Id say its above 8 credits

The Economics of Halo would be an intriguing idea for a series. Maybe trying to calculate the cost of various weapons, vehicles, and ships.

If I recall in one of the halo books, I think fall of reach actually. That the power supply for Mjolnir being the micro fusion pack is what a little over half the cost of Mjolnir goes to. I remember them saying at one point Mjolnir cost as much as a battle ship or a frigate or something like that in the earlier stages of the war, i'm sure the price has come down since then though.

I've been wondering since I heard a single suit costs as much as a destroyer. I guess it's similar to how an ultra high precision mechanical watch can cost as much as an expensive car.

I think you should've told this to the covenant...

The armorer is one of the best characters, even though we see him for such a short time. Imagine, calling the Chief "Son" like he's just another Jarhead out of boot. I like to think Chief appreciated his candor.

Whats even more insane, is that new version of the fusion pack, uses reverse engineered Covenant ship tech, where two points fire a laser to the material in the middle, creating a stable 'sun', creating leaps and bounds more energy than the old packs. This directly relates to why the Chief can arm tank Atrioxs hammer, with his shields still in tact like its nothing... The cost of Mjlnor must be in thr billions

That was an interesting idea towards the end of the video, the idea of a decommissioned MJOLNIR suit being put on display in a museum with all of its vital components stripped out, leaving only the undersuit and armor plating intact.

That still seems extremely low. Maybe for Gen2 suits. But Gen1 were stated to cost the same as a UNSC ship. A modern day Arleigh Burke class destroyer is $1.8 billion. That honestly sounds alot more realistic for Gen1 suits. And I'd bet Gen3 is probably similar, if not a bit lower since I'm sure they incorporated some of what they learned with Gen2 into 3.

Well since Mister Chief one of the AI's on infinite praises you he says something about "and that's why you cost 2 frigates" or something like that, even if we can't estimate how much credits are worth, it is insane how one single super soldier is worth that much

An entire series of the cost of almost every UNSC Weapon, Vehicle, and Ship we know, would be a great series.

Before I even watched the video, this is actually gone over briefly in the LOR. The general expense for armor like master chief, was about the cost of one of the UNSC most expensive carriers or up to a similar cost of an entire UNSC battle group. It just depends on which Spartan armor you are referring to, and when the Spartan program officially started. For example, Spartan 2 Armor versus SPI armor.

One of the things to consider when looking at military equipment acquisition costs is what the R&D costs are. The cost of each piece of Mjolnir would also include the total R&D costs (physical prototypes included) divided by the number of serialized/combat ready units produced. For Gen1 Mk. IV Mjolnir, the R&D would have been astronomically high, likely comparable to a current 5th gen fighter or bomber R&D program. Of the original 300 Spartans the training program was budgeted for, only 75 were selected, and of those just over 30 would ever be put in the field, the total average cost of R&D per suit ended up being almost 10x higher. So the R&D cost burden was very likely in the high 10s of millions of dollars, or even a bit over $100million per Gen1 Mk. IV unit. This is largely why NASA's space suites are so expensive. They have a high R&D cost spread out over a very limited number of suits

A video on if it's possible to create the flood (as close as we can get with our science at least, we don't have neural physics obviously) would be super interesting installation00.

Incredibly fascinating breakdown on a nearly impossible subject. The reality is we may never actually know for sure how much as there are so many variables we just can't account for. Great job regardless.

Didn't someone in-universe say there was a "ship-to-mjolnir" conversation rate of some kind? Would it be easier to figure out the price of a ship and deduce that way?

Send this video to the Covenant

There are bits of lore stating that one suit costs as much as a small starship, so it might be interesting to use something like that as a refrence

Imagine if the four most expensive components of Mjolnir armor weren't sci-fi tech, but real-world and dirt cheap?

Another “Most detailed breakdown” of mark 7/VII would just make my day. Best helmet and armor from 343 ever.

