Inventing Iron Man Read online

  Inventing Iron Man

  Inventing

  IRON

  MAN

  THE POSSIBILITY OF

  A HUMAN MACHINE

  E. Paul Zehr

  © 2011 E. Paul Zehr

  All rights reserved. Published 2011

  Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

  9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  The Johns Hopkins University Press

  2715 North Charles Street

  Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363

  www.press.jhu.edu

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Zehr, E. Paul.

  Inventing iron man : the possibility of a human machine / E. Paul Zehr.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4214-0226-0 (hardcover : alk. paper)

  ISBN-10: 1-4214-0226-2 (hardcover : alk. paper)

  1. Cyborgs. 2. Androids. 3. Human physiology. 4. Human-machine systems. I. Title.

  TJ211.Z42 2011

  629.8—dc22 2011000177

  A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Special discounts are available for bulk purchases of this book. For more information, please contact Special Sales at 410-516-6936 or [email protected].

  The Johns Hopkins University Press uses environmentally friendly book materials, including recycled text paper that is composed of at least 30 percent post-consumer waste, whenever possible.

  To the memory of my mom, Marlene Mary Zehr (1935–2010), who passed away during the time I was working on this book. She always encouraged and supported me … and bought me my first comic books. Here’s looking at you, Mom.

  The suit of Iron Man and I are one.

  —Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark in Iron Man 2

  Learning is the only thing the mind never exhausts, never fears, and never regrets.

  —Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519)

  Contents

  Foreword, by Warren Ellis

  Preface: The Stark Reality of Robotics

  PART I. IT’S MORE THAN SKIN DEEP

  Tony learns to live inside a suit of iron

  CHAPTER 1. Origins of the Iron Knight:

  Bionics, Robotic Armor, and Anthropomorphic Suits

  CHAPTER 2. Building the Body with Biology:

  When the Man of Metal Needs to Muscle In

  CHAPTER 3. Accessing the Brain of the Armored Avenger:

  Can We Connect the Cranium to a Computer?

  The First Decades of Iron: “He Lives! He Walks! He Conquers!”

  PART II. USE IT AND LOSE IT

  Will time tarnish the Golden Avenger?

  CHAPTER 4. Multitasking and the Metal Man:

  How Much Can Iron Man’s Mind Manage?

  CHAPTER 5. Softening Up a Superhero:

  Why the Man with a Suit of Iron Could Get a Jelly Belly

  CHAPTER 6. Brain Drain:

  Will Tony’s Gray Matter Give Way?

  The Next Decades of Iron: “I Can Envision the Future”

  PART III. ARMORED AVENGER IN ACTION

  If we build it, what will come?

  CHAPTER 7. Trials and Tribulations of the Tin Man:

  What Happens When the Human Machine Breaks Down

  CHAPTER 8. Visions of the Vitruvian Man:

  Is Invention Really Only One Part Inspiration?

  CHAPTER 9. Deal or No Deal?

  Could Iron Man Exist?

  Appendix: Ten Momentous Moments of the Metal Man

  Bibliography

  Index

  Foreword

  Some years ago, I was approached by Marvel Comics editor-in-chief Joe Quesada to write new adventures of an early Marvel property that was still in continuous publication but, as these old-time superheroes tend to get, needed a new coat of modern paint. Iron Man was one of those characters that Marvel was having trouble getting a hold of. No hook to hang him on to capture the new century’s light. I said to Joe, “He’s the test pilot for the future. That’s the whole thing. Flying away from himself, trying to bring the future on. Of all Stan Lee’s ideas of the early sixties, this is the one that can and should reinvent itself annually, to keep pace with the stormfront of the future.”

  Of all pop culture’s heroes of the past 50 years, Tony Stark is the one corporate-owned character who is absolutely designed to face the future. His armor is a reflective surface in which we can consider our era’s own reaction to technological concerns. He began in a time when a weapons designer could still be a hero and when some people could still fantasize that the administering of savage beatings to Communists was the work of good men. At roughly the same time as Tony Stark was stomping through comics pages in his original tank-like armor, the U.S. military was testing the similarly massive and clunky Hardiman powered exoskeleton.

