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OROn a bleak afternoon in a Sussex woodland, a 21st century superhero appears. Dressed in black, helmet, backpack on his back and jets on his arms, he gets up a couple of meters above the ground, accelerates over a grassy bank and then soars in a swirling cloud of autumn leaves.
No matter how many times you’ve watched a video on YouTube, nothing can prepare you for the sight of a human being in flight. It is the embodiment of a thousand myths, from Hermes and Peter Pan to Iron Man, as well as a million childhood dreams, and is the only correct answer to that old conundrum: which superpower would you choose, invisibility or flight? If it weren’t for the roar of jet engines and the smell of fuel, you’d assume it was just a dream.
Back on Earth, silently throws, helmet off, the superhero reveals himself. Not Clark Kent or Tony Stark, but Richard Browning, 41, former oil trader, now entrepreneur, innovator, flyer. “It’s the most joyful, free, a little dreamlike state,” he says, of the experience. “When you ride a bike, you’re not thinking about turning the handlebars or keeping your balance, you’re just thinking: I’m riding a bike that way. Imagine that in three-dimensional space, you are completely free to move and go wherever you want. “
Articulate, self-confident, quite intense, it’s no surprise that while making a lot of money in the City, Browning also spent six years on Royal Marine reserves. (Although his previous decision not to undertake officer training at Sandhurst perhaps had something to do with his preference for tearing the rules rather than following them.)
Going back a little, Browning has aviation, innovation and jet fuel in his blood. One grandfather was a civilian and wartime pilot, while the other used to direct Westland Helicopters. Browning’s father was an aeronautical engineer, inventor and nonconformist designer. As a child, Richard created and piloted balsa gliders with his father.
The flight was inevitable, but the way it went is amazing. “I believe you can train your body and brain to do some really amazing things,” he says. “Walking and running are great when you think about it. I was convinced that if you just add the missing power component, you could fly in a very different way. “
Add power is what it did. Four years ago, he picked up a micro gas turbine, plus another, pinned them to his arms and jumped up and down in a field. Then he took a couple more, jumped a little higher, added more whirlwinds, fell a lot … and finally flew. “There was no business reason, no logic, I just thought it would be fun,” he says.
There was also, he now realizes, a deeply personal reason. Despite quitting his day job to pursue his inventions, Browning’s father was unable to profit and, desperate, committed suicide when his son was 15. . My father is just one of thousands of people who has an idea, he tries to take it over the edge. It doesn’t work and eventually cost him his life. I grew up thanks to this. Now I brazenly enjoy taking on new challenges and trying to push them over the edge, probably to remedy what I didn’t see happening when I was a kid. “
His father would like what he’s doing, he says. But what is it doing? What’s the point of all this? “The main thing, crass as it may seem, is entertainment.”
Browning and his firm Gravity Industries, now a multimillion-dollar organization with investments from people like Silicon Valley venture capitalist Tim Draper, do flying displays at events – opening a baseball stadium in Japan, for example, or the launch of a car in China. They are planning a series of races, even if it has been suspended by the pandemic. And they do the training days here at Goodwood. At £ 6,000 each, the rich can come and go, albeit tied on a leash to prevent any unplanned Icarus accidents.
Do you think that the times – Covid, Brexit, Trump – have contributed to fueling the interest of the public, which is “the metaphor of freeing oneself, being weightless and without limits, going to the skies and the stars. people are aware of it, but I think it represents it. “
Browning isn’t the only one taking flight. This year, someone with a jetpack flew around LAX airport in Los Angeles. Franky Zapata from France crossed the English Channel last year on his jet hoverboard. And a US company, JetPack Aviation, boasts that it can take a person to 15,000 feet (4,600 meters).
You may think the skies will soon fill with people buzzing around, but (perhaps luckily for the environment) Browning says jetpacks are somehow far from becoming traditional means of transportation. “I never developed it with that in mind. I embarked on this journey solely with the idea of having some fun with something that conventional wisdom said was impossible. “
Remember, though, that early cars were considered noisy, unreliable and dangerous – vastly inferior, technologically, to the horse. “I’m not going around telling everyone there is going to be a revolution tomorrow,” says Browning. “We will enjoy the ride and see where it ends.”
