C’mon, admit it, you’ve watched Iron Man thinking how badass you’d be if only you had one of those futuristic flying, flighting suits. Who hasn’t?
That’s all that’s standing between you and fame, fortune and generally being an all-round awesome superhero, right?
Well, that’s what was clearly going though Richard Browning’s mind when he started building, and then trying to fly his own, homemade Iron Man suit.
The oil trader turn engineering whizz started investigating new means of personal human-powered flight a couple of years ago before discovering a number of prestigious university labs were already making waves in that area.
Not put off, he started a new company, Gravity, and strapped a bunch of gas turbine engines to his body. Having spent the whole of 2016 refining his design, he’s now unveiled his first product, the Daedulus flight suit that brings the full Iron Man look.
While claiming the machine is capable of flying at speeds of several hundred miles per hour, Browning says he’s as yet been unable to find a test space big enough to hit such velocity.
While the suit might not look as shiny and nice as Iron Man’s garb, it earns all the cool tech points by relaying live flight data and fuel levels to a head-mounted display. Oh, and it actually, legitimately flies, too.
“There’s no rule book for this, there’s no manual,” Browning told Cnet. “When the Wright brothers were learning how to fly, there were no flying lessons, they had to just learn.”
He same the principle was the same with his suit, a machine that straps jet power to the wearer’s limbs. These engines can be controlled to move across six different vectors – up, down, forward, backward, left and right.
As you can see in the video above, piloting the Daedulus isn’t easy and takes a lot of crashes and mishaps to master.
“It just takes a little bit of practice, probably a cumulative 15-20 minutes and you’re there,” Browning said. “As you go faster you do start levelling out and going kind of superhero style.
“It’s about setting yourself ambitious targets and then leaving nothing on the table in pursuit of that.”
Although not currently selling the Daedulus, Browning estimates the machine would cost around $250,000 (£199,525) to produce and claims people haven already approached him about having their own created.
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Would you fly the Daedulus suit? Let us know in the comments below.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
