The tech behind the power source, thrust, and primary weapons doesn’t exist, and there are no real-life counterparts to them even at large scale that would just need to be miniaturized. With that much fiction in even the mark 1 suit, it’s impossible to estimate cost.
The biggest problem IMO is the fact that all our power generation technology comes down to “boil water to turn turbine”. How we generate the heat changes, but not how we turn it into electricity.
The biggest problem IMO is the fact that all our power generation technology comes down to “boil water to turn turbine”. How we generate the heat changes, but not how we turn it into electricity.
Technically the ones that use steam to spin turbines are:
Coal plants
Gas plant
Thermal Solar Plants
Nuclear Fission Plants
Nuclear Fusion Plants
Then you have ones that spin turbines, but using other methods:
Hydro dams and tidal power - use water
Engines / Generators - use controlled explosions
Wind Turbines - use wind
Then you have the few that truly don’t use spinning turbines:
Solar Panels - they use semi-conductors specially designed so that light causes the electrons in the material to start flowing, directly creating usable electricity.
Piezo Electrics - similar semiconductors that react to material stress (bending etc) and cause electrons to flow
Batteries & Fuel Cells - store power in chemical form, and the reactions cause the electrons to flow directly
(Proposed) Direct Energy Converters - experimental devices long proposed for nuclear fusion reactors that can directly produce flowing electrons. There’s been recent research investigating doing this with fission reactors as well.
There’s also another heat -> electricity conversion method used by nuclear fission reactors, though it could presumably be used for anything in place of a steam turbine: thermocouples. Usually people think of them as electrical sensors for heat, but they can also scale up to produce a lot of electricity from a lot of heat. It’s not very new technology either; Voyager spacecrafts use it in their RTGs. No idea about how that scales though.
Good expansion on other things that turn turbines, but all of which would also never work in a mobile suit. Solar and PZ are truly different than “spin turbine“ but neither would work great to power the suit. Batteries and fuel cells might someday be energy dense enough to run an iron man for a short time, but still a long ways off. I think the direct energy converters are a super long way off. Good for low power situations, but I doubt they’ll ever be powerfully enough to propel even cars.
They’re different from chemical batteries in that they can’t be charged or discharged, and their energy comes not from chemical reactions, but from radioactive decay.
Thermal-nuclear batteries convert heat into electricity, including completely solid state ones like radioisotope generators, that use an array of thermo-couples to convert heat into electricity, not turbines.
Then there are Beta-Voltaic nuclear batteries that use specialized semi-conductor circuits to convert the electrons and positrons emitted from a radioactive material into usable electricity.
Neither of these produce anywhere near enough power output for a flying suit, nor can their power output vary, but still interesting to think about in the context of Tony Stark’s arc reactor.
The tech behind the power source, thrust, and primary weapons doesn’t exist, and there are no real-life counterparts to them even at large scale that would just need to be miniaturized. With that much fiction in even the mark 1 suit, it’s impossible to estimate cost.
The biggest problem IMO is the fact that all our power generation technology comes down to “boil water to turn turbine”. How we generate the heat changes, but not how we turn it into electricity.
Technically the ones that use steam to spin turbines are:
Then you have ones that spin turbines, but using other methods:
Then you have the few that truly don’t use spinning turbines:
Solar Panels - they use semi-conductors specially designed so that light causes the electrons in the material to start flowing, directly creating usable electricity.
Piezo Electrics - similar semiconductors that react to material stress (bending etc) and cause electrons to flow
Batteries & Fuel Cells - store power in chemical form, and the reactions cause the electrons to flow directly
(Proposed) Direct Energy Converters - experimental devices long proposed for nuclear fusion reactors that can directly produce flowing electrons. There’s been recent research investigating doing this with fission reactors as well.
There’s also another heat -> electricity conversion method used by nuclear fission reactors, though it could presumably be used for anything in place of a steam turbine: thermocouples. Usually people think of them as electrical sensors for heat, but they can also scale up to produce a lot of electricity from a lot of heat. It’s not very new technology either; Voyager spacecrafts use it in their RTGs. No idea about how that scales though.
Good expansion on other things that turn turbines, but all of which would also never work in a mobile suit. Solar and PZ are truly different than “spin turbine“ but neither would work great to power the suit. Batteries and fuel cells might someday be energy dense enough to run an iron man for a short time, but still a long ways off. I think the direct energy converters are a super long way off. Good for low power situations, but I doubt they’ll ever be powerfully enough to propel even cars.
Oh yeah, I was just expanding on the non turbine power types cause I think they’re neat.
Though I missed some of the most interesting ones: Nuclear Batteries.
They’re different from chemical batteries in that they can’t be charged or discharged, and their energy comes not from chemical reactions, but from radioactive decay.
Thermal-nuclear batteries convert heat into electricity, including completely solid state ones like radioisotope generators, that use an array of thermo-couples to convert heat into electricity, not turbines.
Then there are Beta-Voltaic nuclear batteries that use specialized semi-conductor circuits to convert the electrons and positrons emitted from a radioactive material into usable electricity.
Neither of these produce anywhere near enough power output for a flying suit, nor can their power output vary, but still interesting to think about in the context of Tony Stark’s arc reactor.