I can’t wait for Iron Man 2 movie to come out. Hopefully, Don Cheadle playing War Machine and Mickey Rourke “The Wrestler” playing Whiplash will be a great addition to the Iron Man cast. Do you know if this is going to involve any of the Avengers’ cast? That movie is suppose to come out soon.

1 & 2: Iron Man flies not as an airplane, but as a missile, therefore the repulsors on his hands acts as those side boosters (check satellites, space stations, small rockets on the side to regulate horizontal movements). The fins that occasionally pops up help gives him some aerodynamic stability, but he mainly flies like a rocket.

3&5: In the building of the tin can, you can see a lot of pistons helping him move the arms, legs and other joints. The suit weights a lot, so you will need hydraulic powers to help you over come the extra weight to move. I would guess that he improved on those a lot, and so the later suit generated so much power, Tony can simply move his arm and the suit’s hydraulics will compensate enough for him to lift a car with no extra effort. An example of hydraulics is to look at something such as construction equipments, such as bulldozers, they can lift a massive amount of dirt on their shovels by hydraulics.

4: All forms of reactors, or power source operates on a chemical reaction, even the sun. So by that 50 min time limit he probably meant that the energy required by the suit is so great that after 50 mins, the chemical reaction inside the reactor will be completely drained and the reactor will be done. Its kind of like driving, if you have a small tank of gas powering a large car, you will run out of gas very soon. But the later reactors- though smaller, can provide 100x more power.

6: That I am not sure, probably some advance materials we don’t know about… or it could be his weak spot… and that no one has tried to shoot it yet!

7: Well base on its name, the repulsor, I would expect it to operate base on repulsing particles away from the source… basically what everything does- turbine pushes air, jet pushes air faster etc. I think repulsor some how pushes light particles. There is a space project much similar to Star Wars where people are experimenting using large solar sails to gather sunlight, and the massive amount of light hitting the sails can move the space ship. I think repulsor is similar to that but very miniturized into a orb.

8: Yes, the jericho missile’s propulsion system was what inspired Tony to make his suit fly, and he called it repulsor technology.

9. Heat seeking missiles seek heat, and some missile tracks your radar signature. Flares are like fireworks, they burn very bright and very hot for a short amount of time, the heat will generally be hotter than your engine/propulsion source, so the missile gets trick to follow that instead. Some times flares, due to their crackling or burns, will distort radar signals, but I am not sure of why.

10. Yes I think so, Jarvis does all the work, while Tony just comes up with the idea. I am sure he has a manufacturing facilities under his house.

11. The reactor’s original purpose was to generate electricity, which in turns powers an electro-magnet that pulls the metal shrapnel piece so it wont go into his heart anymore. Electro magnets can be found in like naval yard, or junk yard where you see crane moves over a metal crate or car, and once the electricity turns on, the metal becomes a magnet, and then once the power is turned off, it drops whatever its holding and becomes a metal hunk again.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/x254q545051l2r1p/

And I think Jarvis was trying to take off the suit off Tony when Pepper walked in.

To further answer your questions:

1. I dont think his repulsor killed those guys, but probably knocked them out and whatever they hit probably killed them. It is just like getting hit by a huge gust of wind at once, probably hurts a lot but whatever you end up flying into is going to do the physical damage to ya.

2. I think from an educated guess, the 2nd arc reactor was superior to the large one running the plant. The large one is the first one ever built, and Tony manage to build a miniature one with scrap, so I am sure with the added experience he was able to make an even better one with all the goodies back in his lab. Plus the engineers had the original design he made in the cave and couldnt even replicate it with the larger original, so thats why I think the one Stane stole from Tony is a superior version.

3. Maybe, as a different composite alloy might contain property that does not alloy ice to form as easily (no idea as gold titanium doesnt exist) as I vaguely remember that in the movie, the icing probably was the electronic component was icing over thus turning off the suit. He probably found some type of shielding that keeps the thermal difference within the suit so the electronics kept on working.

4. Yep he needs oxygen and you’re totally right. Or he might be able to process air from outside and store it in his suit to have a large supply of air.