Stark Industries/Family in RL

Nothing else from Marvel, except maybe the occasional mention of a Soviet scientist named Vanko or an operative named the Black Widow. Possibly a rival named Stane who runs a real life tech company like Lockheed.

Howard Stark is an industrialist in WWII, starting as a relatively small contractor and moving up quickly. His company never makes an outstanding weapon or plane, but they make things that make others weapons and planes better.

Tony grows up as his father builds the company throughout the 50's and 60's, becoming a major weapons design and manufacturer as well as some minor interests in medical R&D. Howard Hughes is not a close friend, but he knows the Stark name and occasionally asks them to solve thorny engineering problems.

Tony heads a mine detection project which expands into a mine and tunnel detector, useful in Vietnam, He insists on field testing it, where he is injured and captured by the VC.


However, some differences. Namely, a minimum of SCIENCE!. Tony would have to have made dozens of breakthroughs under atrocious working conditions in order to make the Iron Man Armor featured in the comics, even the first one.

Instead, Yinsen fashions an external pacemaker for Tony after he is injured and Stark is forced to work on improving the Soviet provided tanks the VC use. The VC limit his access to diesel fuel so he won't attempt to drive the tank through their defenses. He makes the tank an electric drive as well as improving the few shells he was provided to kill the guard tanks and pillboxes (perhaps batteries as good as those made today, he'd still be a genius, but nothing like the pocket nuke of an arc reactor). Yinsen still dies buying time for the batteries to charge.

Tony escapes and has a mad on for Communism. He is forced to wear the external pacemaker for several years as he designs a better internal one and/or waits for medical technology to catch up to his needs.

In the mean time, Stark Industries begins to push the pace of technological innovation. Stark batteries make the electric car viable just as the oil embargo ramps up but resistance by oil companies at first stymies the effort. Stark meets with several other non oil industrialists and suggests that they lease the patent at a reduced rate provided they manufacture the batteries in volume.

Stark Industries is involved in the CIA's 'Hughes' Glomar Explorer project, matching the ship with an experimental diving suit. The suit, armored with a lithium/magnesium alloy, is completely self propelled and powered by Stark Batteries. It is also equipped with a liquid breathing system and an O2 scrubber. This enables the diver ( in this case Stark feeling his oats) to assist in the recovery of K129.

Unfortunately the Soviet Navy is alerted to the task of the Glomar Explorer and boards the ship 'engaging in piracy in Soviet waters'. Stark is left under water, his diving suit his only means of life support. He boldy takes matters into his own hands, first disabling the Soviet ship's engines, then clambering out of the sea using the suits articualted claws to pierce the ships hull.

The light armaments the sailors possess pose no threat to a suit designed to resist the pressures miles under water but there is a power issue as the motors are not designed to work without the bouyancy of the ocean. Stark powers the suit through his pacemaker's new beta decay battery, ripping through the electronics and steering equipment of the ship.

The Soviet Captain returns to his ship via a launch, leaving only a minimum guard over the civilians on the Explorer and is greeted by the monstrous armored form which quickly grabs him, crushing his arm and more delicately grasping his head. The remaining Soviet sailors aboard the Explorer return to their disabled ship as Tony returns to the ocean and is hoisted aboard Explorer, his batteries all but exhausted, including that of his pacemaker.

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Need some help with the placing of specific events as well as the implications of Stark batteries, specifically for the space program and military. As you can tell, no repulsors (yet) or super transistors.

I am also toying with Stark Pharmaceuticals making a breakthrough in the treatment of obsessives with drugs-possibly extending and brightening the life of Howard Hughes (who Stark was based on anyway).

As I said, no other Marvel stuff, other than a possible Soviet attempt to reverse engineer Stark tech involving a scientist named Vanko or an operative named Black Widow being assigned to steal it.

A weird but related question, woud the spy sats available in the 80's have helped the US 'win' Vietnam? If Stark Industries accelerated space tech, for example. I understand that space assets are unlikely to really solve incompetence and corruption inherent in the South Vietnam government, but would they have any effect, lengthen or shorten the war? Scare the Soviets or Chinese? That sort of thing.
 
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