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One point that's not been mentioned WRT Japan, is that the farther you get into the apocalyptic endgame, the harder it is to shut it off. The guerrilla war in Germany went on at a low level for years after the formal government surrendered. Japan shut down more quickly due in part for the greater remaining strength of their government.

If we had got to invasion, with its consequent nuclear and chemical destruction, (We had tens of thousands of tons of mustard loaded into shells and bombs.) the command infrastructure would have broken down. Small units of fanatics defending their homeland don't surrender. It takes big units or countries to effectively surrender. Someone has to look at the bigger picture to come to that conclusion.

There would not have been a breeding population of Japanese left.

They should really send us a thank-you card every August 6th.

The napkinwaffe designs are only good for programmes on the Discovery Channel. Has anyone seen that doc on the National Geographic channel about the Horten flying wing that claimed it was 'stealthy' and (of course) 'might have changed the course of the war'? It also had the obligatory Nazi A-bomb attack on Manhattan, never mind the fact that German jet engines had an average life shorter than it took to cross the Atlantic, or that the Germans had less of a clue of how to build a bomb than I do.
For every one Horten fighter the Germans could have built the Allies could have put several hundred Mustangs, Thunderbolts, Spitfires and Tempests into the air.

Even if the Germans did manage to come up with a way to seriously threaten the B-17s and B-24s then the B-29 and eventually the B-36 will come along. Moreover lengthening the war can only make matters worse for the Third Reich; even just a few months will mean that 'Fat Man' and 'Little Boy' will be dropped on German cities rather than Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

WRT to Japan, IIRC the American planning also involved dropping anthrax on the country as well as drenching most cities with poison gas. The Japanese were also planning to use gas and biological weapons in defence.
Never mind there not being a Japanese breeding population left, the country itself would be barren for decades to come after DOWNFALL. Dropping the Bomb really was the best of a lot of poor options for the Japanese.

Bayonet wrote:One point that's not been mentioned WRT Japan, is that the farther you get into the apocalyptic endgame, the harder it is to shut it off. The guerrilla war in Germany went on at a low level for years after the formal government surrendered. Japan shut down more quickly due in part for the greater remaining strength of their government.

If we had got to invasion, with its consequent nuclear and chemical destruction, (We had tens of thousands of tons of mustard loaded into shells and bombs.) the command infrastructure would have broken down. Small units of fanatics defending their homeland don't surrender. It takes big units or countries to effectively surrender. Someone has to look at the bigger picture to come to that conclusion.

There would not have been a breeding population of Japanese left.

They should really send us a thank-you card every August 6th.

That's the first time I've ever heard of an organised, low-level guerilla campaign against the Allies in Germany after the war - out of interest, what source do you have for that, as that's really news to me.

Bayonet wrote:If we had got to invasion, with its consequent nuclear and chemical destruction, (We had tens of thousands of tons of mustard loaded into shells and bombs.)

This brings up what I think is an interesting question. How did the US view the use of chemical weapons before August 6 1945? The whole concept of weapons of mass destruction doesn't even exist yet. On the other hand the allies certainly didn't view chemical\biological weapons as the same as regular bombs or artillery. I known that at least with the Germans we had a no 1st use policy (and because of the German reliance on horses for transportation the Germans wouldn’t use them either.) The Japanese attacks with biological weapons were so inept that we didn’t even find out about them until after the war. I would guess that because allied troops had suffered gas attacks in WWI that chemical weapons had a larger emotional impact than the atomic bomb just because they were within the realm of what had already been experience instead of just a theoretical exercise.

Were the plans to use chemical weapons considered likely or were they like the plans for what to do in a war with Mexico? (ie not likely to be used.)

JN1 wrote:The napkinwaffe designs are only good for programmes on the Discovery Channel. Has anyone seen that doc on the National Geographic channel about the Horten flying wing that claimed it was 'stealthy' and (of course) 'might have changed the course of the war'? It also had the obligatory Nazi A-bomb attack on Manhattan, never mind the fact that German jet engines had an average life shorter than it took to cross the Atlantic, or that the Germans had less of a clue of how to build a bomb than I do.

Yes, but it was a History Channel program. I have it on VHS tape actually.

The A-bomb raid was a nice bit of wank.

-Lack of intuition. A human is way more adaptable. However, this can be solved with a human operator.