  Today, Tony Stark is a bootstrapping “compassionate capitalist” attempting to bring free energy to the masses, and the Iron Man lives inside his bones as nine pints of colloidal technology. Even now we work, in the real world, on synthetic muscles, contact lenses with computer displays, cochlear implants, and fleets of nanoscale devices to sail our bloodstreams and keep us healthy. Tony Stark is the fictive ghost of our own cyborg tendencies, always a few years and at least one impossible idea ahead of us. Pop culture’s test pilot for the future.

  This wonderful book lays out the schema for that notion in energetic, eclectic detail. Starting from the only true way to see the Iron Man—as a prosthesis—the author uses the science fiction of Iron Man in its most effective way, as a tool with which to examine the present and past. From the Nyctalope and battlefield prosthetics of the eighteenth century to cutting-edge cortical implantation, the Iron Man is used as I and so many other writers in the world of comics and film have used it: as a metaphor. We simply hoped the use of the metaphor would intrigue and illuminate. The author achieves both effortlessly and has written a book that educates and delights. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

  Warren Ellis

  Southend, England

  Preface

  THE STARK REALITY OF ROBOTICS

  Where is the line drawn? Between man and machine? Where does her humanity end?

  —Reflections on Tony Stark’s assistant Pepper Potts using the Iron Man armor, World’s Most Wanted #1, “Shipbreaking” (Invincible Iron Man #8, 2009)

  I didn’t realize at the time—that a shell of iron—is hollow.

  —Tony Stark on his childhood, “Dust to Dust” (Iron Man #286, 1992)

  Smashing through walls, flying through the air like a human jet, and controlling an amazingly complicated robotic suit of armor seemingly by mere thought. Oh, and being practically indestructible. These are things associated with the Marvel Comics character Iron Man. The full title description for his comic book is actually “The Invincible Iron Man,” which is kind of a giveaway about the powers he is supposed to possess. Being invincible is a pretty tall order, though. Basically Iron Man is a really, really smart guy (OK—I give in, he is a genius) in a super high-tech suit of armor. It seems pretty clear that we humans have been able to develop some extraordinary technology. We certainly have the ability to control powerful machines and fly through the air (and beyond) with rockets and jets. We also have some pretty fancy armored suits for protection in outer space and in the deep dark reaches of inner space, the sea. But the ability to really put them all together at once is the key to having a real Iron Man. The central focus of this book is exploring just that issue. Is it possible to have seamless biological control of an armored robotic suit? And, if it is possible, what does it really mean for how our bodies function and for our future as human beings?

  One day I was speaking with my
daughters (then ages 6 and 9) about the focus of this book. I told them I was going to explore the background of the possibility of Iron Man. Since they didn’t yet know about Marvel’s character of Iron Man, I showed them some images in an Invincible Iron Man comic book from the 1970s. Their basic response was this: “He wears a big suit. I wouldn’t want to be him; it looks too hot.” I told them that the suit is “air-conditioned.” While that answer satisfied my kids that day and may deal with the real but superficial problem of overheating both human and machine, it does not address at all the totally unsuperficial problem of how that big suit could actually be controlled by the human inside it. Exploring this problem and all the related problems that spring from it is the real focus of Inventing Iron Man: The Possibility of a Human Machine.

