My attempt at power armor

[Ayrix]

Hello, I have made a concept for power suit(s) in my own universe. First for a bit of background, it takes place in a not-too-far future and I’m trying my best not to do anything that directly breaks the laws of physics.
It takes place in our solar system with all the planets (and maybe oort cloud) colonized and populated. The planets are all connected via a jump gate system which accelerates the ship to a pretty good fraction of c and the gate on the other side slows it back down.

The three governments in the sol system are all newly founded, and thus a bit unstable. Therefore they make great use of privateers and mercenary contractors. The system is still very quite unlawful outside of the direct influences of the planets, with pirates and smugglers abroad using their own home made jump gates.

The suits in this universe aren’t much taller than a normal human, being a couple inches taller and maybe 6 inches wider, depending on the suit. Each suit is usually tailored to the user specifically, and the equipment on each also varies greatly with the user, depending on preference. For simplicities sake, Ill just use the concept for my main characters suit.

*Note* Before this gets crazy with the guns and things, I want you to keep in mind the suit I'm describing is a military-grade suit. Most suits in the universe made for combat are simply industrial versions with guns and armor attached.*




-The height varies, usually adding around 2-4 inches to the wearer, and is also a few inches wider with angled armor plates and large shoulder plates/pads. The armor is made of light weight ceramics and metal grids that are highly resistant to small arms fire, and can sometimes even take a hit from an RPG (although with massive damage done to the suit, to the point that abandoning it is the only option.)

-Powered (duh) hydraulic systems hold the suits own weight, making the suit feel nearly weightless on the user.

-Run speed is augmented only to the point that the user is unencumbered by the suit, however the main characters suit has a sort of air compressor jump pack good for a 6m vertical jump or around 10m if used in a horizontal arc. The jump is not graceful at all and is used in a burst instead of a sustained burn. The suit has shock absorbing equipment in the legs to compensate.
*note* the jump modification is something very unique to this particular suit, and is often laughed at by other pilots, which may very well be justified.

-Refilling the compressor is loud and takes around a minute to do, though it only requires an atmosphere to do.

-Power generation is from a highly efficient battery pack placed on the back of the suit, and is usually good for around 12 hours of continuous use. The battery can be recharged easily and via many ways, such as continuous exposure to heat or light or simply plugging it into a portable generator. However it cannot recharge and power the suit simultaneously.

-Weapon wise, they usually carry standard small arms or at most small heavy weapons such as RPGs or squad machine guns. Sometimes these weapons are simply held like any other ones, and other times they are attached or built into the suit, or simply strapped on and have a trigger in the gauntlet of the suit. The main characters own suit carries a 7.62mm rifle in his hands, and a 3 shot (reloadable) 25mm grenade launcher with HE rounds attached to the right forearm of the suit (with proper bracing systems throughout the arm)

-IR blocking and heat shielding sheets are melded onto the top of all the armor on the suit, making the suit usually show equal or less heat then that of a human. Noise wise, the hydraulics on the suit aren’t too loud, though the individual foot step is about double the noise of a normal human (in shoes).

-Overall the weight of the suit without a wearer is about 150-200 pounds although this can easily go up or down depending on the equipment preferred by the user.






Ill keep the background usage of these suits short, and pretty much say they are used very lightly by the military, and find the most use in the mercenary or pirate side of the law, where they are used for quality over quantity missions or simply as automated e-peen wavers by suit jockeys.

Let me know if something is absolutely stupid or if I left something vital out. Thanks in advance.

[Shroom Man 777]

Hrm...ever thinking of using artificial musculature to power your armor instead of bulky hydraulics? And the frame could be made out of some kind of...smart material, with fancy nano-stuff. Like...imagine under the armor plates and kevlar and stuff, the frame that's holding the stuff is some kind of pseudo-T1000 smart metal that reflexively bends whenever the user is bending his knees and arms and stuff.

[Stark]

Shit yeah, what this needs is more complete wank. Make it out of intelligent AI-nanobricks too.

[Ayrix]

mmmm, the muscular fibers idea actually sounds cool, but the meldable under skin might be a bit too advanced for this civilization. Remember, the hydraulics/muscles only have to support the armors own weight, it isnt for wacking someones face off, although you may end up doing that anyway.

[Ford Prefect]

Shit yeah, what this needs is more complete wank. Make it out of intelligent AI-nanobricks too.

I think building your armour out of intelligent bricks would actually be pretty funny. *takes notes* But power armour isn't power armour with roller skates, jet packs and drills.

ANYWAY, I'm just wondering whether ceramics are all that good for dealing with kinetic impact, as I imagine the primary weaponry in this near-future sci-fi would be.

[Ayrix]

ANYWAY, I'm just wondering whether ceramics are all that good for dealing with kinetic impact, as I imagine the primary weaponry in this near-future sci-fi would be.