That's the first time I've ever heard of an organised, low-level guerilla campaign against the Allies in Germany after the war - out of interest, what source do you have for that, as that's really news to me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werwolf#Al ... lf_actions

I'd thought the werewolves and 'werewolf hunters' were better-known. Perhaps it's just my inner geek skewing my perceptions.

Chad wrote:

Bayonet wrote:If we had got to invasion, with its consequent nuclear and chemical destruction, (We had tens of thousands of tons of mustard loaded into shells and bombs.)

This brings up what I think is an interesting question. How did the US view the use of chemical weapons before August 6 1945? The whole concept of weapons of mass destruction doesn't even exist yet. On the other hand the allies certainly didn't view chemical\biological weapons as the same as regular bombs or artillery. I known that at least with the Germans we had a no 1st use policy (and because of the German reliance on horses for transportation the Germans wouldn’t use them either.) The Japanese attacks with biological weapons were so inept that we didn’t even find out about them until after the war. I would guess that because allied troops had suffered gas attacks in WWI that chemical weapons had a larger emotional impact than the atomic bomb just because they were within the realm of what had already been experience instead of just a theoretical exercise.

Were the plans to use chemical weapons considered likely or were they like the plans for what to do in a war with Mexico? (ie not likely to be used.)

Both the Allies and Germany had a no-first-use/strategic deterrent policy toward chemical weapons, quite akin to nuclear weapons policies of the Cold War. IIRC, this concept was directly derived from the 'bomber will always get through' proto-MAD theories of the interwar years, from which the modern concept of strategic deterrence originated. I'm sure Stuart can correct me if I'm oversimplifying.

Given late-war Allied air superiority over Germany, the Germans were wise to refrain from starting a chemical exchange, although this decision was also based on the incorrect belief that the Allies had developed nerve gases. Ironically enough, the Allies were just as in the dark about German capabilities, being basically unaware of the German development of nerve gases.

On the whole, then, both sides maintained strategic deterrence stocks but almost completely refrained from their use, although I recall Stas Bush posting an article about an incident where Germany used chemical smokes against Soviet troops.

EDIT: Here is the relevant thread. It was Sea Skimmer, not Stas Bush, who posted the information.

Stuart wrote:The Germans in TBO did about as well as they could have and probably a bit better. I really doubt that they could push as far east as I described and some of the wunderwaffe that are mentioned in the book probably wouldn't have worked at all. But, I wanted to give the Germans every break possible and then show it still wouldn't have done them any good. I don't think the guy who did that review liked the idea that the Germans simply couldn't win.

As I said, I think the Germans would have had to do antihistorically well to come out of the war better off than they went in.

Or, as a caveat, had unhistorical levels of acquiescence from at least the US and possibly Britain while still doing better than they did historically.

But I agree that it wasn't in the cards. I'm not familiar with the details of what you set up in TBO, only the outline, so I don't know whether your idea of "as well as they could have and probably a bit better" matches mine. I see no reason to argue with your assessment based on what I do know; it sounds like a pretty good estimate for "as well... [see above]"

Bayonet wrote:There would not have been a breeding population of Japanese left.

Demographically speaking, what is the definition of a breeding population?
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Chad wrote:This brings up what I think is an interesting question. How did the US view the use of chemical weapons before August 6 1945? The whole concept of weapons of mass destruction doesn't even exist yet. On the other hand the allies certainly didn't view chemical\biological weapons as the same as regular bombs or artillery.

The US had a "second use" policy. We kept large stockpiles of chemical weapons in the European theater (there was a nasty accident with a freighter full of gas in Bari, for instance), but did not use those stockpiles. Had both sides gone chemical for whatever reason, the Anglo-American forces were both prepared to use gas both on the battlefield and on their deep bombing raids into Germany, which would have made the large-scale terror bombing of German cities even more lethal than it was historically.

In the Pacific, I gather the US had a broadly similar policy of "no first use," at least during the war itself. The Pacific islands were very tempting targets for chemical warfare, because many of them had little or no civilian population and a lot of subterranean bunkers or caves for the Japanese to dig into. Given the number of dead and wounded it would predictably cost to take Okinawa and Iwo Jima, I'm honestly a bit surprised in hindsight that the US did not decide to use gas on those islands.

However, if/since the Japanese were specifically planning to use gas in the defense of the home islands, even if the US had continued its policy of "no first use" the war would still have gone chemical.
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CaptainChewbacca wrote:I'd thought the werewolves and 'werewolf hunters' were better-known. Perhaps it's just my inner geek skewing my perceptions.