I think the closest thing we have to micro nuclear fusion power plants would be focus fusion. The process of nuclear fusion using the inherent instabilities within magnetic filaments to condense gasses into a plasmoid. This process is being worked on by a physicist, Eric Learner. It has the potential to be directly converted into electrical energy without going through a steam cycle. Even the potential device he's building and the other models of the device he's built are about the size of a refrigerator or small car like a Volkswagen beetle. So not really backpack size, however, give it a few centuries, it might get smaller.

You want 500 dolla?

I mean given the in universe stated costs of half a modern warship $125m for just the frame makes sense. A modern warship is around $1 Billion per ship. Given Mjolnir is literally cutting edge and has a whole heap of super classified experimental military tech 1/2 to 3/4 Billion is quite a reasonable estimate.

Considering how many ships the UNSC was pissing through I’d say the return on investment Chief made ALONE covered the cost of the entire SPARTAN II program.

one of the many reason why Power Armor is still an amazing yet costly venture in Sci-fi series, until with find a more effective material or lucrative resources to make mass produce Power Armor we'll be amazed that one in 12 UNSC Soldiers can utilize one and they're not a spartan. I need see that when it happens.

it is stated in lore that one suit of Mjolnir was equivalent in price to a Halberd Class Destroyer during the Human-Cov war and considering Naval Vessel are more valuable that one spartan bot alot of mjolnir was produced, which why most of the spartan 3's wore that semi-powered armour.

Good to see you back again

Could you cover the differences between Mjonir's tech suit and Crysis nano suit. I know youve covered both separately. But a comparison would be cool. Things like the nanosuit symbiosis and your theory on how Mjonir reacts to its users movement.

This makes the existence of Mirage IIC and Rakshasa cores much more understandable. Even if the UNSC could just augment a bunch of soldiers into Spartan IV’s, the titanium MJOLNIR suits are so expensive that they could only give them to the best of the best Spartan IV’s.

Page 45 of Ghosts of Onyx, and I quote 'Captain Rich's brows shot up. "I've never seen these figures before... MJOLNIR suit construction, maintenance staff, and recent upgrades to their microfusion plants. Christ! You could build a new battle group for what Halsey is spending."' I'm sure SOMETHING can be extrapolated from that. I think it'd be easier to attempt to find what is in a battle group, break down the potential price for each ship, find the rough cost of a nuclear plant upgrade, the average spending on a military maintenance crew, figure out how many Spartans were active at the time Captain Rich was saying that, and MAYBE come close to an estimate and compare the estimate from this video and compare it to the estimate from what I just said, giving a possible range. Maybe going as far as looking at the average global inflation the the last hundred years and figuring out a possible inflation rate for the next 500 years, conservatively.

7:00 that has got to be the coolest injection molder I have ever seen Step one: dissolved titanium inside water Step two: boil out water, forge titanium *mostly* together Step three: heat up titanium via laser to solidify it, likely keeping it inside “kiln” for a few days to veery slowly cool off Step four: sound reverberating through the foggy air at the end of the process rips off slag.

"You know how expensive this gear is son?" Chief: nope, but im worth every credit

On top of all that there was also no mention of the energy shielding, something that even to the unsc is a relatively new technology. That can't be cheap either, would guess it would be another category in the unknown price