Er, I thought ceramics were used in hard body armor, or maybe I'm just crazy.


If it isnt then I apologize and Ill find a different thingie to use.

[Ford Prefect]

Ceramic inserrts are used (I think the Interceptor plates are boron carbide ceramic), yes, but they shatter when they're hit. You'd almost certainly want to use some sort of composite armour, like Chobham, which involves ceramics, but involves other materials.

[Ayrix]

Ceramic inserrts are used (I think the Interceptor plates are boron carbide ceramic), yes, but they shatter when they're hit. You'd almost certainly want to use some sort of composite armour, like Chobham, which involves ceramics, but involves other materials.

hmm, thats pretty good to know. Thanks for that.


Oh and I have a second question that may sound a tad naive, but just how wanky on the stupid scale are my suits?

[Sidewinder]

-Overall the weight of the suit without a wearer is about 150-200 pounds although this can easily go up or down depending on the equipment preferred by the user.

With all the stuff you're putting in this suit, e.g., the hydraulics, a battery good for 12 hours, and armor tough enough to protect the wearer from an RPG? You'll be lucky to get the suit under 900 pounds-- and if you can, it'll be from using horrendously expensive materials that are light and strong, and horrendously expensive mechanisms that are miniaturized without sacrificing performance.

[Ayrix]

With all the stuff you're putting in this suit, e.g., the hydraulics, a battery good for 12 hours, and armor tough enough to protect the wearer from an RPG? You'll be lucky to get the suit under 900 pounds-- and if you can, it'll be from using horrendously expensive materials that are light and strong, and horrendously expensive mechanisms that are miniaturized without sacrificing performance.

hmm, now that I think of the weight it does sound way too low. Though about the cost Im fine with it.
I forgot to mention it in the original post but these suits are not common at all in my universe, costing upwards of $500,000 for a bare bones (AKA a frame with maybe a metal skin) one and thousands more for weapons, armor, modifications etc.
The suit I described in the original post would be one that has been tinkered with and has had enough money thrown at it to probably be a multi-million dollar investment.

And yes, they very easily could buy an actual vehicle or two for how much a good suit costs, however I intend for those that have them to either A) use them for their intended purpose, which are lightning raids usually executed from an orbital lander/drop pod or B) giant I-HAVE-A-BIG-DICK machines for the douchebags of the world.

[Ford Prefect]

Oh and I have a second question that may sound a tad naive, but just how wanky on the stupid scale are my suits?

My own Swiss cheese science fiction universe involves three metre tall, mind-machine linked 'armour' with antimatter drives on roller skates (no, seriously) having gun battles across tens of kilometres. You really don't have to worry about 'wanky', even without me getting into a rant about the misuse of the word 'wank'.

[Ayrix]

My own Swiss cheese science fiction universe involves three metre tall, mind-machine linked 'armour' with antimatter drives on roller skates (no, seriously) having gun battles across tens of kilometres. You really don't have to worry about 'wanky', even without me getting into a rant about the misuse of the word 'wank'.

Thanks, this is one of the few times that I've been glad that I was just one upped.

[Ford Prefect]

Thanks, this is one of the few times that I've been glad that I was just one upped.

Just remember that even myl udicrous 'power armour' is not actually wank in the context of its own universe, which is all that really matters. Power relative to other universes should not come into it; otherwise we might as well say the whole of Star Wars is wank, because it's so much more powerful than Star Trek.

To give another example, compare the Sun Crusher of Star Wars with the Xeelee Nightfighter of the Xeelee Sequence. They're actually superficially very similar, fighter sized, practically indestructible vessels capable of destroying stars. Only one of these is wank: the Suncrusher is so wildly out of control in the context of Star Wars that it has to be wank.

You should never be afraid to put together something on the basis that people will call it wank, so long as it remains consistent with the setting itself, and serves the story well.

[Ayrix]

Ill keep that in mind, seems to make writing rollerskating (please tell me there ROCKET rollerskates) mechs that much easier eh?
But seriously, sounds like good advice.

[Ford Prefect]

Ill keep that in mind, seems to make writing rollerskating (please tell me there ROCKET rollerskates) mechs that much easier eh?

Antimatter rocket roller skates. I aim to please.

[Ayrix]

Antimatter rocket roller skates. I aim to please.

Make. Babies. now.


Anyway, do you think its a good idea to have these suits be deployed from a stealthed lander (which in turn is deployed from a corvette somewhere in orbit)? Im still debating if they should do that or the routine marine droppod fiasco.

Or hell, maybe both. These suits I dont think would ever get deployed in numbers larger than 10 at a time, and thats multiple teams working together. Though that presents another problem, do you think that 10 of these suits could reasonably be expected to do a lightning strike on some pirate camp, blow their leader up etc. and return safely?

