Space Diving: Iron Man Meets Star Trek Suit In Development 133
cylonlover writes "Science fiction may well become reality with the development of a real life Iron Man suit that would allow astronauts or extreme thrill seekers to space dive from up to 62 miles (100 km) above the Earth's surface at the very edge of space, and safely land using thruster boots instead of a parachute. Hi-tech inventors over at Solar System Express (Sol-X) and biotech designers Juxtopia LLC (JLLC) are collaborating on this project with a goal of releasing a production model of such a suit by 2016. The project will use a commercial space suit to which will be added augmented reality (AR) goggles, jet packs, power gloves and movement gyros."
The fall...check...landing...what? (Score:1, Interesting)
Safety consideration (Score:3, Interesting)
If you can have a parachute, why not include a parachute? I'd consider retroboosters as the backup system, not the primary, for safety. By the time you're close enough to the ground to fire them, the parachute is no longer an option, so if they fail, you get about 3 seconds to contemplate your own stupidity before cratering.
A company that can provide two layers of life-saving security and yet only manufactures one should be charged with manslaughter, but instead we're allowing it because it caters to thrillseekers? Where was this kind of logic during the anti-smoking campaigns of yesteryear? "Smoking is okay; it's a thrill-seeking behavior!" Yeah.... okay, sure.
Re:The fall...check...landing...what? (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, you need surprisingly little fuel.
Even for a modest exhaust velocity of 2000m/s of the rocket and a terminal velocity of 100m/s (the atmosphere does most of the breaking for you anyway), only about 5% of the total mass need to be fuel to land. That's about 20kg of fuel for a total mass of 300kg of the whole rig including the shaved ape. There's also a healthy safety margin for hovering and fooling around before touchdown, especially if you use somewhat better rocket fuel. (2000m/s isn't all that great).
Re:Not Exactly Iron Man Yet... (Score:5, Interesting)
Nanofibre? Sure, but I want to use them to create a hybrid organic / inorganic mental lattice. My current brain can then interact with the additional brain power and more and more power can be added. Hopefully by the time my organic cells are old and dying it will be a mere fraction of the total mind and be redundantly duplicated across the neural network from recalling the memories. Bodies? Where I'm going, I don't need bodies. Why jump to the ground from space when I can just control a remote avatar wirelessly from the rim of the planet's gravity well?
Some people watched star trek and wanted to be the captain or engineer... I wanted to be the ship.