Canadian man beats entire US Military industrial complex!

From bears to bullets

suit

John Rennison, the Hamilton SpectatorHamilton-born Troy Hurtubise has developed a feature-filled suit of armour out of high-impact plastic, ceramic bullet protection and ballistic foam.

Inventor hopes to sell armour suit to the military

By Wade Hemsworth
The Hamilton Spectator
(Jan 11, 2007)The grizzly man is back, and this time he’s ready to take on bullets and bombs.

Troy Hurtubise, the Hamilton-born inventor who became famous for his bulky bear-protection suit by standing in front of a moving vehicle to prove it worked, has now created a much slimmer suit that he hopes will soon be protecting Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan and U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

He has spent two years and $15,000 in the lab out back of his house in North Bay, designing and building a practical, lightweight and affordable shell to stave off bullets, explosives, knives and clubs. He calls it the Trojan and describes it as the “first ballistic, full exoskeleton body suit of armour.”

Using the hard-learned lessons of his Project Grizzly experience — a 20-year odyssey that included a National Film Board documentary, an appearance on CNN and personal bankruptcy — he’s ready to start selling his newest idea.

Already, he says, the suit has stood up to bullets from high-powered weapons, including an elephant gun. The suit was empty during the ballistics tests, but he’s more than ready to put it on and face live fire.

“I would do it in an instant,” he said. “Bring it on.”

Yesterday, he returned to Hamilton to show off the suit, hoping to generate some publicity that will get him the meetings he wants with military and police outfitters.

On Saturday, he plans to wear it to Nathan Phillips Square in downtown Toronto and wait for the reporters. It shouldn’t take long to create a stir.

Hurtubise, 43, wore his suit — helmet and all — on the four-hour drive down south, partly as a way of making sure it would be comfortable enough in the field. Even sitting on his armoured butt cheeks, he said he was fine.

As he drove his black pickup in his black getup, other drivers gawked and honked. Just south of Huntsville, he was delighted to be pulled over and gave an apprehensive OPP officer a close-up look at the suit.

Once he established that he could see just fine in his helmet and that the guns attached to his magnetic holsters were just props, Hurtubise was free to continue his trip.

The whole suit — which draws design inspiration from Star Wars, RoboCop, Batman and video games — is made from high-impact plastic lined with ceramic bullet protection over ballistic foam.

Its many features include compartments for emergency morphine and salt, a knife and emergency light. Built into the forearms are a small recording device, a pepper-spray gun and a detachable transponder that can be swallowed in case of trouble.

Dangling between the legs, that would be a clock.

In the helmet, there’s a solar-powered fresh-air system and a drinking tube attached to a canteen in the small of the back. A laser pointer mounted in the middle of the forehead is ready to point to snipers, while LED lights frame the face.

The whole suit comes in at 18 kilograms. It covers everything but the fingertips and the major joints, and could be mass-produced for about $2,000, Hurtubise says.

He said he hopes to earn enough of a living from the suit so he can keep on inventing, but the real reason he did this, he says, is “for the boys.”

Wow. I WANT ONE!!

No this guy seems like a nut, but he’s done some very awesome (if nutty) things in the past. Perhaps he’s most famous for his grizzly bear armor, which could theoretically withstand any kind of pounding or attack a Grizzly bear could muster. To demonstrate it’s durability he gets beaten with wooden bats, falls off a cliff, gets hit with a log, gets struck by a car, forced against a brick wall and so on without any injury. You can look at his video here on youtube.

Mark

San Diego classified ads

Dirty underwear no longer to be an issue?

This is an interesting development in the clothing front…

Self-cleaning fabrics could revolutionize the sport apparel industry. The technology, created by scientists working for the U.S. Air Force, has already been used to create t-shirts and underwear that can be worn hygenically for weeks without washing.

The new technology attaches nanoparticles to clothing fibers using microwaves. Then, chemicals that can repel water, oil and bacteria are directly bound to the nanoparticles. These two elements combine to create a protective coating on the fibers of the material.

This coating both kills bacteria, and forces liquids to bead and run off.

The U.S. military spent more than $20 million to develop the fabric, deriving from research originally intended to protect soldiers from biological weapons.

Jeff Owens, one of the scientists who worked to develop the process, said, “During Desert Storm, most casualties were from bacterial infections—not accidents or friendly fire. We treated underwear for soldiers who tested them for several weeks and found they remained hygienic. They also helped clear up some skin complaints.”

Science fiction writer Neal Stephenson wrote specifically about nanotech fabrics that stayed clean; he referred to “fabricules” in his 1995 novel The Diamond Age:

…with a quick brush, John and Gwendolyn were able to transfer most of the dirt onto their white gloves. From there it went straight into the air. Most gentlemen’s and ladies’ gloves nowadays were constructed of infinitesimal fabricules that knew how to eject dirt…
(Read more about fabricules)

British news organizations pointed out that an earlier reference to the general idea of clothes that never got dirty can be found in the 1951 film “The Man in the White Suit.” Sci-fi fans can console themselves with the fact that the lead role was played by Alec Guiness, who of course played Obiwan Kenobi in the original Star Wars films.

Now I know a lot of people back in high school that could have really benefitted from this… I mean there were some jocks with some rather stinky clothes, and the people who had gym class earlier also tended to smell unpleasantly. This would be a major victory for high schools everywhere as human body odor no longer clings to our clothes…

Wow, I bet even the french would stink less…

This, combined with the spray on clothes could make for very interesting clothing possibilities in the future.

Mark

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