Fun video! I think there's a different way to approach this question which can, generally, point in the direction of an accurate estimate. Rather than breaking down the components of the armor (or whatever futuristic weapons system), their engineered and materials cost, additive value, etc, instead refer to project costs in terms of capability and use case. I.E. you should evaluate these costs the way the real defense industry and procuring governments do. What's a weapons system package that we today, regularly employ at our frontline, in which an individual soldier is tasked with the operation of a highly-iterated upon, cutting edge piece of hardware that costs exorbitant amounts of money? Fighter aircraft. The training alone of a modern US fighter pilot costs the Department of Defense millions before she or he even sits in the cockpit of a deployed asset. The fighter itself has a cost that is leveraged against a production run of the unit, estimated service life, maintenance costs, and how that cost will decline as the program is stood up. A common phenomenon of this is that the initially produced units will have a wildly higher on-paper cost than the final units, and the longer the service life of the unit (generally speaking) the more this nominal costs (vs the program itself) will drop. This is why a fighter like the F-35 Lightning II has such a high initial unit cost that declines as not only the procurement and upgrade program matures, but as more units are added for the same amount of research and development costs spun out at the start of the project. A convenient way to think of this is, we don't make the decision of what we'll eat based on the individual unit cost of a grain of rice or a single noodle in the bowl, we evaluate the value of the meal itself. Knowing this you can start to develop ideas about "how much, percentage wise, of its economy does the UNSC dedicate to defense spending? What does their economy look like?" You can start to make educated inferences there rather than try to divine the cost of technologies which don't exist yet. Compare like for like, rather than unlike to unlike.

For the printing, I'd say that we could make a ceramic slurry that could be painted on in layers around a plastic 3d print of the desired armor component before having the plastic melt and flow out of the newly fired mold. With this now in place, assuming it's able to remain solid above the melting point of the desired casting material, such as the titanian our dear Irish narrator/researcher here. Once the cast is done, all that's needed is to chip and flake away the mold and trim and file off the sprues, slag, and residue from the mold material that formed in the holes that the casting material was poured into and where the metal and ceramic met during the casting.

I wonder how much marine and odst armor would cost respectively

Great Channel, keep up the good work!!!!

This kind of thing is why I find it incredibly difficult to believe Spartans have anywhere near the amount of customization we are led to believe they have in their base armor. The premise I would think would be that a Spartan has some input at the start of their armor's creation, but they would not be issued new helmets, new shoulders etc. unless it was deemed necessary at that time. Either based on mission requirements, or damaged components needing replacement. And I find it hard to believe so many variations would exist in the first place. Reach was already starting to stretch my believability a bit. But at least the customizations in that game were still parts that could be placed on top of the base suit, as opposed to the suit itself. In H4, the customizations would replace large parts of the entire suit itself. It's hard to call the Wetwork set even Mjolnir, because aside from the undersuit none of it *was* Mjolnir. It introduced dozens of entirely customized entire suits, instead of just parts. And I always felt that jumped of the shark. Infinite thankfully toned it down again, not in terms of parts but in terms of actual sets of armor. We have 4 canon cores, and 2 canon kits that effectively act as their own core as well. But most of them are just updates on previous armor designs *which makes sense* and all of them aside from arguably Rakshasa are actual Mjolnir armor. We can just put stuff on top of it, like H3 and Reach. In terms of scaling the price of Mjolnir. It's been said that it is the second-most expensive piece of technology in human history, behind the slipspace drive. So the development of Mjolnir armor stands somewhere between the cost of building a Slipspace-capable ship, and whatever the third most expensive thing that exists in the Halo universe is. The idea that they could make a few hundred? Yeah I can get behind that. The idea that they can make thousands, or tens of thousands? The UNSC might consider that a worthwhile investment, after all they have developed thousands of ships. But when you take the personalization of that armor into account it starts to be a stretch. Only a small handful of variations of human slipspace-capable ships exist in the Halo universe *because* of how expensive and advanced the technology is. So as I said before, there would definitely be *some* level of customization available, but I think Infinite's little parts here and there on top makes a lot more sense than 4/5's full suits of custom armor components.

I don't know, but it should be obtainable through gameplay and not just the in-game store!

Yay it’s a good day when you upload

In the books credits are the official currency. And credits also appeared in Reach as the current cy!

How is it that humans in Halo has all the technology to make MJOLNIR Armor in the way you described here, but they still use 7.62?