[Ford Prefect]

Anyway, do you think its a good idea to have these suits be deployed from a stealthed lander (which in turn is deployed from a corvette somewhere in orbit)? Im still debating if they should do that or the routine marine droppod fiasco.

Or hell, maybe both. These suits I dont think would ever get deployed in numbers larger than 10 at a time, and thats multiple teams working together. Though that presents another problem, do you think that 10 of these suits could reasonably be expected to do a lightning strike on some pirate camp, blow their leader up etc. and return safely?

Well, the depends on where you're making the strike. How much fuel do you have to expend getting the suits out of the gravity well you're assaulting? Life is easy if you're attacking some sort of orbital colony that you just can't ice due to civillians, as you can just shove the men out the door and watch them float to the target, where they can cut open the right spots and kill whomever.

However, keep in mind that stealth in space is pretty implausible. How do you hide something which is hundreds of kelvin warmer than the surrounding space. Depending on what sort of dive it has, you might be able to see it from Pluto, when it is in Earth orbit.

[MJ12 Commando]

With all the stuff you're putting in this suit, e.g., the hydraulics, a battery good for 12 hours, and armor tough enough to protect the wearer from an RPG? You'll be lucky to get the suit under 900 pounds-- and if you can, it'll be from using horrendously expensive materials that are light and strong, and horrendously expensive mechanisms that are miniaturized without sacrificing performance.

Well, it's futurey enough that he has common interplanetary travel. His civilization has an energy budget that is, quite obviously, IMMENSE. So we can probably handwave the battery.

Even without, the maximum theoretical energy in a battery is IIRC (don't quote me on this) something like 1-2 MJ/kg. That gives you something like a 10 kg battery assuming you're

If you think of other methods, you could probably use fuel cells or something else to get more power for less mass. Hydrogen has an energy density of something like 120 MJ/kg, which means a hydrogen fuel cell, even working at 30% efficiency, will give your suit 40 MJ of electrical power.

A normal person working at peak capacity doesn't reach a kilowatt-and unless the suit's creating some quite absurd levels of added strength, I doubt its energy consumption is going to be more than two or three times that with everything attached. But a lot of mass is going to be fuel, this much is certain.

The jump system is silly unless designed for low gravity environments specifically. To jump 6m vertically for 200 kg of armor, person, and equipment requires 12 kJ and all at once-you'd probably need a capacitor specifically for this role, which means that you'd have an extra part that's heavy. You'd also need a high power compressor and some other stuff that tend to be bulky and easy to damage.

Ditch that, just retain vestiges of it as a zero-G maneuvering system in case you get knocked off the ship or accidentally jump a bit too fast and get to escape velocity off an asteroid.

Hydraulics are silly, because carbon nanotubule muscle can give strength to weight ratios up to a hundred times superior to human muscle with similar contraction speed and are going to be lighter and more apt to fail gracefully than hydraulics. EAP generally should be quieter and less vulnerable to damage than hydraulics, and do not have fluids involved that can sublime away in space and create catastrophic power loss with even a single lucky hit.

Taking a hit from a RPG is likely going to be a bit much unless you have sillytech armor or extensive use of materials nearing the theoretical limits of materials strength-and even then you're probably meaning a "modern" RPG. I'd tone that down.

But really, this is about typical for sci-fi stuff. A combination of technology that's a bit silly high and a bit silly low for the overall advancement level intended.

[Gullible Jones]

Stealth in space... Hmm. I've been working on some of my own fiction and that's been bugging me.

I suppose you could have honking big heatsinks with reflectors behind them, to try to dump as much of your heat as possible in directed cones instead of all over the place... That way you would have an easier time avoiding detection, provided nobody entered one of the cones. I'm not sure if that's thermodynamically worthwhile though. (Stupid stupid stupid...)

[Ayrix]

The jump system is silly unless designed for low gravity environments specifically. To jump 6m vertically for 200 kg of armor, person, and equipment requires 12 kJ and all at once-you'd probably need a capacitor specifically for this role, which means that you'd have an extra part that's heavy. You'd also need a high power compressor and some other stuff that tend to be bulky and easy to damage.

Ditch that, just retain vestiges of it as a zero-G maneuvering system in case you get knocked off the ship or accidentally jump a bit too fast and get to escape velocity off an asteroid.

hmm, I was intending it for it to be stupid even in universe, although now it seems much more improbable than stupid. I think Ill follow your advice on that one.

Hydraulics are silly, because carbon nanotubule muscle can give strength to weight ratios up to a hundred times superior to human muscle with similar contraction speed and are going to be lighter and more apt to fail gracefully than hydraulics. EAP generally should be quieter and less vulnerable to damage than hydraulics, and do not have fluids involved that can sublime away in space and create catastrophic power loss with even a single lucky hit.