I knew there was a Werewolf plan, but I didn't know any of the plans were actually attempted...

Come to think of it, looking at that list of 'Werewolf' attacks, I'm not sure it even counts as a serious attempt at guerilla warfare. That's more of a "last twitches" thing to my way of thinking.

Stuart wrote:The Germans in TBO did about as well as they could have and probably a bit better. I really doubt that they could push as far east as I described and some of the wunderwaffe that are mentioned in the book probably wouldn't have worked at all. But, I wanted to give the Germans every break possible and then show it still wouldn't have done them any good. I don't think the guy who did that review liked the idea that the Germans simply couldn't win.

I suppose, but at what point do you think war with the Allied Powers was inevitable? I'm wondering if they could have come out ahead and saved their skins (the Nazi Germans) had they "only" taken Austria, demanded the Sudentland and a land passage to East Prussia, and then bombarded the British, Americans, and French with dire stories about the oncoming communist menace in the form of Stalin. That would have put them in the position of waiting to see if Stalin would launch an attack, but if/when that attack came, they might have been able to find more allies than they had IRL.

Of course, I suppose Hitler wouldn't really be Hitler if they'd done that.

Demographically speaking, what is the definition of a breeding population?

He is forgeting the large populations in the US and Brazil. I think he was just going for dramatic phrasing.

Baughn wrote:http://www.isracast.com/article.aspx?id=28 <-- Here's one near-future variant.
https://www.nas.nasa.gov/News/Techrepor ... 97-029.pdf <-- I don't know if you can call NASA an authority, but see their comments on the brittleness of carbon nanotubes on page seven - the section on space elevators. The actual authorities would, of course, not be as well known, but go ahead and ask Drexler if you like.

So ... a company making bold promises and seeking venture capital, and a NASA report which says that carbon nanotubes would be somewhat less brittle than diamond (no huge feat, since diamond is pretty much as brittle as it gets). How does that lead to your .50cal-proof fabric-thin ultra-light armour again?

I'm perfectly aware that micro-motors won't have any mechanical advantage, which is why I repeatedly stated that their output would be torque - rotation. You'd need macroscopic structures to translate that into the movements necessary for power assistance, most likely by using the distance between the two sides of the fabric.

"The distance between the two sides of the fabric?" Do you even listen to yourself? A two millimetre long lever arm to rotate a 40cm long femur? That's a mechanical advantage of 1/200, for fuck's sake.

Even then, you'd still have enough issues with lack of leverage that the power assistance would be limited to what could be described as sane levels, instead of the ridiculous (Vaporization would become an issue, except that the classical scaling laws don't hold all the way down) levels suggested by sufficiently tiny electrostatic motors - see http://www.crnano.org/essays04.htm#Scaling - however, the motors can still produce extreme levels of force without necessarily having very high wattage.

Of course, the point is that making the motors smaller does not significantly reduce mechanical advantage, so long as you're smart enough not to try driving a lever at four nanoradians or something like that. You can move the force around without worrying about mechanical advantage, by moving it as torque. You do need to worry about structural strength, but not much more than usual.

It seems to me that your plan is pretty much entirely based on your assumption that this ultra-light fabric-thin .50cal-proof armour of yours is actually feasible. If it is, then you can declare that a power armour would work simply because it won't require that much force, and of course, you can arbitrarily assume that these nano-components can survive abuse and not break down or stop functioning in the field because they would be pretty much impossible to field-maintain.

And what about power source? Are your nanotech wank fantasies also going to make super-miniaturized batteries?

I repeatedly mentioned MEMS gas turbines. If you can't be bothered to read what I'm actually posting, I don't see why I should bother to post. One last time, then: http://files.asme.org/IGTI/Knowledge/Articles/13045.pdf

Again, that sounds great if you're moving miniscule things around, but we're not talking about moving miniscule or feather-light things around. The sheer amount of work required to move a heavy armoured vehicle around would require a large fuel supply to get any decent range, regardless of what mechanism you use to convert it into mechanical activity. And really, if we're going to assume we have your magic wanktech .50cal-proof T-shirt in the future, why even bother with power armour? The whole reason people invented the whole power armour meme in sci-fi was the need to have prodigious amounts of force to move heavy armour plates around.

Atomically perfect seals? Just how much advantage do you expect to get from that?