We actually have examples of metal presses in modern manufacturing. They're *MASSIVE* machines that apply so much pressure to metals that they are formed into the shape of the dye; this is how most high end aircraft parts, and really anything with ridiculously high tolerance requirements, are made. Needless to say, these machines are ludicrously expensive to build, and wouldn't really get to a point of being cheap with Halo's technology. I'd assume, the ones we see, cost in the ballpark of hundreds of millions, or even billions, given their complexity. (In USD)

The metal work in space is forging not casting and is accomplished by heating up metal (not melting) and pressing it into shape with a mold which results in a much stronger and less brittle product because metal loses its best qualities when melted into a molten state and is very common in high end engine components.

I wonder if the ghost prototype suit would be more feasible to build a real world analog because of its size minus the flying bit cause ion thrusters just aren't there yet

It’s definitely mentioned in the Fall of Reach that a suit costs as much as one battleship or another. So not sure what that would equate to in a currency we would understand but definitely billions. I do forget exact details though whether this was including an AI and whatnot.

Honestly, based off of everything you’ve said, the Halo lore wanting 300 Spartans but could only get half of the funding for (or so). And the UNSC is something of the equivalent to the UN. Based off of US currency, if those four items were actually somehow real. I’d say they would be astronomically more expensive than the 125m price tag you put. In todays money, I would give a hard guess of one spartan would cost the equivalent of 1-5 trillion dollars a suite. Whatever that would be in credits, 500 years from now. Obviously today, the entire world is only worth maybe up to 100 trillion dollars (give or take). BUT, 500 years from now… hundreds of planets, population at maybe like 50-200 billion humans; obviously the economy will be leagues bigger than today. But even 500 years from now, an economy that huge, whatever the equivalent of 1-5 trillion is; that’s still a fuck ton of money for a few dozen soldiers. That’s my guess lol…

Based on what you say in this video, and since in lore I’m pretty sure I remember it being said that each suit is worth about as much as a UNSC destroyer I would put anything in the realm of the billions to tens of billions of dollars as being reasonable Not to mention that until recently in lore the Spartan program was extremely top-secret, so materials can only be acquired from specialty contractors, and there’s extra overhead on shipping and assembly, just from the sheer nature of it being a secret project Each unit of mjolnir is essentially the equivalent of a United States aircraft carrier, in terms of value to the UNSC, and I’d imagine the price tag would reflect that

Hey Installation 00, long time fan here. I just read some science news that makes me happy, I think you’ll like this one! Another piece of the incredibly detailed science fiction Eric Nylund and Joe Staten came up with has been tested IRL. In both Fall of Reach/The Flood/First Strike and Contact Harvest, we learn that long range space comms are hard lol duh and the medium/short range comms system in use by both the UNSC and the Covenant is a laser/maser system. Beaming info on light. This was a natural progression from the (at the time) state of the art tech of fiber optics. It’s a somewhat obvious theory considering light is basically the limit for travel speeds for anything, so to move information at close to the speed of light is dope. But anyways NASA’s Psyche mission has beamed information on a laser for the first time and that is some like straight up Halo shit and I’m happy

THE INTRO LOOOL so good 00

So hyped you took the X thread and made it into a video!

Amourphous metal has amazing properties which would be ideal and cooled extremely quickly with liquid nitrogen immediately after casting and may be the reason it is not glowing after being pressed

For metals cost, if energy is cheap and humans are spacefaring it would be exponentially cheaper as the asteroid belts are full of good ore. Having the vacuum of space and fision means refining ore is cheap. SLS is not as strong as forging as the orientation of the crystal are random. Forging and forming (if done right) causes optimal orientation. The video is showing cold forming and forging. We currently "3d weave" carbon fiber using 6axis cnc robotic arms. Lockhead has been playing with an exo skeleton for the past 20 years. Its used as an anti fatigue measure for carrying heavy items.