Also sounds like a good idea, Ill change it to that.

Taking a hit from a RPG is likely going to be a bit much unless you have sillytech armor or extensive use of materials nearing the theoretical limits of materials strength-and even then you're probably meaning a "modern" RPG. I'd tone that down.

Well, when I meant take a hit from a RPG, I meant it that it could take one and the pilot (probably) wouldnt be dead, but other then that it would be scrap metal.

[Turin]

While my first instinct when I see a detailed description in the course of a story of how a piece of tech works in-universe is almost always "yawn," it seems to me if you're going to do it that you're missing a big chunk of the tech here -- the sensor/coms package. That's going to actually be a somewhat important part of telling your story, because that will determine what the characters actually see, hear, and feel from their own POV.

[Ayrix]

Of course, for sensory equipment it, shockingly, varies greatly with the suit. However for our protagonists suit it has a host of visual sensor arrays (IR, night vision, motion tracking), several lock on systems for the grenade launcher and a targeting aid for the 7.62mm rifle built into the helmet.

It of course has auto-dimmers for space and a built in comm-link.


I'll out do myself here and also say that this particular suit has full NBC protection, and is (duh) space capable, although alot of the suits out there dont feature either of these.

[Turin]

Of course, for sensory equipment it, shockingly, varies greatly with the suit. However for our protagonists suit it has a host of visual sensor arrays (IR, night vision, motion tracking), several lock on systems for the grenade launcher and a targeting aid for the 7.62mm rifle built into the helmet.

It of course has auto-dimmers for space and a built in comm-link.


I'll out do myself here and also say that this particular suit has full NBC protection, and is (duh) space capable, although alot of the suits out there dont feature either of these.

I think you missed my main point, which is that you'll need to be able to portray what it's like to be in one of these suits (assuming we as the audience have access to the protagonist's thoughts, which I'd recommend). Otherwise scenes with the suit just become some kind of military rar-rar cool guns wankfest. Look at the difference it makes in something like The Bourne Supremacy where we're "close" to the character in all the car chases.

How does a human being process all this augmented information coming into the suit? Does he switch between different forms of vision (if so, how does he make his commands to do so)? Does his suit have some kind of filtering that gives him only information he needs? Is it equipped with some kind of limited AI personality that obeys his commands with respect to what he wants to know, or is it a dumb piece of equipment that needs to be told everything explicitly?

What can he hear from inside the suit? Is he connected to a constant stream of radio chatter from all the other suits plus from the spaceship? If he's under radio silence, does he hear the constant rhythm of his own breath and heartbeat echo in the helmet? If he's in-atmosphere and there's a nearby explosion, does the suit have some kind of automatic filter in the helmet?

As much as it's a lousy novel in a lot of other ways, check out Starship Troopers. Heinlein does a pretty decent job of addressing a lot of these issues in a way that you understand what the viewpoint character is experiencing. I wouldn't recommend the expository nature in which he does it, but it's there.

[MJ12 Commando]

hmm, I was intending it for it to be stupid even in universe, although now it seems much more improbable than stupid. I think Ill follow your advice on that one.

Thanks, I guess. It's not improbable, just quite impractical, and might as well be useless.

Well, when I meant take a hit from a RPG, I meant it that it could take one and the pilot (probably) wouldnt be dead, but other then that it would be scrap metal.

Simpler answer- proof it only against, say, heavy rifle fire (~.50 cal or equivalent) and give it an active defense system of some sort, either a soft-kill sensor blinding laser suite or a hard-kill countermeasure system like ARENA or TROPHY.

[Ford Prefect]

While my first instinct when I see a detailed description in the course of a story of how a piece of tech works in-universe is almost always "yawn," it seems to me if you're going to do it that you're missing a big chunk of the tech here -- the sensor/coms package.

It seems to me that you've completely missed the point as to the purpose of this technical description. Technical descriptions created for reference are extremely useful to the writer for a variety of reasons. They can define hard limits on what the technology can do, so then you can remain consistent. At the same time, it allows outsiders to view the technology and provide fixes for anything we percieve as being problematic; by creating this technical description, Ayrix has been alerted to possibly nonsennsical parts of the suit's capabilities, and can correct them when it comes to actually writing the story.

Simpler answer- proof it only against, say, heavy rifle fire (~.50 cal or equivalent) and give it an active defense system of some sort, either a soft-kill sensor blinding laser suite or a hard-kill countermeasure system like ARENA or TROPHY.

It might be hard to get much effective coverage from a PD system. I suppose you wouldn't really need it to last that long, so a couple of pre-loaded bursts in the launchers would work (as would 'super smoke screens' for anti-laser duty). What about ERA? I mean, I know you'd want something like ARENA over reactive armour, but ERA might just be cheaper.