  In many ways, this book carries on from my previous one, Becoming Batman: The Possibility of a Superhero. That book was about examining the reality behind whether the self-made man Bruce Wayne could become the ultimately sculpted Batman through physical training. This book is about the self-invented man Tony Stark becoming Iron Man through the application of robotics. However, as we shall learn, a lot of training and adaptations are needed to actually master that iron suit. The iconic characters I have studied have several things in common. Batman is also a superhero lacking in actual superpowers. He first appeared in Detective Comics; the first appearance of Iron Man wasn’t in his own comic book either. Instead, his first story was in Tales of Suspense #39 from March 1963. As with so many Marvel characters, this story was the brainchild of creative genius and writer Stan Lee with synthetic contributions from scripter Larry Lieber and artists Don Heck and Jack Kirby. Just to make sure readers could not fail to note how powerful Iron Man was supposed to be, the cover of Tales of Suspense #39 actually says “Who? or what, is the newest, most breath-taking, most sensational super-hero of all …? Iron Man! He lives! He walks! He conquers!” In our journey examining the possibility of Iron Man, we will talk about the living and the walking parts. I am a bit opposed to gratuitous conquering so we won’t really get into that bit. In homage to the true comic book writing style, I will emphasize that by throwing down an exclamation point!

  Iron Man is the character that emerges when millionaire industrialist Tony Stark (for those not in the know, his actual full name is Anthony Edward Stark) puts on a mechanized suit of armor that he custom designed and built. The basic origin story for Iron Man—like all comic characters—has been revised, revisited, and re-created over the years. The key part that has been maintained in all alternate origins is that Tony the industrialist gets captured and kidnapped by bad guys. They know (as does the whole world because Tony Stark really is a genius and brilliant inventor and head of a huge international conglomerate) that he can build all kinds of devices.

  The actual story title for Iron Man’s introduction in 1963 was “Iron Man Is Born!” and in this tale the military industrialist Tony Stark has been designing and selling weapons to the U.S. government for use against the communist guerillas in South Vietnam. While on a “site visit” to the jungles of Vietnam to see his technology in action, Tony trips a booby trap bomb. Shrapnel from this bomb gets lodged in his chest very near to his heart. In order to get help and a surgery to save his life, Tony agrees to help create a new weapon for Wong-Chu, who is the main communist terror warlord. However, he plans to trick and double-cross the villain with the help of another kidnapped scientist, physicist Professor Yinsen. The two men build a chest plate that creates a magnetic field which then acts to hold the shrapnel in a kind of stasis. This was really nicely shown in the 2008 Marvel Studios’ film Iron Man. If you recall the scene in the desert cave in which Tony, played by Robert Downey Jr., wakes up to find a 12-volt car battery connected to terminals coming out of his chest, you get the idea. Well, from this chest plate Tony and Yinsen develop a full-body and fully articulated mechanized suit of armor. This is the double-cross part, by the way, and gives birth to Iron Man as a super hero to fight crime.

  At this juncture, Tony Stark moves away from being the capitalist solely concerned with profit from making munitions to becoming the iron-garbed superhero and founding member of the Avengers—Iron Man. A key implication from this origin tale is that Tony Stark must always wear the chest plate to keep the shrapnel from moving into his heart and killing him. This was shown in a panel in Tales of Suspense #40 from 1963 in a story entitled “Iron Man vs. Gargantus.” Tony is mulling over how sad he feels that he couldn’t go swimming with a girlfriend (Jeanne), “She probably thought I was trying to avoid her, but I couldn’t go swimming! I can never appear anywhere bare-chested because I constantly wear this iron chest plate. Just as other men plug in their electric shavers for their morning or evening shave, I must constantly charge up this plate which gives continued life to my heart!” When he finally plugs his chest plate into the outlet meant for the shaving razor, he exclaims “Ah! Electrical energy is pouring back! Now I can continue living … to help humanity as Iron Man!”

  I am going to admit right up front that Iron Man plays a bit fast and loose with valid concepts of physics and energetics. All right, all right, those of you “in the know” realize that is really an understatement. I spoke to my colleague Jim Kakalios, the friendly neighborhood physics professor and author of The Physics of Superheroes (you should read this book—it is great) about this very issue. He pointed out that “energy storage in batteries has dramatically lagged behind information storage. If batteries had followed the Moore’s Law that describes the increase in density of transistors on integrated circuits, with a doubling in capacity every two years, then a battery that would discharge in one hour in 1970 would last for over a century today. Ultimately, if we don’t want to wear licensed nuclear power packs on our backs, we are limited to chemical processes to run our suit of high-tech armor, and in that case we must either sacrifice weight or lifetime.” And on this point I concur with him completely. The energetic needs of Iron Man outstrip what we can provide currently. We cannot really power up to use repulsor rays and so on. However, what we are going to explore is just how much of the Iron Man character is based on a realistic extension of concepts in neuroscience, robotics, biomedical engineering, and kinesiology that we have today.