"Tell that to the Covenant" 🤣

Great video thanks

In traditional manufacturing waste material is almost never "thrown away" like you said in fact most machines are designed to capture as much of the shavings as possible so they can be recycled and melted down and reused again. Especially titanium because you have to keep the workspace around titanium clean of crap anyway might as well just recycle it while you're cleaning it up

Thare is another take here that could be used for a rough estimate of the cost for a fully functional suit. The price has been compared to a warship, so use the cost of a modern navy destroyer, assume a 1:1 currency conversion, factor in 500 years of inflation, and you should have a ballpark estimate.

recently i learnt about secondary waves which are basically waves that change the shape of rocks and metals in the scene where the Mjolnir plates are being crafted the edges are more refined by an unknown source a possibility could be that artificial secondary waves are used to perfect the shape of the hard titanium used for Mjolnir Armour.

I think if you extrapolated the cost of a UNSC destroyer from a US Navy Aircraft Carrier you may be able to back out the Mark IV cost and then lump those unknown costs together. For Gen 3 though, I think they are more cost effective due to economies of scale as those individual dies would be used multiple times as noted in Rubicon protocol that Gen 3 armor is routinely replenished so it would stand to reason that there is a stock of replacement parts for each spartan. Great video!

Quick and to the point. Zero fat on that intro.

Wow! This really put things into perspective regarding the price of these "mobile suits", essentially. They're basically expensive azz precursors to full-on Mecha suits!

I remember in the book the armor cost being the cost of a UNSC ship. Could you do a UNSC Ship cost breakdown?

9:58 expect a really loud chirp if your wearing earbuds turn your volume down

I dont know enough about crochet to be completely sure about this but that was definitely the first thing I thought about when you were talking about the bodysuit. The 3-dimensional part. We currently can't create a machine that can crochet. It is a silly thought but little old grannies crocheting sweaters for the spartans. ^^

I love halo MasterChef never removes his helmet because its a sign of fear

When I was a mechanical engineer I specialized in additive manufacturing so I got to work with a good amount of these metal '3d printers'. I wouldn't say they have negligible waste, but it is much less than traditional machining. For a typical laser powder bed fusion machine the waste comes from not just the support material (which is often machined off) but also the degradation of the recycled powder. The un-sintered powder gets vacuumed into a reclamation system. However due to its exposure to oxygen and/or proximity to the laser it stops performing the same and must be discarded at regular intervals. This powder is also expensive as hell and a hazard to work around. There is also typically a post-production process involving heat treatments, chemical treatments and possibly more machining. These machines can be as cheap as $100k (but aren't laser powder bed fusion in those cases) or as much as millions of dollars. Some of these machines are so large they have a staircase to walk up to the build chamber, even for a bed size of 2' x 2'. They often need to be assembled in an isolated room with specialized venting and utilities. Not every type of metal can be printed either. Sometimes it's the melting point of the material. Other times it's the reflectivity of the material, because it reflects the laser energy instead of absorbing it. It can even be due to how the material changes when heated and cooled, preventing a solid structure from creating at the required tolerances. All of this can be improved in the future though - 500 years is a long time. Just thought i'd add this interesting background information.

From 22 minutes i probably understood 5 minutes of talk yet i was 100% entertained.

@Installation00 it's in the fall of reach books, the suit of armor costs about the same as a destroyer each. From what I can understand this includes the research, cloaning, the building of the suits, and the cybernetics and so on. The books also suggest the armor about as durable as the scorpion tank armor when they're getting ready to eject in shuttle in the middle of a jump stream to sneak into a covenant fleet. Then there's the gold wires installed in the heads of the soldiers. Not that expensive but the hookup to their liquid ceramic ballistic weave undersuit. We already have experemental versions, and theyre cheap materials, but expensive to run it. With current technology its not feasible but yeah, about half to three quarters of a billion dollars each. Now for current tech, We have titanium poly ceramic nitrogen foam that does nearly all of the thibgs you want the armor to make. Super expensive now cause we dont have it ready for production. The hud systems are all aready a thing, the thermal systems, titanium ballistic weave is becoming a thing, graphine fiber also a thing that would likely drastically reduce the weight and keep the durablity cause we didnt have the tech at the time. Using computer aided systems to augment the users movements is also currently a thing abd it can be found in naval canons and anti-shake spoons. Ill have to look for it, but we're like 40-60% there for a full on Spartan 0.5 system the only current problem is micro power, and we had backpack fusion generators being tested in 2019.

