as you know in my 'verse Tony's revelation that he is iron man causes a stir just like in the movies, however unlike the movies Tony builds stark enterprises as the main proprieter of "Iron Man" technologies and begins selling his tech out to government and private contractors after the War Machine armor's creation.
After War Machine was created Tony swore to make sure that people like Hammer wouldn't be able to mess with his technology. Tony signed a defense contract to oversee future developements for the WM project as well as other projects for other contractors...
one of these was his "SWAT" armor developed for the NYPD.
Another was an answer to NASA's old and outdated space suit design. Tony's Iron Man armor acted as the perfect platform to create a new exo-suit for american astronauts. The much lighter, more durable, and much more menuverable IM armor created a far superior space-suit.
Nasa had a few specific features they wanted incorporated (all of which, pluss some, Tony installed):
-Full environmental control and life support
-Armored protection from impact with space debri
-light weight, modular design for easy transport aboard the shuttle
-redundant systems to protect the astronaut from failures
-extreme menuverability in zero G
-the ability to withstand re-entry in a severe "abandon ship" senario
Tony answered this with a highly modified version of his modular armor. Installing an external main thrust pack to give the wearer control in zero G as well as in atmosphere, this was supplimented by the modular armor's arc-reactors working dually as attitude thrusters.
inadvertently Tony also cornered the market on the sport of extreme space diving, where the wearer of this suit leaped from an orbiting platform to re-enter the earth's atmosphere in free-fall....
construction notes:
this figure is mainly the Marvel Universe modular armor with the red areas re-painted in gloss black (unfortunately I'm noticing some paint rub issues and faint bleed thru already...)
The head is from the TRON clu figure
The hands are random joe fodder with the back of the IM hands glued on.
Blast effects are from an IM figure.
Backpack is a cast resin star wars piece from clint, aka "Clonehead"