It sure as hell ought to help against pheromones, or other chemical agents. That it also limits the exposure of internal mechanisms to dust is just a bonus.

And there is no wear in this system, thus ruining the seal? What about different rates of thermal expansion, which would open up gaps? There's a reason we use flexible materials which are pre-loaded in order to get seals. We do not go for the perfectly sized seal because it wouldn't work in realistic usage conditions. None of your ideas seem like you've even tried to look at realistic usage conditions at all.

No. Go argue with http://e-drexler.com/d/06/00/Nanosystems/toc.html.

And I should believe that you have correctly understood everything he's saying and are correctly applying it here because ...?

This is like vaguely waving at a physics textbook when someone asks you to justify a physics statement you've made.

It's low-maintenance due to being self-maintaining. The "specialized nutrients and fluids" you talk about are readily available in most areas of the world from simple foraging; an army lives on its stomach, but is in many cases perfectly capable of satisfying that stomach from local resources. Oh, except that would be a war crime. Boo hoo. They're still capable of it.

The fact that people are smart enough to maintain themselves does not change the fact that their bodies are fragile high-maintenance systems, prone to permanent irreversible breakdown if a large number of conditions are not met on a continuous basis. I'm just pointing out that you're doing bio-wanking in order to justify your nano-wanking.

Bullshit. Mechanical shock to all of the mechanisms and joints will cause wear and tear, thus forcing routine maintenance. Real-life tanks and aircraft require regular maintenance after every use, even when they take no battle damage, or they will break down. You do realize this, right? Oh wait, you'll just wave your hand and say "nanotech! I win!"

Notice that I said "won't need much", not "won't need any".

And you say this based on what, exactly? Nobody has any practical experience with the kinds of systems you're talking about; you're simply making glowingly optimistic assumptions out of thin air.

The strength of carbon bonds, as opposed to the metal/composite parts used in airplanes, will still reduce that need to reasonable levels, especially if you stop to consider that a suit of armor that isn't being shot at won't be subject to the same forces as the internals of a tank engine or airplane.

Since when does high UTS automatically reduce maintenance requirements? And you're correct in that it won't be subject to the same forces as airplane or tank parts. But the components also have far less cross-sectional area to dissipate these forces.

What makes you think you would be able to enter a building with a bulky power suit on? Oh right, I forgot: you think it would be no bulkier than clothing, because ... nanotech!

If it were, they wouldn't be able to use it, therefore the protection will be downscaled until they can. We're talking about a material far stronger than current soldier-mounted armor, so why the hell would you think it also needs to be bulkier?

Are you assuming "power armor" equates to "lift tank", or something? It means "lift armor, and possibly extra bolted-on supplies".

Right, and we've established that your entire premise relies on the assumption that a .50cal-proof wanktech T-shirt is inevitable. If it isn't, then the whole idea is pointless.

Darth Wong wrote:A two millimetre long lever arm to rotate a 40cm long femur? That's a mechanical advantage of 1/200...

This is a single-issue suggestion: could you use tendon-analogues to improve the mechanical advantage? You'd have to armor those too, probably with some form of ballistic fabric, but I think it would at least make the problem of leverage less insane.

You'd still end up needing something stronger than human muscles to get any appreciable strength augmentation, too, but could it work, if not for combat exoskeletons then for something more like a 'power lifter' exosuit?

Simon_Jester wrote:

Darth Wong wrote:A two millimetre long lever arm to rotate a 40cm long femur? That's a mechanical advantage of 1/200...

This is a single-issue suggestion: could you use tendon-analogues to improve the mechanical advantage? You'd have to armor those too, probably with some form of ballistic fabric, but I think it would at least make the problem of leverage less insane.

You'd still end up needing something stronger than human muscles to get any appreciable strength augmentation, too, but could it work, if not for combat exoskeletons then for something more like a 'power lifter' exosuit?

We have those now; they're called Forklifts.

Yes, I know, they work wonderfully for everything strapped to a pallet, which is a lot cheaper than an exoskeleton.

I'm not trying to make powered exo-whatevers profitable or cost-effective here; I just had an idea that popped into my head about how to reduce the leverage problem and I wanted to bounce it off an engineer. There's a difference between an idea that's impractical because it wouldn't work and an idea that's impractical because it would work... but not well enough to salvage a design that was impractical to begin with.

Darth Wong wrote: Right, and we've established that your entire premise relies on the assumption that a .50cal-proof wanktech T-shirt is inevitable. If it isn't, then the whole idea is pointless.