Love to see your suit build

Mjolnir Armor will ALWAYS be cheaper than letting those Covenant bastards win...

I think you could make an analogy to the price of fusion energy technology compared to today with the price of a compact high capacity battery of today compared to consumer-available batteries of decades ago. They say the military has access to equipment analogous to consumer technology decades in the future. So for example a high grade consumer battery today would be worth several times as much 30-50 years ago. So imagine in Halo there are consumer-grade fusion reactors but they may be the size of gasoline generators of today, with Mjolnir fusion reactors representing what consumers may have available to them in another 30-50 years.

I've heard that a single Spartan armor is more expensive than a UNSC spaceship, which is wild to me. Like how in the heck is a massive fully functional spaceship more affordable compared to basic Spartan armor? Granted I don't know just how good Spartan armor is in lore but going by the games then I don't see where the heck the money is going into because it sure as heck isn't going into making it waterproof.

I read somewhere that “a single suit of mjolnir costs as much as a small starship”

Your content is always good ❤😊

As an aside, this has been bothering me a lot. Of course I refer to the seemingly decades age difference of characters between games. Johnson goes from looking 45 in CE, then maybe 38 in 2 only to look 60 in 3. Then Miranda looks like she's 20 in 2, then looking like shes 45 in 3. you'd think they would have at least tried to have some internal consistency.

It is said in the lore somewhere that a single suit costs more than a ship. I don't remember if a particular class of ship is specified but I think we can safely assume that, a minimum, Chief's suit costs more than The Pillar of Autumn.

Somewhere between the cost of a Longsword and In Amber Clad for Spartan I-III programs, with the Spartan-III's Mjolnir on the lower end as they were more numerous and rushed. Though with the Spartan IV's it's probably come down to between a Scorpion MBT and a Hornet as they are mass-produced and cheaper after decades of refinement in production methods.

It's easy to spot that manufacturing MJOLNIR is a cool multi-trillion dollar (credit) enterprise. The UNSC/ONI does not need an economic "return on investment" for the suits and their upkeep. However, the projected costs of a second SPARTAN II class would've cratered the UNSC/ONI budget as the war escalated, thus no second class is created. It's also possible ONI didnt give Halsey more Spartans because she pissed someone off, or the creation of such forces would have pressured ONI by the UEG to go public with the SPARTAN Program as it would have dived (that) many funds and resources away from other war efforts. A trade off between secrecy and scaled growth. The sustainment & upkeep of armor systems for 100+ Spartan IIs was not economically possible during the Human-Covenant war. Resources and funding that would have caused MORE planets to burn or lest, unsuccessful mass evacuations and defense of human life from inevitably doomed worlds. It might all be ONI tinfoil hat facts at the end of the day. The UNSC, and the UEG economics of space manufacturing, can very much adhere to a "diminishing return" model of recouping resources and the refinement of the best materials for each and every thing in military application, and dumping the waste material during refinement, only allowing the BEST yields of resources be used at the manufacturing level. This is where the "costs as much as a fleet of ships" quote can be easily based off of. The sentence structure can apply to both the individual cost per suit, and or the overall technological enterprise. It is (and not) the "per unit" price of a suit (as no things consider yet the logistics of parts and software package upgrades) but the cost of upstarting the entire logistics chain of MJOLNIR and its manufacturing/ testing and sustained use. I think the molecular manufacturing of the suit itself is 1:1 with the costs of the micro-fusion reactor. The nanomolecular weaving of materials in a microgravity environment WHILE enabling a liquid crystal matrix to reactively move the suit, and keep ALL The systems inside structurally supported, functioning, bullet proof, CBRN, microgravity, extreme high heat grazing hits from plasma, with the body wearer, would be a wildly expensive process even for 26th century standards. More intricate systems not discussed would be such as the nanotechnology (plumbing of internal fluids), water, biofoam, waste management, hydrostatic gel, all very much are capillaries to the "second skin" philosophy. The armchair UEG economist in me says this can easily top $220 billion (credit equivalent?) per qualified initial suit and armor plating, nuclear reactor unit, etc. (And the spare parts for ALL those components, which there is very high probability, Spartan-II/III MJOLNIR suits may as well be Space Shuttles. If time-duration between missions allowed- the ENTIRE suits components that saw high cycle usage or near breakpoint failure from a single mission, would get swapped out- full stop. Spartans tasked to fleets or ONI task groups had their own logistics train in tow. Each suit basically new before each major campaign, resources pending. As SPARTANs were anticipated (expected) to basically save or destroy whole worlds and the inhabitants on them at any given notice. Undersuit maintenance notwithstanding (likely required a dedicated space stations worth of volume of facilities to replace nanomolecular level structures and recrystallization) The (per unit) price of the suit is proportional to the equivalent parts replacement and or pace of upgrades for each Spartan-II (and Spartan III using MJOLNIR) and their needs. This is to keep the argument within the 2525-2552 period of economics while humanity gets driven to extinction by the Covenant. In conclusion, it's definitely above 8 credits.

