As most of you may well know, "Captain America: Civil War" has very recently come out. I don't know about you but I chose team Iron Man. It wasn't a choice of ethics for me, but rather it was the amazing suit! Here I will give you all a brief synopsis on the Iron Man and his suit. Including the differences between the comic books and movie suits as well as whether the suit is science or science fiction.
Tony Stark is the protagonist of the Iron Man story and he is the genius who made all of the Iron Man suits. When he was captured by a terrorist organization he was forced to make them weapons of mass destruction. However, when they weren't looking he was making a tool for his escape. This first suit was the mark one Iron Man suit. It was bulky, heavy, and less technological than we'd like. The cinematic Marvel universe kept true to this version of the suit by making it equally bulky in the movies.
The point that the two universes split was immediately after. In the comic book world, Iron Man's mark two armor was slightly less bulky and was made of a different metal. It still had a very basic design and was incapable of lengthened flight. In the cinematic universe, the suit looked much different. It wasn't painted hot-rod red but it was a nice silver color. It also had an artificial intelligence integrated heads up display and the ability to fly for long distances. Its only flaw was freezing up once it got too high in altitude.
The mark three armor was even more of a Stark difference between the two universes. The suit from the comics had a thick chest plate and an almost fabric-like alloy covering the arms and legs. Tony Stark would use this suit during the events of the first Iron Man movie. This was the first suit to receive the iconic red and gold colors in the movies.
Now to the interesting part, the science! Just how possible is Tony Stark's technology? Not all of it but I will show you how much is. Most of the cinematic suits follow the same design, minus the Hulkbuster, and will have the following technology. The beginning is the basic frame or chassis for the armor. This is made of titanium and carbon nanofiber plating. We already can manufacture those, check. Next, his helmet has the artificial intelligence integrated heads up display. Our military is already testing such displays, so the HUD is possible. We, however, do not have the programming capability to have a super processor like JARVIS. The helmet gets half a point in possibility. The rocket boots are definitely a possibility, but the problem would lie in making the suit look the same as we need a compartment to store fuel. The last point in the suit and my favorite are the repulsor gauntlets. As much as I want these to be possible, they just aren't. If the gauntlets were the size of a small engine they would be. What happens when he repulses is he is discharging a large amount of plasma and light in a concentrated direction. Well, we can make plasma already, what's the problem? The problem is that you would need a power source so large to pull off that kind of force it would be enough to power a large building.
Sadly to say until we can reach the point of cold fusion we will not be able to make our own dream Iron Man suit. The possible points are the chassis, helmet, and rocket boots. I speculate it will be years until we can have repulsor gauntlets or our own JARVIS. Though, a nerd can dream, can't he?
