Skies Over Tomorrow: Constellation Read Free Page B

not with the soldier, or the drug, but with the practice of concealment. The current methods that made a soldier “invisible” failed to meet the Army’s expectations. If the Predator program were to be a success, then it needed a technology that would make a soldier virtually unseen. The Army spent billions of dollars issuing bids, sponsoring research, and subsidizing institutes, just to possess their dream of invisibility. Unbeknownst to the Army, part of their dream came about with Japan’s technological advancements for NASA’s International Colonization of Mars project.
    In 2004, Japan’s Honda Corporation introduced the Powered Insecta Suit to replace dated spacesuits. Though it could not make a soldier invisible, the Army realized the powersuit was what it was looking for, and as far as it was concerned, could make it into what it envisioned. Thus the Army sought to develop armed applications of the powersuit for its Predator program. Initially, the United States purchased three at ten billion dollars each. They transported the powersuits to Area 51, where researchers dissected them to tinker with and tool over. What was discovered surprised many in the military’s upper echelon, including the president.
    Japan manufactured biomechanisms remnant of armor worn by knights during medieval times; however, the streamlined appearance of the twenty-first century protection reflected the sleek design of exoskeletons from the insect kingdom. At some areas, like the thorax, the shell’s maximum thickness of ten centimeters—in which six and a quarter centimeters consisted of titanium plating and underlining—proved to be equally as durable as the reactive armor of a M1A1 Abram. The light material composite of the armor, in addition to the biological properties it exhibited, stunned the researchers.
    The accomplishment of the powersuits’ harden exterior resulted from the combined implementation of nanotechnology and bioengineering. Studies discovered that having been created to assimilate from DNA material properties of the rhinoceros beetle, nanomites were encoded to replicate the hard, resilient nature of the species’ exoskeleton. Interestingly enough, a microscopic cross-section of a suit’s covering revealed it to be capable of regeneration due to the nanomites’ incorporation of the autotomy genome, adapted from the reptilian family of Lacertilia. With supplementary programming, the nanomites functioned more like human skin cells and formed layers that could be recognized as the epidermis, dermis, and subcutaneous layer. There was very little doubt that part of the success of the powersuits was the hundreds upon hundreds of millions of nanomites that made up their casing. It became apparent the powersuits were to be more than just spacesuits, or protective armor.
    The powersuits alone looked animated; however, they were perceived to be awkward and overall heavy to don and operate. This seeming notion was later refuted after a suit’s Lilliputian hydraulic system was found to assist it in amplifying the grace of the human body in motion. The means by which a suit’s biocomputer interfaced with a pilot made the emulation of body motion possible. In operating a powersuit, a special type of electrode, placed on the shaved head of a pilot, received motor impulses from the cerebellum of the pilot’s brain and transferred the brainwaves to the biocomputer. In nanoseconds, the bioelectrical signals were translated into streams of photonic data that pulsed across the suit’s micro fiberoptic network, to the tiny hydraulics that were its muscles. Test pilots remarked how easily and weightless the powersuits moved with them, mimicking their every action.
    The entire biocomputer network imitated the nervous system of the human body. The speed with which the biocomputer itself executed also mimed the human brain and performed tasks that far exceeded the