Stark's Arc Reactor Fuel Consumption

[InsaneTD]

It's said in the first movie that the shrapnel will take months to kill unless it's removed or stopped from moving. The arc reactor turned that into years if not decades. He can survive for a while without the arc reactor, it's just painful as the shrapnel wiggles through his flesh.

I do wonder why the reactor doesn't cook his flesh though, surely it produces heat as a by product.

[TOSDOC]

It's said in the first movie that the shrapnel will take months to kill unless it's removed or stopped from moving. The arc reactor turned that into years if not decades. He can survive for a while without the arc reactor, it's just painful as the shrapnel wiggles through his flesh.

I do wonder why the reactor doesn't cook his flesh though, surely it produces heat as a by product.

Then why does he say he's going into cardiac arrest when Pepper changes out the arc reactor for him in the first movie? Is he just kidding with her?

[InsaneTD]

I'd actually forgotten about that. And I have no response and can't come up with anything reasonable in answer.

[TOSDOC]

A lot of the tension in IM and IM2 comes from Stark being dependent on the arc reactor to keep him alive. He states he’s slipping into cardiac arrest when Pepper changes it for him, and I believe him in his attitude and in the monitors. He is pale and profusely sweating when he’s crawling towards his spare after Obadiah has stolen his second one, desperately trying to reach it in time not only to save Pepper and stop Obadiah, but to save himself. In IM2 he removes the reactor from his chest to change out his palladium cores, but it’s still portrayed as something he doesn’t waste too much time on.
In the Avengers he’s got the most advanced arc reactor he’s devised, and isn’t suffering from palladium poisoning. Havok says he’s carrying multiple arc reactors, which is a precursor to IM3 for the suits to function remotely. He now has power to spare, and the tension isn’t coming from him losing power anymore.
Stark is arguably the Avenger who does the lion’s share of the fighting and suffers the most during the battle, by virtue of his suit’s flight and speed, and his PTSD in IM3 is understandable. He’s airborne nearly the entire time as a one-man perimeter against mobile hostiles. He intentionally flies down a giant space monster’s throat, not knowing how it will turn out. He ends up holding a live ticking nuclear warhead in his hands, and if he fails Manhattan and everyone in it is dust. The suit is portrayed as maintaining consistent thrust all the way through the portal, and he ends up in space, where he’s staring at a massive alien fleet by his lonesome before he passes out in exactly the moment a person would if they were exposed to a vacuum, about 15-30 seconds. The suit shuts off and he falls, but he wakes up on the ground again, not in cardiac arrest from loss of the arc reactor fuel, but recovering from simple anoxia. He’s also walking around in the same suit when he confronts Loki with the others. You don’t need tension from the shrapnel in his heart or him losing power to advance the plot any more than it already is.
The Mark VII is one of his finest performing suits and has power to burn, I just don’t get the impression it’s spaceworthy. But he now has reason to make a suit that is, especially with all the hype of Thanos coming.

[Ted C]

I watched the battle this morning, and it's not clear where it's pretty clear that was said. I followed where JARVIS said "We will run out of power before we cut through [that creature's] armor", but he doesn't mention suit power after that, just calling Pepper on the phone. Can you give me a time index?

When He finds out there's a nuke incoming. He tells JARVIS something like 'put everything into the engines' to which JARVIS responds 'I just did' and he rockets off. And then later 'save everything we've got left for the turn' suggesting he was running low by that point.

What ^he^ said.

[Ted C]

There are two arc reactors. One in the suit, one in Tony's chest. I don't think Stark is the type of guy to make one not have enough power to power the suit.

It's possible that the newer suits, having their own reactors, no longer have a way to pull power from the one in his chest.

[TOSDOC]

I watched the battle this morning, and it's not clear where it's pretty clear that was said. I followed where JARVIS said "We will run out of power before we cut through [that creature's] armor", but he doesn't mention suit power after that, just calling Pepper on the phone. Can you give me a time index?