  But, while it might seem perfectly realistic to you that suits of armor could be powered and worn rather like clothes, you likely haven’t thought much about the real science behind creating ways for biological creatures like human beings to connect with artificial creations like bionic limbs. In the comic books, imagining this very thing was how Stan Lee and others created a superhero, albeit one quite different from the granddaddy of superheroes, Superman. Iron Man is a mere human being. As highlighted by Andy Mangels in his book Iron Man: Beneath the Armor, famous Iron Man writer David Michelinie has said that Iron Man is “a super hero with no superpowers. Any abilities he has are abilities that he makes, that he imagines and then invents. Prime among those, of course is his amazing suit of electronic armor. Without the armor, he’s just a man. A man with a huge brain and a few billion dollars, but still just a human being … That makes him a lot more interesting than many heroes, as well as making him easier for the average reader to identify with. He could be you or me, if we had the money and inventiveness. And the courage. And the willpower.”

  Inventing Iron Man is divided into three parts related to different aspects of how humans can interface with technology. In Part I we start “skin deep” and then explore areas under the skin such as muscles and nerves. We also look at what might go on top of the skin in examining the concept of controllable suits of supporting armor by using Iron Man as a primary example and other attempts at creating prosthetic extensions of the human body as secondary examples. This exploration also includes discussing the way in which the body works normally so we can better appreciate the effect of layering technology over top of our biological machines. We also consider this from the perspective of something that you wear (or drive!) to survey the reality about what is nee
ded to make connections between biological beings and machines. It really is largely all in our heads—which is to say our brains. We will talk about the possibility of controlling things like a computer or a robotic arm by measuring electrical activity in the brain and spinal cord. This is the area of neuroscience known as “brain-computer interface”—the literal connection between activity in the nervous system and actual machines.

  Part II describes the long-term effects of interfacing with the kind of technology in the Iron Man suit. Our bodies adapt to the stresses that they experience, and interfacing with technology is a biological problem of stress adaptation. This kind of interface removes some stresses that are normally present in the body but also adds a few new ones. What are the limits within which our bodies can borrow, blend, and become one with artificial technology and, perhaps more importantly, how does this alter the body itself?

  Part III looks at the good and the bad about Tony Stark the man and what he brings to the suit. Tony wrestles with demons—in a bottle and otherwise. But his drive and creativity allow him to constantly reinvent himself and his suit to changing circumstances. In this way, he has a kinship to creative geniuses the likes of Leonardo da Vinci and modern-day inventors such as Yoshiyuki Sankai and Yves Rossy. If you don’t know who these men are, you will by the time you have finished the book! The chapter also tackles the issue of what kinds of problems you might experience as an iron-suited superhero. What are some of the practical aspects of being Iron Man?

  Inventing Iron Man explains the science behind and limitations of the extent to which human beings can control and interface with computers, machines, and robots. Because Iron Man is a normal human being inside a high-tech suit of armor, it is always assumed that anybody, well practically anybody, could just slap on the gear and be ready to go. This is not so, as you will read in this book. A lot of specialized learning and adaptations in the body of the Iron Man armor “user” would be needed. Just exactly what those adaptations are (and they aren’t all good) you will find out later. For those of you who aren’t that familiar with Iron Man, you will learn here a bit about a Marvel Comics icon and the science behind linking humans to machines. For those readers very familiar with Tony Stark and Iron Man, well, I have a few surprises ahead for you. To find out exactly what I mean, please keep on turning the pages and read along as together we probe the possibility of inventing Iron Man—the possibility of a human machine.