Dow Corning helps Army develop high-tech battle suit

AP ^ | 8/25/2003

[mephisto660]

there was a game out before starship troopers that featured that kind of armor, it's called Fallout. the game creaters called the suits power armor. you guys should play the game at least once, it's pretty good and hilarious.

[dave_scothern]

Remember what happened to the soldiers in Starship Troopers when the suit ran out of power? They became frozen in place like a statue. Which is what will happen within an hour or two unless we use nuclear. But enviro wackos will not allow it.

Consider the size of a modern nuclear power plant. Once you have the reactor, its radiation shield, the steam/liquid metal/whatever primary coolant circuit, the secondary steam circuit, turbine, generator, condenser and regulation systems, is it surprising that the smallest reactor system tested was to power what is even today a large aircraft, the 6-engined B-36 bomber back in the 1950s? Crew protection alone weighed 12 tons. Also realise the problems associated with decommissioning a reactor - a 100-year plus program is needed to decontaminate a nuclear power plant. It's not just the "enviro wackos", it's anyone with sense. A nuclear-powered suit would be substantially larger than a tank... plus if one of a soldier was captured nuclear material would end up in your enemy's hand... not exactly a ideal. Dirty bombs, anyone?

Suggestion: would it not make much more sense to power such a suit in the same way as any other army mechanical system is powered... a small petrol or diesel engine driving either a hydraulic system or a generator? Even 10-15hp would provide massively increased power compared with ordinary soldiers (who are currently capable of producing about 1/2hp!). You'd need to refuel every 12 hours or so... but this would not be a huge problem as humans in battle themselves tire in a comparable length of time.

Nuclear power might seem a futuristic idea, but it would be totally unfeasible in practice.