When He finds out there's a nuke incoming. He tells JARVIS something like 'put everything into the engines' to which JARVIS responds 'I just did' and he rockets off. And then later 'save everything we've got left for the turn' suggesting he was running low by that point.

What ^he^ said.

I'm not following you here. Are you supporting your own OP or not?

[Ted C]

When He finds out there's a nuke incoming. He tells JARVIS something like 'put everything into the engines' to which JARVIS responds 'I just did' and he rockets off. And then later 'save everything we've got left for the turn' suggesting he was running low by that point.

What ^he^ said.

I'm not following you here. Are you supporting your own OP or not?

Crazedwraith quoted the dialogue that implies that the Mark VII armor was running low on fuel around the time the nuke was incoming. As I indicated in the OP, it seems plausible to run the Iron Man armor on some kind of nuclear fusion for hours, but the device obviously has limits.

[TOSDOC]

With the first I interpret diverting power into propulsion, not that it's running low. Only the second line implies a low power level, and not very clearly. Even then, what we see doesn't suggest he ran dry after letting go of the nuke. Your OP makes sense to have a suit that lasts hours no matter the conditions. He would need that kind of endurance in the first place to fly from CA to the Middle East and back, fighting battles with infantry and dodging two F22s in between.

When my two-year old dropped my iPod in a glass of water, it ceased to function because it was placed in a medium in which it wasn't designed to operate, even though the battery kept its charge. (No, this was not a thought experiment). I think we see the same basic thing to his suit in space.

[Simon_Jester]

Very possible. On the other hand, he's using repulsors as beam weapons a lot more heavily in Avengers, plus the laser gun, to fight swarms of tougher, more maneuverable hostiles. So the power draw per minute of combat in Avengers is probably higher than the draw per minute in Iron Man.

[TOSDOC]

True, but the draw per minute in Iron Man would have to be extended over many hours compared to Avengers.

We see him break the sound barrier in Iron Man. Comparing his suit to the Concorde (which had an average supersonic transatlantic flight time of, what, 3.5-4 hours one way?), his suit's endurance in Iron Man alone would have to be at least 8 hours. And that's just on one arc reactor, while we're seeing more than one in Avengers, of greater power output than before according to IM2. I don't get the impression the battle lasted 8 hours. The battle may be power-intensive, but there's no indication the suit can't keep up with it.

[Terralthra]

The California to Afghanistan, fight, and fly back expedition probably took more like 48 hours. Santa Monica to Kabul is not too much less than as far away from another place on Earth as two places can be. One-way trip is on the order of 7,500ish miles. Even if he's flying at Mach 1 (which I find personally rather unlikely), that's a ten-hour flight each way. In the case that his suit travels at ~750 mph, the minimum flight time is 10 hours, but that can't be the case because of time of day of arrival and leaving. He left the fancy party, suited up, and left at night, placing departure time sometime around 10 PM - 2 AM California time. He arrives on Afghanistan during the day, looking like midday-ish, we'll say somewhere between 10 AM - 2 PM. Afghanistan is -11:30 from California, meaning it was the time he should have arrived when he left. This leaves two main possibilities:

1) He made the flight from Santa Monica to Afghanistan leaving his party early (10 PM) and arriving as late as the end of the window (2 PM) and thus flying 7,500 miles in 4 hours: 1900mph, Mach 2.5.

2) He made the flight from Santa Monica to Afghanistan leaving his party late (2 AM) and arriving as early as the beginning of the window (10 AM), flying 7,500 miles in 20 hours, a more reasonable 375 mph, Mach 0.5.

He fucks around in Afghanistan for some small amount of hours blowing up tanks and dodging F-22s until let's say 12-4 PM then flies back to Santa Monica, landing late at night/early morning, again. Again, Santa Monica is 11.5 hours ahead, so again, the flight was 12 PM to 4 AM, four hours at Mach 2.5 or twenty hours at Mach 0.5.

