There's tons of science in the StarCraft universe, both from the original games and in Starcraft 2, that I can't wait to talk about, but I thought a good place to start would be the StarCraft 2 teaser cinematic, which shows a Space Marine being outfitted in his armored suit. (If you haven't seen the video, follow link 1 provided at the bottom of this article.)
You've gotta love the space marines. They're the first armed boots on the ground when you start a game, they're in the thick of even the most epic battles, and they're the last resort when your base is crumbling around you. So it's great to learn more about how they work!
This video actually tells us a lot about the technology involved in building a marine, and about the level of Terran technology overall. Marines are about as basic as it comes for terran units, but there's some pretty high-tech stuff going on here, so we can only imagine what goes into, say, a battle cruiser!
Let's jump right in and start dissecting this video to see what we can learn.
The opening shot shows the lights coming on and flickering. That tells us that even though we're in the future, it's not so high-tech that they don't use recognizable technology like a good old fashioned fluorescent light bulb. But it's clearly futuristic. This is a room brimming with technology and a lot of the suspense of the early part of the video is in wondering what it is all for.
Next, we see a ridiculously thick set of blast doors. Are they so thick to keep something in this room or to keep something out? Do the marines have a power source in their suit that could explode or something? Or maybe these doors are how a barracks can keep churning out units even as a swarm of zerglings are tearing down the walls. Or maybe they're just cool.
We finally meet our marine, and I was interested to see that he's a convict. And also: this dude has some muscles! Superhuman, grotesquely huge muscles! If you look really closely when the computer screen shows his information, there's a line at the lower right that says "Genetic Alteration", so that might be part of it. But, the whole "shoulders larger than the head" thing is also sort of the Blizzard style so we'll bypass that and get to the suit.
The machinery that emerges from the walls of the chamber is undeniably awesome, but it's also quite realistic! Don't believe me? Just take a look at a modern assembly line, with dozens of specialized robots that work together to construct the cars. They actually look strikingly similar to the robots shown in the video.
The idea of an armored suit is also not nearly as science fictional as you might think! Various robotic suits are being developed by the military and robotics researchers, though nothing quite equivalent to the marine power armor exists. Most of the suits in development are intended to allow the user to lift heavier loads and are not armored or pressurized, but it's only a matter of time before we see those. Still, the amplified strength provided by exoskeleton suits that already exist will be extremely useful on the battlefield, in construction work, and for the disabled.
If you look closely during the video, you can see that there is actually hardware embedded in the marine's flesh. None of the current powered suits are quite so intimately merged with their wearer. Some, such as the Hybrid Assistive Limb do measure electrical nerve impulses via a patch on the skin, which actually seems like a more elegant solution than having to rely on implanted hardware.
The last thing I'll mention about the marine's suit is the power source. In the video, there's a shot of a cylinder of some sort being locked into place, and a few seconds later we see two vents on the top of the suit flare up like miniature jet engines. I'm guessing the cylinder is meant to be some sort of power source for the suit. If the jet engines are supposed to be heat vents for the power source, then I would guess it is either fusion or fission-based. That's the only way I could imagine justifying wasting so much heat (and therefore energy). If that's true, then of all the cool stuff shown on the video, the suit's power source is the most advanced in terms of technology.
The smallest modern fission power plants are still about the size of a small shed, and fusion plants still can't make enough power to break even, let alone be miniaturized to fit into a backpack-sized unit.
There's a lot more to be said about the marines: how do their Gauss rifles work? What's in their stim-packs? What does the U238 upgrade in the original Starcraft really do? But that will have to wait for a future post.
Ryan Anderson is a PhD candidate at Cornell University. For his day job, he shoot rocks with lasers and looks for places to land on Mars. He started writing about the science of Starcraft because it combines three of his favorite things: gaming, science, and writing.
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