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[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

I'm trying to say the fluid might have the properties needed, unless you've checked it out and can say it doesn't but you just sound like you don't believe it's the device you are talking about when it could be

[Urist Arrhenius]

It was a joke about the whole 'carbon OP' thing. I have no idea what would be best for building a suit like that.

Dark energy, probably.

[XXXXYYYY]

Unpowered lithobraking

I'm totally going to use that in conversations in the future.

[Bauglir]

I mean, shock absorbers are a thing, but a layer that thin is going to have a difficult time doing much. At the speed you're going, you'd cover that distance so fast that anything that would keep you in your suit would still hit you like a wall, no matter how soft and compressible. You need adequate space over which to decelerate; with such a thin layer inside the suit, your only options for getting that space are outside it, and that's how thrusters work.

[i2amroy]

That said if you had the ability to manipulate gravity (which I believe shows up in some of the elevators/etc. in the Halo series) you could hypothetically survive an impact with only a minimal suit that didn't provide any real protection. That basic method would be:
1) Fall and reach your terminal velocity of ~200 km/h
2) ~300 ft before you hit the ground the suit kicks in and flips you so that your head is pointing downwards
3) Create a 7g gravity well attached just below your feet. (resulting in a net 6g force upwards, but to you it would feel like 8g)
4) 1 second later touch down light as a feather.

The flipping to be head down is important, the body can withstand some tremendous g forces downwards, but is really bad at resisting them upwards. By flipping you upside down we can run you through what would feel like an 8g force for you body, which modern pilots in high-g suits can withstand pretty easily.

If you don't want to deal with the (highly speculative) field of gravity manipulation you could hypothetically pull off a similar thing by using a monopole (the existence of which is, to quote Joseph Polchinski, "one of the safest bets that one can make about physics not yet seen") in combination with the magnetic field of whatever you are landing on to generate the upwards force. (Though then you would want to be feet down instead of up).

Of course what you are essentially doing in both of these cases is attaching a rocket to the bottom of your feet to "push" (or "pull" in the case of the gravity manipulation) you upwards and slow the collision, but in a method that doesn't deal with all of those burning flames or visual effects.

Edit: Woah, 9 new replies while I was typing that.

[Urist Arrhenius]

That said if you had the ability to manipulate gravity (which I believe shows up in some of the elevators/etc. in the Halo series) you could hypothetically survive an impact with only a minimal suit that didn't provide any real protection. That basic method would be:
1) Fall and reach your terminal velocity of ~200 km/h
2) ~300 ft before you hit the ground the suit kicks in and flips you so that your head is pointing downwards
3) Create a 7g gravity well attached just below your feet. (resulting in a net 6g force upwards, but to you it would feel like 8g)
4) 1 second later touch down light as a feather.

Not the case. What you've done is reverse your acceleration, not reduce your momentum. So you'd still hit at near terminal velocity. It's not about feeling heavy or light, it's about being massive and moving quickly. Which you still are.

[XXXXYYYY]

That said if you had the ability to manipulate gravity (which I believe shows up in some of the elevators/etc. in the Halo series) you could hypothetically survive an impact with only a minimal suit that didn't provide any real protection. That basic method would be:
1) Fall and reach your terminal velocity of ~200 km/h
2) ~300 ft before you hit the ground the suit kicks in and flips you so that your head is pointing downwards
3) Create a 7g gravity well attached just below your feet. (resulting in a net 6g force upwards, but to you it would feel like 8g)
4) 1 second later touch down light as a feather.

Not the case. What you've done is reverse your acceleration, not reduce your momentum. So you'd still hit at near terminal velocity. It's not about feeling heavy or light, it's about being massive and moving quickly. Which you still are.

7G grav well, so a total of 6Gs of acceleration upwards.

[i2amroy]

The sudden (and fairly large) change in acceleration suddenly causes your internal organs to flutter about like butterflies and your eyeballs to pop out of their sockets.

It's only an 8g acceleration. Fighter pilots regularly go through sudden accelerations like that all the time. Of course in the wrong direction it would be fatal, but that is why it's so important that (with the gravity version at least) you flip around to be pointed in the right direction. As an example the Apollo 16 astronauts experienced 7.19g on reentry for a much longer period of time than 1 second, and they turned out just fine. Assuming you were wearing a high-g suit you probably wouldn't even black out.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

((Ok plan b from a thread talking about acceleration and how to use it for destruction))

Let's say this guy in power armor is falling and as he hits atmosphere a 30000 ton tungsten rod going .98c flys down and strikes the planet would the impact bows be enough to throw the guy in power armor back into space?

[i2amroy]

Assuming he's anywhere close to it yeah, that's exactly how we get meteorites that we know came from other planets like mars, something hits them and some chunks get blasted off the surface where they float for a few million years until earth collects them up.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

How far away would he have to be to not get pulled down with it?

[i2amroy]

Assuming the actual rod didn't hit him it wouldn't pull him down as best as I can tell (and even if it did hit him it wouldn't pull him down, it would just rip off whatever it hit). At that speed everything is basically frozen in space compared to the rod, so he probably wouldn't even feel a shockwave until after it was already long gone. (At which point it would essentially be a thunderclap combined with a horrific explosion).

[Bumber]

It keeps it from being externally lethal.
This has been used in game multiple times to survive falling from upper atmosphere with no way of slowing down. It has an ((electro magnetic?)) outer shielding, armor plating, some sort of futuristic skin suit, and some fluid to protect the wearer.

Though this is also used on people who are heavily modified so maybe I'm leaving a lot of info out on the person wearing the suit.
This is the augmentations put on the person we are talking about.

The shield might help deflect the force of the collision, though I'm not sure it's actually strong enough for that. The shield gets depleted in 6 pistol rounds or so? Given the weight of the suit, I'm sure the impact force is stronger than that.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

Depending on what difficulty it can take a fuel rod shot which is a lot of energy.

[hops]

Couldn't you hypothetically build a working warp-drive if you harnessed the ability to project these particles in a given space, removing mass and thus instantly teleporting you I guess?

Has anyone really been far as decided to use even go want to do look more like?