In the former scenario, he's active for his-time 10 hours, leaving around 10 PM Saturday and arriving back at 6 AM Sunday after flying almost literally around the world, at a speed not otherwise indicated.

In the latter, he leaves at 2 AM Saturday, and arrives home at about 9-10 PM Monday.

Flying at the sound barrier is not possible, because of the times of day he arrives in each place, compared to the time of day when he left.

[Terralthra]

The California to Afghanistan, fight, and fly back expedition probably took more like 48 hours. Santa Monica to Kabul is not too much less than as far away from another place on Earth as two places can be. One-way trip is on the order of 7,500ish miles. Even if he's flying at Mach 1 (which I find personally rather unlikely), that's a ten-hour flight each way. In the case that his suit travels at ~750 mph, the minimum flight time is 10 hours, but that can't be the case because of time of day of arrival and leaving. He left the fancy party, suited up, and left at night, placing departure time sometime around 10 PM - 2 AM California time. He arrives on Afghanistan during the day, looking like midday-ish, we'll say somewhere between 10 AM - 2 PM. Afghanistan is -11:30 from California, meaning it was the time he should have arrived when he left. This leaves two main possibilities:

1) He made the flight from Santa Monica to Afghanistan leaving his party early (10 PM) and arriving as late as the end of the window (2 PM) and thus flying 7,500 miles in 4 hours: 1900mph, Mach 2.5.

2) He made the flight from Santa Monica to Afghanistan leaving his party late (2 AM) and arriving as early as the beginning of the window (10 AM), flying 7,500 miles in 20 hours, a more reasonable 375 mph, Mach 0.5.

He fucks around in Afghanistan for some small amount of hours blowing up tanks and dodging F-22s until let's say 12-4 PM then flies back to Santa Monica, landing late at night/early morning, again. Again, Santa Monica is 11.5 hours ahead, so again, the flight was 12 PM to 4 AM, four hours at Mach 2.5 or twenty hours at Mach 0.5.

In the former scenario, he's active for his-time 10 hours, leaving around 10 PM Saturday and arriving back at 6 AM Sunday after flying almost literally around the world, at a speed not otherwise indicated.

In the latter, he leaves at 2 AM Saturday, and arrives home at about 9-10 PM Monday.

Flying at the sound barrier is not possible, because of the times of day he arrives in each place, compared to the time of day when he left.

Which direction he flies matters a bit, but doesn't solve the fundamental time zone problem.

[TOSDOC]

The California to Afghanistan, fight, and fly back expedition probably took more like 48 hours.

Well, forget about all his tank missiles then, Bruce, where does he fit his Perrier?

[Batman]

The man can fit more than the suit's volume of missiles into the suit but you think he can't fit in a minibar.
Besides, 48 hours is a long time to be in the suit. Who says Tony didn't take potty breaks along the way?

And while given how far ahead of modern technology even the early IM suits are the Mk II being seriously supersonic doesn't seem all that unreasonable, the fact that Tony didn't just run away from those F-22s indicates it can't do so easily/for long.

[Sea Skimmer]

He could pretty easily land and piss in a random field you'd think?

But speeds and what not for jets, aren't so simple as x is faster then y. Well, sometimes, but not when your going supersonic-supersonic to who knows how fast supersonic.

The F-22 has extremely high transonic acceleration (what it was designed for and all), but is then heat limited for maximum speed. The suit appears to use some kind of bizarre rocket thrust working... who knows how, perhaps it has very small air intakes that aren't obvious. But basically it could have a high top speed of mach 2.3 or what not, and be able to sustain it for long periods, but not have better acceleration then an F-22 in the transonic regime. In fact this is fairly likely considering the suit's horrible aerodynamics, and the fact that it cross the transonic regime so quickly indicates that all else aside the thrust to weight ratio is excellent and does not suffer a radical drop off when going supersonic. Turbofans do, as the fan air become almost useless once you get past around mach 1.1-1.3. This is why the F-22 has low bypass engines, and why several turbojet equipped aircraft from the 1950s could supercruise without exceptionally high thrust to weight ratios when thrust is quoted in terms of static thrust at sea level, which is what you always get for jet engine specifications. This is also why jet fighters have afterburners. At high altitude and high speed the afterburning thrust suffers much less performance loss then the turbine part of the engine.

