).

 

 

Note: The above assumes that the human body is homogeneous with respect to density (and said density matches the saline solution). It isn't, but that's about the best scenario I can dream up.

 

 

Edit: Another wrinkle... The hydraulic suspension of the wearer may help resist extreme accelerations (neglecting that whole collapsed lung thing), but it would add vulnerability to shock waves as they would be transmitted through the suit to his internal organs with frightening efficiency. So while he may be able to handle extreme accelerations (again, neglecting the lungs/ears/etc.), a blast-based warhead would truly rock his world.

Edited December 25, 2011 by InigoMontoya

[TransformerRobot]

Maybe I should make the bikes slower then. Exceeding 700 km/h is ideal for such things as fighter jets or space shuttles, but not for motorcycles or hoverbikes. I know this now after learning of the disastrous health hazards tied into making a supersonic, open-cockpit racing machine.

[Xittenn]

You could always implement liquid breathing, like in the movie the Abyss.

 

I'm kind of curious why sliding to a stop is seemingly being dismissed. The likelihood of traveling on land, at rates exceeding 400km/h, will not only most likely be done on a straight away, but will also most certainly be done on an empty plane. There will more likely than not, not be anything that this person is going to hit aside from the flat surface that is the ground. Motorcyclist suits are designed to allow the rider to slide to a stop, this is already the reality.