Unless you want the suit for its advantages in NBC warfare environments, something that goes all the way back to Starship Troopers. Having a sealed armor envelope would also automatically confer vastly great resistance to blast and burns and gas inhalation from explosions too. .50cal weapons are no more a threat to a powered suit then to a hummve or a wide range of other light armored vehicles very often lack protection against such a threat. This really doesn’t matter, a 7.62mm weapon will kill normal infantry just fine and it’s much smaller and easier to use. Heck back in WW2 the open topped halftracks we had infantry ride around could barely stop hits from the 7.62mm guns as it was. Beat walking though.

Anyway, if it was million dollar item it'd be within reason when you look at what was paid for MRAPs to be heavily expended, but more likely several million. Either way it's a niche weapon, but then so is an AC-130 gunship and many things we very much like to keep around.

Sea Skimmer wrote:

Darth Wong wrote:Right, and we've established that your entire premise relies on the assumption that a .50cal-proof wanktech T-shirt is inevitable. If it isn't, then the whole idea is pointless.

Unless you want the suit for its advantages in NBC warfare environments, something that goes all the way back to Starship Troopers. Having a sealed armor envelope would also automatically confer vastly great resistance to blast and burns and gas inhalation from explosions too.

Fair enough, but that relates to a previous question I had asked him: even if we get super-tough fabrics in future, why make a "power armour" suit out of them when you could make a normal suit with the same materials instead? The non-powered suit would serve the same purpose.

.50cal weapons are no more a threat to a powered suit then to a hummve or a wide range of other light armored vehicles very often lack protection against such a threat. This really doesn’t matter, a 7.62mm weapon will kill normal infantry just fine and it’s much smaller and easier to use. Heck back in WW2 the open topped halftracks we had infantry ride around could barely stop hits from the 7.62mm guns as it was. Beat walking though.

Fair enough, although with respect to Baughn's idea, 7.62mm-proof T-shirts don't seem particularly likely either, and a Humvee is relatively cheap, which would be important in a story universe where their economy is going to shit as a result of the war already. We presently need to put weighty rigid plates in flak jackets to accomplish that, and I'd like to see something much more substantial in the way of evidence before I believe his "nanotech = bulletproof fabric" idea.

Anyway, if it was million dollar item it'd be within reason when you look at what was paid for MRAPs to be heavily expended, but more likely several million. Either way it's a niche weapon, but then so is an AC-130 gunship and many things we very much like to keep around.

As an NBC suit, that makes sense.

Raesene wrote:
That's the first time I've ever heard of an organised, low-level guerilla campaign against the Allies in Germany after the war - out of interest, what source do you have for that, as that's really news to me.

It's the same stuff Chewie cited. It was never a big deal in the overall sceme of things, but Germany had a legitimate government that had announced the surrender. My point was that, ifv the Japanese resistance had become viral; if the legitimate government was destroyed or communications got so bad that it was functionally dead, then it would have been nearly impossible to shut off the resistance. We were still policing up the random Japanese soldier in the Phillipines in the 1970s.

How does one manage to go twenty years without noticing the war is over?

I can think of several ways, but mainly I'm wondering if there are books about any of those soldiers.

Simon_Jester wrote: In the Pacific, I gather the US had a broadly similar policy of "no first use," at least during the war itself. The Pacific islands were very tempting targets for chemical warfare, because many of them had little or no civilian population and a lot of subterranean bunkers or caves for the Japanese to dig into. Given the number of dead and wounded it would predictably cost to take Okinawa and Iwo Jima, I'm honestly a bit surprised in hindsight that the US did not decide to use gas on those islands.

We were probably moving in that direction. Certainly, if the Japanese initiated CW or BW, we would have cone chemical with a gusto. There would be no other power to deter us by potentially retaliating with their own CW and the Japanese would have been particularly vulnerable compared to the Americans.

It would have been exceedingly ugly.

Baughn wrote:How does one manage to go twenty years without noticing the war is over?

I can think of several ways, but mainly I'm wondering if there are books about any of those soldiers.

We had bypassed a lot of areas, and there was simply no communication. The Japanese had been told that we would treat them incredibly harshly, so there was good incentive to stay hidden. Some of them were probably a few maki rolls short of a sushi plate.

Bayonet wrote:Some of them were probably a few maki rolls short of a sushi plate.

