I'm new to the community. As such, I'm only starting to pick up on half of the jargon you guys use. So as a little help for a new guy, and to keep things light... How would I become Superman? As in, not becoming Clark Kent, but in duplicating his powers. How would science overcome the inherent 'impossibilities'? Can it happen one day? What are some of the technologies that might be employed? In case you aren't the fanboy I am, here's a refresher on his powers: Super Strength (100+ tons) Super Speed (Subsonic over land, I believe, but he might just be holding back, so let's assume Flash level speed, nearing the speed of light, or as close as possible) Flight (Also very fast, near light, capable of withstanding vacuum of space, though he still needs air.) Invulnerability (Extremely hard to injure, bullets bounce off like striking steel, also regenerates very fast in the case of actual injury) X-Ray Vision (Can't see this being that useful, though it may be the easiest to duplicate. But what am I going to do with it, besides turn into a perv?) Heat Vision (along with super enhanced vision, hearing, and probably all his senses.) And the list goes on and on, but in the end, I think these will suit me very well...

Well a lot of these physical enhancement technologies are actually pretty old.

• You want superstrength? Just plug yourself into earthmoving machinery or cranes.
• You want to move faster than sound? The Blue Flame is waiting on the Bonneville Salt Flats and there are plenty of military jets around.
• You want godlike vision? Google Map is just a click away. You can also buy real time image feeds from SPOT and other satellites. And the military and NSA has stuff even better than this.
• You want flight? Get a hang glider or an ultralight
• "X-Ray vision" is now being installed at your local airports with THz scanners. Miniaturization may reduce these things to something portable soon.
• Bullet resistance can be achieved with Kevlar and other impact plastics. The new carbon nanotube sheets might make this stuff even lighter. Synthetic diamond manufacture just keeps getting cheaper and better all the time. Perhaps tank armor will be studded with synthetic diamond linked together with laminated nanotube sheets in a few years time.
  
• Heat vision is hard. You need a building-sized lasers to burn holes in steel at large distances. (This is one reason why nobody takes lasers seriously in SDI anymore.)

But I'm guessing you're not really interested in the fyborg approach to this stuff, safer though it is.

Athletes are already abusing steroids and other performance enhancing drugs. There is talk that gene-doping will manifest itself at the next Olympic Games. Lasik, bone lengthening (longer reach and greater leverage is always good for feats of strength) and other surgeries are old hat now.

Me, I'll stick with the fyborg stuff at least until cell repair machines are mature and all side effects can be fully reversed.

Haha, yeah, I mean having this stuff within my own power. But I wouldn't mind a set of Iron Man's armor either, probably a lot closer to happening within my lifetime anyway.

I recommend reading the Science of Superman by Mark Wolverton. It has some good ideas and some not so good ones, but mostly good.

I doubt that we'll ever be able to fly like Christopher Reeve, around the earth so fast that it will turn backwards on it's axis and time will go in reverse. Pah. I'd much rather be the Silver Surfer anyway.

In a thundering voice, echoing from the universe, Raken beckons out to you.

"Grahamwolf, I call upon thee to become my herald. Though you surely are not Norrin Radd, you shall serve me well..."

 

 

That suffice?

To me, my board! 8-)

They've done stuff with mice to give them super strength, but then they've done a lot with mice....

Something that would be very cool would be the ability to "sling webs" like spiderman. And climb walls.

Anyway as for flight, well, that would be impossible unless you severely changed your physical form, ie by shrinking so that you could have wings that could hold your weight, or by going to live on a smaller planet where the gravity was less. Alternatively you could learn to do a "Neo" and control the space around you. Bit far fetched but who knows what scientific discoveries we've yet to make.

this will prolly piss you all off, but what will happen when one day science catches up to eastern religions and actually begins to understand energy and the fact that all matter is trapped energy? 

then we will see supermen...

Ahem, need I remind everyone here about E=mc²? This is hardly news and hardly ancient Indian or Chinese metaphysics.

lol! The Power Cosmic.

Faster than a speeding bullet...

 

 

information!

 

I always imagined him with a forcefield of some type, and his flying was him learning to extend his forcefield into a type of sail that catches some unknown form of energy as opposed to air. Alas, I don't know enough about physics to justify that even a little bit, but it's just an idea. I had read some metaphysical mumbo jumbo about turning the body into a living superconductor. The sort of thing that would probably just kill us instantly, but in the case of Superman, maybe that's how. It's probably all hype, and I've never bothered to research it, but they claimed superconductors energy fields sort of negated gravity and allowed them to levitate. I can see that in a magnet or a ceramic, but a man? I can only hope, I guess...

I've always viewed the superhero flight ability as a very powerful but crude form of telekinesis.  The hero pushes the earth away and moves it around, giving the result of the hero moving instead due to the massive size of the earth preventing him from affecting it.

It seems Superman couldn't do most of what he does without tapping into a vast power source like the theoretical Zero Point Field for energy. This (if it actually exists) could also explain his ability to control gravity. An interesting link about one theory is here.