Which is not to say he has no hope. “Can you imagine, with safe, high energy density battery storage at 10 times what gasoline, diesel and jet fuel can do, an electric hover suit that can be handled automatically so it goes no more than three o four meters high and an airbag activation system that makes it completely safe, the equivalent of a bike ride. “
It seems practical applications may already be here. Browning says his company is talking to the British and US military. “I will say that there is a very healthy collaboration. There is a niche special forces application. If you have to take a human anywhere within a three or four kilometer radius of here, over minefields, through earthquake disaster zones, through forests around rivers, I don’t care if it’s night or there’s a storm coming, I can get started with the latest version of this in 10 seconds and be there. “
Ambulance crews in the Lake District may soon be joined by paramedics in jetsuits, after a recent trial showed they could reach an injured walker or climber in a fraction of the time a traditional mountain rescue team would take.
Andy Mawson of Great North Air Ambulance Service, who led the trial with Gravity, tells me, “It’s amazing what you can do with such a minimal set of equipment.” The 10 or 15 kg of kits tied to the front and legs of a flying paramedic might even include a lightweight defibrillator, along with airway management equipment and some medications. “It’s not beyond feasibility that if there was cardiac arrest on Helvellyn, we might be able to get a defibrillator on that patient within eight minutes.”
Mawson sees a situation where a paramedic operates from a car with a jetpack on board, somewhere in the center of the Lake District near the most popular hills, ready to go when the call comes – broken leg on Scafell Pike, perhaps. He makes the analogy of a city motorcycle paramedic. A jetpack will not get you to the hospital, but it will get a trained person by your side quickly, to resolve your breathing, blood flow, or pain.
He has already had a training day and the service is in serious discussion with Gravity on how to make the dream come true. “It’s a possibility we might see this late summer next year,” he says.
Back in the slightly less demanding terrain of the South Downs, now it’s my turn. I am here to experience that joyful and dreamlike state for myself. The backpack is tied to the back, the jets to the arms and I wear earmuffs.
There is a raised metal frame with an easel. I’m trying to think about getting on the main Glastonbury stage rather than going to my performance, which is what it sounds like so much more. The hangman is Browning’s assistant, Ryan, who puts me on the rope. At the other end is a counterweight: I’ll need all the help I can get. Then the jets are turned on. I tentatively squeeze the trigger under my right finger.
It is a strange sensation, thrust flowing in the arms. Browning, standing in front of me, indicates that I should lean forward as if resting my weight on my arms and I can feel a reduction in weight … then turn around to face the other way. After a few more attempts, my feet almost lift off the ground by a few inches, but it’s probably mostly Ryan pulling the other way. Less Iron Man, more Tin Man than the Wizard of Oz. However, a small step, as they say.
Well, I’ll take one, how much? They’re not really for sale, Browning says. “We sold a couple of them, but only to people we trained properly and who wouldn’t give up on desperately wanting to own them.
“And we still keep their clothes, we never lose sight of any. It’s like a Formula One car: who sells a Formula One car? It is too dangerous unless you know what you are doing with it. “
Come on, I’m not giving up, how much? The latter went for £ 340,000. Quite a bit for something you can’t even take home.
How dangerous is it? “It’s risky when you choose to fly it,” Browning says. Unlike Zapata, who flies very high, Browning flies a few meters above the ground, “as tall as I would grudgingly accept to fall. So in the worst case a twisted ankle or a broken leg. “However, it reached 85 mph.
Things can go wrong, even on the ground. On the launch pad after me is a paying customer, having his last attempt of the day to take flight. Suddenly there are flames coming from the jetpack and for a couple of scary seconds it looks like there might be an Icarus moment after all. But Ryan is working on it very quickly with a fire extinguisher. Some kind of rear engine failure, they think and investigate.
“In four years of operation, that was the only time we applied the fire extinguisher,” says Browning, who looks, for the first time, a little shaken.
The client is fine and noticeably untroubled, although he admits, “Well, it’s not quite how I expected the day to end.” I could hold my order and wait for the electric hover suit with the airbags. In the meantime, what about the other superpower, the only one that even comes close? “It’s funny that you say that about the invisible thing,” Browning says. “I actually have a plan for that.”
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