Given that Stark did have some kind of altitude limit this suggests his suit does need air to generate thrust, but, beyond that its hard to say much. So we don't know and we can't really know how fast the suit is, but its propulsion system has no obvious limit for straight line speed. We just know it has better then 1:1 thrust to weight ratio, by a lot, at least up to medium altitudes. Because he can gain speed going straight up.

Also the slight problem exists for the 'run straight away' option that the missiles on the F-22 have a lot of range, Sidewinder will go 20nm or more, AMRAAM much further when fired supersonically, running away just isn't a good strategy in general. AMRAAM is going to reach over mach 4, its unlikely the suit could go faster because of heat sink issues, so running away would mean exposure to multiple shots. Its not tactically sound.

Real question is why he didn't dive for the deck while reversing his course. The suit was clearly far more agile then the jets. I suppose he might have feared colliding with the ground or something, or being pinned in place?

[Simon_Jester]

He could pretty easily land and piss in a random field you'd think?

Well yeah, but what about if he's over the mid-Atlantic and needs to go? Besides, we know he designed the armor to be able to handle him pissing in it, since he did exactly that in Iron Man II.

Although, there's still the question of what he'd do for food and drink on a 48-hour flight. I honestly can't see Tony Stark designing the suit to rehydrate him with recycled sweat and urine.

But speeds and what not for jets, aren't so simple as x is faster then y. Well, sometimes, but not when your going supersonic-supersonic to who knows how fast supersonic.

The F-22 has extremely high transonic acceleration (what it was designed for and all), but is then heat limited for maximum speed. The suit appears to use some kind of bizarre rocket thrust working... who knows how, perhaps it has very small air intakes that aren't obvious.

Since the basic technology involved is described as a "repulsor" and is routinely used as a push-things-around ray, I figure it's exerting a pressor-beam* effect on the air behind or around him. Though it'd have to somehow work without intakes on the other side of the repulsor unit.

*tractor beam, only backwards...

Given that Stark did have some kind of altitude limit this suggests his suit does need air to generate thrust, but, beyond that its hard to say much. So we don't know and we can't really know how fast the suit is, but its propulsion system has no obvious limit for straight line speed. We just know it has better then 1:1 thrust to weight ratio, by a lot, at least up to medium altitudes. Because he can gain speed going straight up.

The altitude limit on his suit seems to be related to high-altitude icing (damned if I know why) and is resolved in the Mark III design. But from Avengers we know the suit doesn't seem to function in complete vacuum, so the "needs air" theory still sounds correct.

Also the slight problem exists for the 'run straight away' option that the missiles on the F-22 have a lot of range, Sidewinder will go 20nm or more, AMRAAM much further when fired supersonically, running away just isn't a good strategy in general. AMRAAM is going to reach over mach 4, its unlikely the suit could go faster because of heat sink issues, so running away would mean exposure to multiple shots. Its not tactically sound.

While Stark's probably got considerable (even expert) knowledge on the AMRAAM, he may not be that great a tactician.

So he goes "What? Air Force rolling up on me in Raptors? I'm going to outrun these fuckers! Oh, right, crap, their missiles are really long range."

Real question is why he didn't dive for the deck while reversing his course. The suit was clearly far more agile then the jets. I suppose he might have feared colliding with the ground or something, or being pinned in place?[/quote]Hm. I don't recall him having any active defenses capable of shooting down a long range missile... does anything like that come to mind?

[Sea Skimmer]

Well yeah, but what about if he's over the mid-Atlantic and needs to go? Besides, we know he designed the armor to be able to handle him pissing in it, since he did exactly that in Iron Man II.