I wonder, have you done a deep dive on the calibers of various Halo ship weapons? I know you have a MAC video, but I was moreso wondering what caliber the dual multipurpose cannons that can be found on the pillar of autumn for example are.

Little late to the convo, but never mind the cost of developing said power armor. Knowing the development cycle of current military tech, id imagine the development cost in the hundreds of billions.

I’d also like to point out that the unsc makes significant use of the Astriod field called the ort cloud

No mention of the shield? Amazing video btw man :)

I found this video a lot more interesting than I thought I would! Space manufacturing and trying gain advantages from zero-G casting is something I am a bit passionate about and the armor creation doesn't seem correct from a material science perspective. That is filling a die with near-molten material means the die would have to be hot or else the metal would start to nucleate and freeze at the die interface, which doesn't benefit the process at all and really just makes a headache being in zero G. IF the metal was undercooled (cooled below the freezing temperature but unable to solidify because of a lack of nucleation sites) THEN the metal could be precisely and repeatable solidified at a calculated rate (ranging from seconds to *enter seemingly crazy small amount of time* to solidify fully), giving known grain sizes, properties, and microstructure. Add in the free vacuum and you have an incredibly defect free process with a microstructure on the level of gen 6 turbine blades (we are developing gen 5 right now). A more realistic vision would be to have a neutral, defect free, gas at low atmosphere and use complex sound waves (AI to the rescue) to manipulate the metal into shape, then cool it off until it gets to the desired temperature and then introduce a seed crystal created prior to encourage the proper structure creation directionally (forces defects to the end). Lots of unknowns and what-ifs, but that is what I see as the future of advanced materials manufacturing. Additive is great, but I generally see its strength is that is will work the same no matter what. It can make the same shape just about anywhere so long as the powder is pure and it is in position. It has its own strengths that casting cannot do, like complex internal channels, but it doesn't leverage anything about space except perhaps the free vacuum but that also means the equipment would have to have beefed up cooling or run slower. Funny enough some additive manufacturers throw out extra powder post manufacturing (increases costs) and others recondition/recertify/sell it/whatever. _____ It is fun how the phase-change piezoelectric metal would move the suit. That alone would be rather complex to make work, since it would be like making a skin that crystalizes into scar tissue to pull an arm into position and then relaxes back into skin to let it down. Its forces would be spread out over the radius of the limb and not internal like a tendon PLUS there would be a volume change and crystal damage to account for. Failure to properly manipulate the articulating skin at any point could easily twist a limb wrong or cause muscle tears (which I think I remember something about this in a book). Seems like an alternate way to move things besides polymer muscles like Battletech, but theoretically also possible. On Nuclear Fusion: I've seen a nuclear fission reactor about the size of 1.25 the size of large wheeled luggage (interesting unit of measure, I know). Doesn't seem outside the realm of possibility to get a fusion reactor smaller with a lot of time, but the big rub would be converting the thermal energy to electrical and not generating too much waste heat. Maybe using a thermo-electric effect of some sort and advanced active cooling system? Not really knowledgeable on this, but I do know high quality crystals and space go hand-in-hand. The 3-d woven body glove reminds me of mathematical expressions visualized. They weave within themselves for many turns before eventually completing a single circuit. Once again AI would greatly reduce the time needed to find a solution. Not sure if zero-g would help with this one, but present techniques would be hard-pressed to manage manufacture without getting dangerously bloated with space and complexity. I could talk about this for many more paragraphs, but I will stop. Really interesting how plausible certain aspects of Spartan armor is with just a bit higher technology level and/or a boost in space manufacturing experience/capability.

