How much would it cost to design and build an Iron Man suit?

​ ​ Iron Man's suit isn't as science fictional as you might think. Most of its components exist right now in research and development labs. What would it cost Tony Stark today to put them together and become superhuman? Helmet-mounted display Tony controls his Iron Man suit via a sophisticated helmet-mounted display that is voice-activated. It could easily be compared to helmet-mounted displays currently under development for fighter jets like the F-35. Fighter pilots use these displays to guide their aircraft the way Tony guides his suit. Last year, the companies developing F-35 HMDs announced they would be creating these helmets with a development budget of $54.1 million. Development cost for a typical HMD for a fighter jet: $54.1 million ​ ​ Exoskeleton Tony's suit is essentially an exoskeleton that gives Iron Man his super strength and maneuverability. Several companies and labs, including those at Raytheon and UC Berkeley, are developing exoskeletons like Tony's that give the wearer additional strength. They are usually designed for soldiers carrying heavy packs, or for disabled people as a replacement for wheelchairs and canes. Possibly the closest to Tony's suit is Raytheon's XOS exoskeleton, which allows the person wearing it to lift 200 lbs. as if they were nothing. Cost to develop one XOS exoskeleton: $10 million ​ ​ Portable nuclear power source Tony's nuke heart can be compared to the energy source in the new Martian rover Curiosity, a nuclear generator called a Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (MMRTG), which will power its large robotic body and lab for years with a small nuclear power source. While the MMRTG with its 10 pounds of plutonium dioxide is bigger than Tony's fist-sized heart, its components are similar enough that we'll make the comparison. Cost of one MMRTG (according to NASA estimates [PDF]): $36 million ​ ​ Jet packs Constructed inside Tony's boots are jets that allow him to fly and hover. While jet packs don't work particularly well, we've seen a few recent successes. Yves Rossy, pictured above, has actually piloted his own jet pack across the English Channel. And there are a few companies selling strap-on jet packs similar to equipment Tony has in his suit. In fact, Jet Pack International will sell you a strap-on jet pack that could potentially be modified to fit inside Tony's boots. Cost of two jet packs from JetPack (one for each boot): $400,000 ​ ​ Wearable computers Tony's suit is operated by wearable computers that are wired into each body part and controlled from the HMD. Lucky for Tony, wearable computers are pretty cheap. Basically you just take an awesome computer and fit its components into cases that fit into your exoskeleton. Let's assume he wants a few computers, some awesome antennae so he can store shit in the cloud, a few ARM processors, really good hard drives. And let's have him run QNX because that's how Tony rolls. But other than that we're just talking about a really kickass set of secure computers with specialized cases. Sort of like the kinds of wearables that MIT students (like the one above) have been developing for years. Estimated cost for wearable computers: $20,000 So, what's the final price tag? $100,420,000 Source: http://io9.gizmodo.com Peace✌

Copying-and-pasting my answer to a near-identical question elsewhere.  I note with some amusement that my estimate is (by pure coincidence) exactly in line with the MoneySupermarket.com number(s) previously posted by Darshil. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Though miniaturization at the Tony-Stark level is not (yet) (currently) possible, I think a crude predecessor of this suit -- perhaps more like Stane's big bulky Iron-Monger chassis -- could be built, or at least approximated.  I'm going to put total cost somewhere in the $500M (one half-billion USD) ballpark.  Possibly more. My rationale -- The F-35C (Navy's variant of the Joint Strike Fighter, with VTOL capability to accommodate aircraft carriers) costs something like $330M per plane. (We can argue about government misappropriation, waste, and abuse on some other occasion.)  Capability-wise, this is probably our "closest" parallel to Iron Man technology... missile payload, stealth, guidance systems, electronic countermeasures, Mach-capable flight, vertical thrusters, etc. The MIM-104 Patriot surface-to-air missile launcher costs something like $3M to $4M per mounted turret.  This doesn't even come close to the Iron Man concept, but we have to start somewhere with the armaments and firepower.  Alternately, the M1A1 Abrams tank costs $6M to $8M per vehicle, and maybe this more accurately represents modern ablative-armor/artillery development. Lastly, for the exoskeleton itself, US SOCOM is spending something like $17M to $80M (estimates vary, and depend on current defense budget) for a simple man-sized suit to do the "heavy lifting."  More functionality would be needed, obviously, but that form factor is at least a step in the right direction. So now we're up to 330 + 4 + 8 + 80 = ~422 million.  Should we maybe include a voice-to-text interface to a specialized artificial-intelligence?  IBM's Jeopardy-champion Watson system cost $3M to build. With the leftover cash, I'll pay Tesla Motors to work on nothing but a single portable lithium-phosphate battery prototype (Tesla R&D spends $80M every three months), and, if I've still got room on the chassis, a (smaller) version of that Navy laser weapon (LaWS, $11M).  Our resulting mess will be large, slow, kludgey and cumbersome... but I'm reasonably confident it will hold up in a fight.