Realistically the limit on flight wouldn't even be that, it'd be how long he can crank his neck back for. I would suggest stopping on the deck of a cargo ship is the solution to that. Rest twenty minutes, keep going ect..

Although, there's still the question of what he'd do for food and drink on a 48-hour flight. I honestly can't see Tony Stark designing the suit to rehydrate him with recycled sweat and urine.

Carry a credit card, walk through a drive through. Its not like the world is a barren wasteland between California and Afghanistan.

Since the basic technology involved is described as a "repulsor" and is routinely used as a push-things-around ray, I figure it's exerting a pressor-beam* effect on the air behind or around him. Though it'd have to somehow work without intakes on the other side of the repulsor unit.

*tractor beam, only backwards...

It may be using extremely small amounts of reaction mass. If it isn't then its into such magic la la land that the suit creating meat out of the atmosphere is much more plausible. Indeed, actually possible.

The altitude limit on his suit seems to be related to high-altitude icing (damned if I know why) and is resolved in the Mark III design. But from Avengers we know the suit doesn't seem to function in complete vacuum, so the "needs air" theory still sounds correct.

Stark seemed to have real doubts on the ceiling though. If it was just a magic flight device with no external reaction mass requirement then he should have expected to reach orbit or at least some radically higher altitude. No reason it wouldn't and very easily. So he made beating the public manned flight record his goal, though by the time of the movies writing the true ceilings of the SR-71 were public, and UAVs flew long ago at 100kft, manned balloons much higher in turn.

While Stark's probably got considerable (even expert) knowledge on the AMRAAM, he may not be that great a tactician.

Most likely he just hoped the USAF wouldn't fire on an air target they couldn't possibly identify by running away.

[Simon_Jester]

Well yeah, but what about if he's over the mid-Atlantic and needs to go? Besides, we know he designed the armor to be able to handle him pissing in it, since he did exactly that in Iron Man II.

Realistically the limit on flight wouldn't even be that, it'd be how long he can crank his neck back for. I would suggest stopping on the deck of a cargo ship is the solution to that. Rest twenty minutes, keep going ect..

Why would he need to crank his neck back? If it's "so he can see where he's going," well, there's really nothing stopping him from putting cameras on the suit that feed to his helmet's internal displays, so he can look 'forward' while holding his head in a comfortable position.

It might not be such a great idea to do that during a potential combat situation, because it'd be disorienting to have your line of sight pointing in a different direction than your eyeballs. But for long range cruising flight when you have reason to think there are no obstacles in the way (or none Jarvis can't warn you of)... go for it.

Although, there's still the question of what he'd do for food and drink on a 48-hour flight. I honestly can't see Tony Stark designing the suit to rehydrate him with recycled sweat and urine.

Carry a credit card, walk through a drive through. Its not like the world is a barren wasteland between California and Afghanistan.

This is certainly practical, although if Stark were actually doing it I'd almost expect an obligatory scene of it happening in the movie. That proves nothing of course.

Overall, I'd be surprised if Stark hadn't put at least some thought into making the suit self-sufficient in terms of food and water, since it's clearly designed to handle him pissing in it.

Since the basic technology involved is described as a "repulsor" and is routinely used as a push-things-around ray, I figure it's exerting a pressor-beam* effect on the air behind or around him. Though it'd have to somehow work without intakes on the other side of the repulsor unit.

*tractor beam, only backwards...

It may be using extremely small amounts of reaction mass. If it isn't then its into such magic la la land that the suit creating meat out of the atmosphere is much more plausible. Indeed, actually possible.

Er... why is the suit pushing against the air with some kind of beam that exerts a powerful force on it that implausible?

We already know that he has some kind of bizarro soft-SF technology in this respect, the repulsors are routinely seen as a weaponized device that exerts pushing/breaking force on solid objects after passing through the air.

The altitude limit on his suit seems to be related to high-altitude icing (damned if I know why) and is resolved in the Mark III design. But from Avengers we know the suit doesn't seem to function in complete vacuum, so the "needs air" theory still sounds correct.

