Is Iron Man’s Ablative Armor practical?
Today we’re asking a very simple question about Axol, the Model 23 Ablative Suit: Is it practical? Let’s do a deep dive.
The Concept
Let’s start by taking the Ablative as it’s presented to us, as a space suit for “exploration in impact-rich environments, like asteroid fields…comet tails…particle storms…” It’s truly made for scientific purposes and not for battle.
Each tile breaks away from the suit so that it takes impact energy with the tile instead of transferring it to the wearer. Ablation technology exists in our world and is mostly used for heat shields on spacecraft returning to Earth; such tiles are ablated by heat, not by impacts.
Would the Iron Man Ablative Armor work in the way that Tony suggests?
Asteroid Fields
You might have heard by now that real asteroid fields don’t look like they do in the movies. As exciting as the asteroid chase was in The Empire Strikes Back, asteroids are actually about 600,000 miles apart. Space debris in the best-known belt in our solar system — the one between Mars and Jupiter — range in size from dust particles to the dwarf planet Ceres. Asteroids do collide…about once every 10 million years. Watching Tony flying through an asteroid field unablated would be very boring.
“Use the bathroom here, kids. It’s half-a-million miles to the next one.”
Asteroids
Sometimes asteroids get bumped out of an asteroid field and start flying through our solar system. They’re affected by gravity like everything else, and some start spinning around the sun. These are the asteroids we see get fairly close to Earth every so often.
“Fairly, he says.”
Would this prove more dangerous than an actual asteroid field? Well, it’s important to remember that, even though an asteroid is hurtling through the cosmos at tens-of-thousands of miles per hour, it’s only dangerous if you get in its way. There’s really not much danger once you’ve caught up to it and matched its velocity. Even meteoroids that have broken away from the asteroid would be moving at the same rate as the asteroid itself. There really wouldn’t be much for the Ablative Armor’s tiles to deal with.
The one danger I can think of would be outgassing. While asteroids are mostly metal and/or rock, they also contain a not-insignificant supply of primordial gasses. Gaseous escape increases as the asteroid heats up and gets closer to the sun, so it wouldn’t be surprising if Axol had to deal with flying debris from expanding gas.
Planet Rings
Let’s talk about the most well-known rings in our solar system: Saturn’s. The seven rings are mostly made of dust, but there are some pieces of debris the size of a house. Amazingly, each ring is only about 30 feet tall, though there are bulges.
Not all of Saturn’s rings are moving at the same rotational rate, but a good average is about 38,000 miles per hour. If you’re moving along inside the ring and rotating at the same rate, you’d be in little danger; every piece within the ring is moving at a nearly identical speed, and gravity is slow to bring them together.
It’s a different story if you’re completely stopped within the ring. Billions of particles are racing toward you, and no number of tiles is going to be enough to hold up to all of that debris moving so quickly.
Particle Storms
Solar flares create an extreme increase in the number of protons hurtling toward Earth, an event we call a particle storm. This energy can wreak havoc with satellites, Earth’s communications, and power grids.
Particle storms are filled with gamma radiation, posing both heat and cancer risks to anyone outside Earth’s atmosphere. Real-world tiles like those on the Ablative would have to be at least 3/16” and made of lead; we know that’s not the case. The polymer tiles of Axol would not work with our current scientific knowledge.
Enough about our world, let’s talk about the Marvel Universe. Since gamma rays cannot be reflected by mirrors or deflected by electric fields, there’s a good chance that Iron Man’s forcefields would offer no protection from even low-energy gamma rays. Similarly, tiles wouldn’t help because:
If they are plastic polymers the gamma rays would pass right through.
If they are made from polymers containing lead, they are too thin to stop gamma rays.
If they contain enough lead to stop even low-energy gamma rays, the suit would be too heavy and cumbersome to wear.
If they were made from a thicker and lighter comic book metal — vibranium would be an obvious choice since its periodic element would be above 121 — then the tiles wouldn’t shatter as designed. (Then again, vibranium is essentially magic and can do whatever you want it to do.)
In the end, it’s easy to say that the suit could help protect Tony in a particle storm, but the science would be very difficult to explain. (I have written an entire blog about how this armor would hold up to particle storms. To get a full description of particle storms, how they form, and how the armor might react, check out the blog “Will Iron Man’s Ablative Armor hold up against particle storms?”)
Comet Tails
You might know that a comet tail is light reflected off the ice dust created as the comet gets closer to the sun. Even though there’s no air resistance in space to slow the ice and force it to trail the comet, space weather such as the solar wind pushes against the ice enough to offset gravity’s pull from the sun or the comet itself.
Of all the purposes for which the Ablative was made, I think this would be the most helpful. There’s a lot of outgassing that going on as the comet approaches the sun and warms up to create the tail. This is bound to create quite of lot explosive ice debris that the Ablative Armor could handle.
Final Verdict
There’s no doubt that Tony’s Ablative Armor is useful. Just take a look at the purpose he used it for in the only two issues in which it appears and it’s obvious it works.
When it comes to protecting him from celestial bodies, I suggest that comets would be the most dangerous situation in which the ablative nature of the suit would work best. With the right science, the tiles might also be able to protect him from gamma rays. Asteroids and asteroid fields wouldn’t give the armor a workout, and planetary rings could be navigated easily.
