Could You Build a Real Iron Man Suit? | The Science of Iron Man

How would you build a real Iron Man suit? Could it even be done? The science behind Iron Man's suit looks about as accurate as the rest of the science in Marvel Comics - not very - but is it? Can you build your own Iron Man suit?

Let's take a look at some of the (possibly surprising) answers to these questions:

Before we get started on building our hypothetical Iron Man suit, we need to know what kind of technology is in Iron Man's armour. Here's a rundown of the essential components of the current Iron Man armour (as decided by me, basically. Feel free to disagree).

• An arc-reactor.
• Jet boots, capable of near-space flight.
• Repulsor beams.
• A computer system with near-human intelligence, or a super-advanced personal navigation system.
• A brilliant if difficult billionaire to fly it (optional, but if you've got a spare you don't want, I'll have him)

So, Iron Man's 'arc reactor' is actually just a fusion reactor with a cooler sounding name and a lot of hype - at base, it makes a lot of power by way of nuclear fusion. You may have heard of nuclear power before - it's not exactly uncommon in a lot of places in the world. What makes Tony's invention special is that it's very small, and very powerful. Only a handful of years ago, fusion reaction seemed like science fiction - but now it's quickly becoming common science. Check out some of the theory to see for yourself:

The jet boots might be the most unrealistic part of the Iron Man suit. Seems strange to say that an arc reactor is potentially in the pipeline and somehow, there's no boots to go with it (though the dilemma of having no shoes to go with your outfit is not one unknown to me), but it's true: for reasons best known to smarter people, we've never really been able to build jet boots without, y'know, setting stuff on fire or killing ourselves.

Or have we...?

Maybe. Sort of. Depends. There's no clear explanation in the comics about how Iron Man's repulsor beams work, but we can take some guesses. The best guess, if you ask me, is that it's a classic repulsor beam - the opposite of the popular sci-fi concept of the tractor beam. And those, well, you might be surprised by how far they've come. How hard could it be to stick a reverse switch on it?

Is it possible to build a computer with near-human intelligence that could help us fly a real Iron Man suit? Remembering that we're not talking about building an artificial human here; just a machine that could interface with us directly and make smart plans about how to fly our cool new Iron Man suit, do you think it could be done?

We've already built it. A modified missile guidance system coupled with a voice interface (not new technology - I'll bet you have it on your hands-free device) would provide the same effect. Sarcasm not necessarily included, but that might be a good thing. We could probably get Paul Bettany to do the voice...

Can't you? If you've gotten this far and you're still not convinced that one day, we could build a real Iron Man suit, maybe someone else a little more persuasive (possibly with some letters after their name that mean Impressive Things) can get you on board: