Project EON – Mach 1

Some of you may know of my long running Project EON. Some of you may not. This week I reached a major milestone in the project by completing the Mach 1 Phase.  It seems a good time to brag about this humble endeavor.
EON will be wearing the suit at a major RLSH event called HOPE 2011 at the San Diego Comic Con the weekend of the 23rd.
Project EON is an attempt to build a super suit somewhat akin to a real life version of Iron Man. Now if there are any comic book nerds (or even comic movie nerds) in the audience, you already know who Iron Man is. Tony Stark is a normal guy in a metal suit that gives him all sorts of super powers. It does this by ignoring those laws of physics that I harp about all the time.
Of course the Real Life version must work within those laws. So we will have to scrap some of the Iron Man super weapons in favor of more realistic available gadgets. And unlike Tony Stark, who is a billionaire, we have to do it on a modest budget.
The first six months of the project were completely eaten up by trying to decide what to build into the suit, make it super, and still meet those physics requirements. There are several hundred pages of archived brain-storming from some of the finest, most creative minds in the RLSH community. Some people joined the community JUST to work on this project. Probably 80% of the gadgetry that I build has come about as a direct result of this project. To say the least it is an incredible undertaking.
Now the Mach 1 is complete and on its way to EON.
Well, you might ask what does that consist of? And why is it the Mach 1?
The Mach 1 is the lite patrol version of the suit. It consists of The Blast Boots, a utility belt, a UHMW level III bullet resistant vest, an MK6 Kevlar helmet, flash Kevlar gloves, the Shock Collar, armored forearms, a stinger flash light, various bits of first aid gear, and goggles. Because modern heroes wear goggles, not because I forgot to make the mask. The whole ensemble weighs in at about 25lbs. That is right where we wanted to be for the Mach 1.
See the Mach 1 suit here.
We looked at a lot of the stuff that Iron Man does, and asked: What would be a real world counterpart?
Iron Man is invulnerable thanks to his super alloy skin of Titanium and Vibranium. Vibranium is comic book metal and doesn’t really exist. Our answer was to add in some bullet resistant materials such as Kevlar and UHMW in the vest. UHMW, or UHMWPE, is a type of polyethylene plastic. It stands for Ultra High Molecular Weight. That just means that the molecular structure of it is very dense. Dense enough to stop a bullet.
Iron Man has repulsor rays in his hands and feet. That really isn’t going to happen in the real world. We replaced these weapons with the shocking voltage of stun gun technology. The Blast Boots came from needing a weapon on the foot. Also because we were watching Ultra Man, and thought it would be cool to kick a bad guy and shock him at the same time. The hand repulsors were replaced by flash Kevlar gloves with carbon fiber knuckles. EON can put out a small fire with the fire resistant gloves, or bap a bad guy in the face with the reinforced knuckles. Hopefully it will never come to that.
The other things that Iron Man can do such as fly, communicate via integrated wireless, computational systems, and super strength,… Those things will be addressed on the more advanced Mach 2 and Mach 3 components. Wait till you see some of this stuff.
EON will wear the Mach 1 equipment most of the time for his patrols. Technically the helmet is for the Mach 2. There will be a mask made for the Mach 1 in the next few weeks and the helmet will be kept for the Mach 2. The Mach 2 will be a bigger, badder, more super, suit that can be worn on special missions. When it is ready, I will update you again, here on Get You Gadget On!