It was a bit of a national mindset; these were people that believed(well, not all of them I'm sure) that their head of state was a living god.

NetKnight wrote:Both the Allies and Germany had a no-first-use/strategic deterrent policy toward chemical weapons, quite akin to nuclear weapons policies of the Cold War. IIRC, this concept was directly derived from the 'bomber will always get through' proto-MAD theories of the interwar years, from which the modern concept of strategic deterrence originated. I'm sure Stuart can correct me if I'm oversimplifying.

Given late-war Allied air superiority over Germany, the Germans were wise to refrain from starting a chemical exchange, although this decision was also based on the incorrect belief that the Allies had developed nerve gases. Ironically enough, the Allies were just as in the dark about German capabilities, being basically unaware of the German development of nerve gases.

On the whole, then, both sides maintained strategic deterrence stocks but almost completely refrained from their use, although I recall Stas Bush posting an article about an incident where Germany used chemical smokes against Soviet troops.

EDIT: Here is the relevant thread. It was Sea Skimmer, not Stas Bush, who posted the information.

Wasn't it also true that Hitler himself had received a mild exposure to mustard gas during his time as a soldier and remained deeply horrified of chemical weapons right up until his death?

Darth Wong wrote: Fair enough, but that relates to a previous question I had asked him: even if we get super-tough fabrics in future, why make a "power armour" suit out of them when you could make a normal suit with the same materials instead? The non-powered suit would serve the same purpose.

Unless you have a super awesome armor which is not only good protection, but also highly porous then the user is going to drop dead of heatstroke in a full suit. That happened to knights all the time even in relatively temperate Europe while they did nothing more then ride horses, never mind what happened in the desert. If you also want NBC protection, then forget about that even mattering since you must seal out vapor, barring even more advanced porous armor material that can actually chose which types of molecules it allows through or only allow one way traffic with utter reliability.

A powered ventilation system would really be required (actually tested, and failed so far in Iraq for gunners using extra body armor) and hauling that thing around is unlikely to be reasonable. 70lb of armor and 20lb of ventilation, coolant circulating and power gear would be within the weight limits of a man to carry… but he’d barely be able to carry anything else like a weapon. So combining that ventilation system with a load carrying system makes a fair bit of sense even if you do not have a classic ridged armored suit.

Fair enough, although with respect to Baughn's idea, 7.62mm-proof T-shirts don't seem particularly likely either, and a Humvee is relatively cheap, which would be important in a story universe where their economy is going to shit as a result of the war already. We presently need to put weighty rigid plates in flak jackets to accomplish that, and I'd like to see something much more substantial in the way of evidence before I believe his "nanotech = bulletproof fabric" idea.

You can’t expect to stop .50cal rounds with soft armor simply because the soft armor will deform in such a matter that the user will still die without penetration. That’s a serious problem against smaller caliber rifles too and even big handguns. However given powered armor, you at least have a ridged frame which the armor can be attached too to absorb some of the impact energy, rather then all energy inherently being transferred from a bulletproof vest onto a human body as current systems work.

So the armor for a realistic power armor suit is likely to be some kind of plate mail system, like dragon skin but with glue that works in the heat. I don’t have time at this second to go into it at this second but several different avenues for new body armor are very promising. Spider silk could as much as double effectiveness over kevlar as soft armor. Nanotechnology comes into play for a couple different materials, the most advanced of which seems to be carbon nanotube based carbon fiber which would be used as the backing material for future improved ceramic armors some of which will also use nanotechnology.

Such suits are far too expensive to mass produce and the armor technologies could easily be a decade plus from service, but think about it. Earth faces an unknown number of unknown pocket dimensions it may have to face in combat or just explore. Many of them may have extremely hostile environments. Hell is unhealthy enough with all the dust in the air and the rules on what can sustain intelligent life are being rewritten meaning we can't rule out toxic air death worlds. The situation may be even worse in the future. So people are dominantly going to be doing work on suits, armored and unarmored and powered, semi powered (ventilator only) and unpowered, which will allow for operations in any possible environment. Somehow though I think we’ll probably have a bipedal combat robot before we have decent powered armor.

I'd mention non-newtonian liquids, and the possibility of non-newtonian metamaterials, but.. there's apparently no point in mentioning things that might possibly not happen on this forum. I apologize for attempting.

I'll just hand you this link without further comment, then, as an interesting link: http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-F ... ewsNum=108