Stark seemed to have real doubts on the ceiling though. If it was just a magic flight device with no external reaction mass requirement then he should have expected to reach orbit or at least some radically higher altitude. No reason it wouldn't and very easily. So he made beating the public manned flight record his goal, though by the time of the movies writing the true ceilings of the SR-71 were public, and UAVs flew long ago at 100kft, manned balloons much higher in turn.

Well, my idea is that the reaction mass isn't stored aboard the suit- but there's no air intake as such, just the suit pushing off against whatever air molecules happen to be behind it with the repulsors. If the air isn't dense enough, he doesn't get enough thrust, so he has no mobility in a vacuum, but there's no onboard store of reaction mass.

Also, reviewing the scene, he specifically wanted to beat the SR-71's altitude record, and Jarvis talked to him about "the record for fixed-wing flight." Can't speak for balloons.

While Stark's probably got considerable (even expert) knowledge on the AMRAAM, he may not be that great a tactician.

Most likely he just hoped the USAF wouldn't fire on an air target they couldn't possibly identify by running away.

Also very possible. Although it's in character for Stark to forget/ignore a problem like that until it bites him on the ass. Especially Iron Man 1 Stark, who's particularly prone to rashness, irresponsibility, and not thinking things through.

[Gaidin]

Well yeah, but what about if he's over the mid-Atlantic and needs to go? Besides, we know he designed the armor to be able to handle him pissing in it, since he did exactly that in Iron Man II.

Realistically the limit on flight wouldn't even be that, it'd be how long he can crank his neck back for. I would suggest stopping on the deck of a cargo ship is the solution to that. Rest twenty minutes, keep going ect..

Why would he need to crank his neck back? If it's "so he can see where he's going," well, there's really nothing stopping him from putting cameras on the suit that feed to his helmet's internal displays, so he can look 'forward' while holding his head in a comfortable position.

There's nothing stopping him, and he probably did. But you're talking about human instinct to look in the direction you want to go even while he's looking at the information feeds that Jarvis is giving him.

[Terralthra]

I mean, pragmatically speaking, it's clear to me that the film-makers just didn't particularly think about how fast he'd have to be going to get where he gets when he gets there. It seems obvious that the intent was "he leaves the party (Saturday, 11 PM), pops over to Afghanistan (5 minutes), kills some militants, blows up a tank, tangles with F-22s, then flies home (5 minutes), arriving home at roughly the time he would if he left at last call (Sunday, 3 AM)." The timeline (leave at night, arrive around midday, arrive at night) works perfectly well with near-instantaneous travel. The fact that he clearly doesn't travel at 75,000 mph (mach 100) makes the situation much more difficult to reconcile.

[Gaidin]

I'm not sure they were really worrying about doing that so much as establishing that he could do it in one trip without refueling.

[Havok]

I think there was a flow problem with the movie so they changed it and just said screw it, not because they were ignorant of the travel time, because IIRC there is a deleted scene where Stark actually uses his private jet at some point in the trip. (Coming back I believe)

[Vendetta]

The Mark VII is one of his finest performing suits and has power to burn, I just don’t get the impression it’s spaceworthy. But he now has reason to make a suit that is, especially with all the hype of Thanos coming.

He did.

All the suits in Iron Man 3 eventually got backstory in tie-in media (including stuff like the companion app that plays alongside the blu-ray on tablets) and one of them is space capable. (Mk. 39).

He blew it up, of course.
Spoiler

though of course we've seen concept and props for the Hulkbuster suit

[TOSDOC]

I figured now that Guardians has been so well-received, they'd work a Stark space-suit into the story somehow when they finally meet Thanos. Which would be really interesting considering the past few posts--if air is so integral to the function of Stark's suit, how would he go about making it work in a vacuum? A larger, bulkier suit like Stane's comes to mind, with space for consumables (reaction mass, air, water, food, etc).

I'm really going to have to get myself a blue-ray player someday.