Also, the fusion packs are cheap enough to have marines be equipped with larger, yet less powerful versions, but till fusion packs nonetheless

11:52 - 16:03 can you do a short or a video explaining a bit of what this is? I tried to look it up, but it’s kind of hard to understand what I am looking at And us having downloaded/encoded done anything like that sounds really cool

Nobody do it like you bro 💯🙌

The micro nuclear plant would in all likelihood not be the most expensive thing in the suit simply due to the small size of it.

I think to really estimate the cost you got to look at government contracts. In Halo they took the jackal shield and eventually made the energy shield. It took years of research effort to at first make very few shields. So the cost of each shield would be out of a large pool of expenses making them astronomically high in cost. Like dividing a billion dollars in research over maybe 8 shields in the field.

I think i heard once that these suits cost more than a frigate. I could be butchering that and maybe not that big but someone somewhere once said that they are around that field in cost. Again could be frigate could be pelican i don’t remember.

Halo 2A has some of the best looking cutscenes ever. I zoned out for the first few minutes on the visuals

I had read somewhere that the cost of 1 suit of armor cost as much as a UNSC Frigate!

We haven’t actually even had a break even fusion reaction tho. If I recall, that publicized fusion reaction, while producing a decent amount of energy, didn’t produce as much as the energy used by the lasers required. Btw, what about armor with batteries? Also, why don’t Spartans or odsts, even just marines get sheilds of some sort. I feel like it would be cheaper and more protective like how the jackals are honestly pretty tanky if they couldn’t have their hands shot.

I believe in one of the books it is mentioned that a suit of mjolnir costs as much as a destroyer. Assuming that the costs of destroyers for the UNSC are relatively similar to the costs of them today that would be 1 billion credits per suit.

If 1 credit is equal to 1 cent, wouldn’t the final price for the museum piece armor be around 12.5 billion credits instead of 125 million since the modern cost would be equal to 125 million dollars?

This is actually a rather simple question. The cost of a molijnir suit is revealed to us when admiral cole says "one spartan 2 costs as much as a battle group" as in a battle group of ships. We also know from halsey that the majoirty of the cost was in the development of the suits and cortana. An exact analogy for a battlegroup is a carrier strike force. Which can vary widely on the ships present however you're looking at approx 50b. The US and maybe russia and china would be able to field spartans in this regard.

“Tell that to the banished”

I'll take a crack at it. 00 ❤

The price of the NASA suits is not just the manufacture costs, but also the full cost of all R&D included in the project divided by the very low number of units.

the metals themselves would be kinda expensive but i'd assume the nano technology, cybernetic systems and gel layer would be where the truly grevious expenses would be incurred. I haven't finished the video yet but I like to comment early and then test my original thesis against the information given in the video. cheers.

They do have reactors in shipping containers that can be moved to support natural disasters pretty easily, so not bad compared to what they had back in the day