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[Arx]

Mineral oil mist followed by clay dust in a dispersal pack would clog up the active cooling of the power armor, making it overheat and either cook the occupant, or shut down to protect the occupant.

Man, you really can solve everything with a spray can of oil.

[wierd]

Nobody likes to actually consider the consequences when they use scifi tropes like power armor.  Even if you go all super mcguffin, like iron man's power suit, you have thermal dissipation, air intake, and power distribution as possible modes of attack.

His suit uses a mcguffin power source (arclight generator, clealry some kind of magically biproduct free fusion tech in a tiny package), and obviously uses super conductors for the distribution system. That still leaves air intake for the various thrusters and plasma projectile launchers. The mist+dust lowtech attack woudl at the very least ground him, and disable his primary weapons until he could purge the contaminants.

That still leaves the thermal dissipation problems though. Even if we assume he is using high temperature superconductors inside his actuators, the field strengths he would need to get the "work" (physics parlance) done that he does, would introduce magnetic hysteresis in the other parts of his suit, and that excess thermal energy needs to be expelled somehow. If we assume hydraulics, the compression of the fluid to drive the actuators will raise its temperature, and it will need to be actively cooled to avoid boiling of the fluid (and thermal stresses to the hydrualic lines and chambers)

You dont just shrug off the second law of thermodynamics. You have to eliminate the expended entropic energy.

[Magistrum]

After a long time in this forum, I just realized that wierd is 99% of the times right in any discussion or argument.

I fell weird for taking so long.

[Mr. Strange]

After a long time in this forum, I just realized that wierd is 99% of the times right in any discussion or argument.

I fell weird for taking so long.

Does that mean you're 99% likely right? 

[Andres]

His suit uses a mcguffin power source (arclight generator, clealry some kind of magically biproduct free fusion tech in a tiny package), and obviously uses super conductors for the distribution system. That still leaves air intake for the various thrusters and plasma projectile launchers. The mist+dust lowtech attack woudl at the very least ground him, and disable his primary weapons until he could purge the contaminants.

Um, the power armour in question doesn't have weapons. It improves strength and speed a bit, has a HUD built into the helmet, and has an emergency air supply.

[H4zardZ1]

Unless you are willing to fry yourself inside, thermal-induced weapons are a must.

[NullForceOmega]

A simple air exchanger and cooling layer makes that unlikely, just how much power do you think a basic exo-harness and HUD cost to run?  We can do it with freaking batteries right now, now for something heavier with actual armor strapped to it we still don't need some phenomenal amount of energy, tho' we can't do that currently (kinda, depends on how much you want to spend), really the only reason PA isn't a functional thing currently is cost or weight.  It isn't going to get obscenely hot inside a suit of PA, hell unless the wearer is walking through fire it probably won't get as hot as articulated plate.

[wierd]

The US military's various secret skunkworks type labs are actually producing a number of exoskeletons that are just a few slabs of ceramic plate away from being power armor.

They are deisel powered, because of the energy requirements.  There's a reason why BigDog is diesel.

[Neonivek]

You dont just shrug off the second law of thermodynamics. You have to eliminate the expended entropic energy

Ohh he just shunts it to another dimension. Problem solved.

[Arx]

The US military's various secret skunkworks type labs are actually producing a number of exoskeletons that are just a few slabs of ceramic plate away from being power armor.

They are deisel powered, because of the energy requirements.  There's a reason why BigDog is diesel.

Batteries aren't too shoddy either.

[wierd]

The US military's various secret skunkworks type labs are actually producing a number of exoskeletons that are just a few slabs of ceramic plate away from being power armor.

They are deisel powered, because of the energy requirements.  There's a reason why BigDog is diesel.

Batteries aren't too shoddy either.

From the wikipedia article:

Lockheed Martin announced that it is evaluating fuel cell power sources to increase the duration to support a 96-hour mission.[11]

Fuel cells leverage a high density fuel as a power source. This is because batteries simply don't even compare to what you can get out of a fuel cell.  The only way to top a high density fuel is to go with controlled fusion. Since small scale controlled fusion is totally not a thing right now, Lockheed Martin is going with a fuel cell. 

The issue with power armor is that you end up with a set of design factors that work against each other.  This exoskeleton is not designed to be power armor. It is a human assist device for transporting heavy payloads.  As such, the device does not have to calculate having a huge mass all by itself that it has to assist in transporting, (and thus, the fuel/energy reqs needed to transport, and thus the weight of the fuel and fuel tank in addition to the weight of the armor... etc.)  This is similar to the technical limitations that engineers bump into when designing chemical rocket engines. (Most of the energy of the burn is taken up just lofting the remaining fuel up into the air.)

Actual power armor, that is ACTUAL ARMOR, is going to weigh a shit ton. (It has to absorb kinetic impacts that are lethal without the armor on, or else it simply isnt power armor. The best way to absorb a heavy kinetic impact is to have a large inertial rest mass. That way when you get balsted by that 50 cal machine gun, you dont get blown over by the barrage of projectiles.) That means the armor is going to consume a lot of power to move all that heavy mass. That means a very large fuel tank, which adds additional mass.

The energy needed to move that heavy mass around is nontrivial, and once it is used to move the mass of the armor, it becomes heat. This is why large hydraulic systems have radiators on the hydrualic fluid reservior.

http://www.hydac.com.au/cooling-system.aspx

Power armor that is actually useful as power armor, is going to need an enormous amount of power, is going to produce non-trivial amounts of heat, and is going to need active cooling.

[NullForceOmega]

Honestly weird, there is no valid reason to try to keep the operator on their feet under that kind of kinetic force, what the armor has to do is keep the soldier alive, not turn him into a one-man Abrams.  All the plating a suit of viable PA needs to do is disperse the force, just like a Kevlar vest only heavier, that way you have still made the soldier functionally invulnerable to small arms and allow him/her to survive against heavier weapons.  It is not unimaginable that such a system could come in at under five hundred pounds, including power supply (depending on your willingness to spend money.)  We don't actually have a need for Glitterboys, just T-51.

[Magistrum]

Does that mean you're 99% likely right? 

I'm 100% sure of that. 

[Sergarr]

Frankly, a power armor that's *only* bulletproof against machineguns or weaker weapons would already be a huge boon for any sort of military force. It would make clearing buildings much, much easier.

[Shazbot]

This is not the route military technology will evolve in. The future of infantry hardware is detection and concealment aids, not ways to make an individual soldier attract higher-caliber gunfire.