How Gravity Built the World's Fastest Jet Suit

[jet pack whining]

I'll be the first to admit that we went down this road

really at the beginning for the pure joy

of taking on a challenge that was largely thought

to be impossible.

There's not textbook on how to go and do this.

I'm Richard Browning, I'm founder and chief test pilot

for Gravity, and we build 1,000 horsepower jet engine

flying suits.

[Narrator] For the last few years Browning and his team

have tested every possible design and configuration

they can could up with,

all in an effort to make this a reality.

[Richard] The origins of the concept were all around.

Some of the inspiration from my early life.

Used to fly model gliders and model aircraft with my father.

He was an aeronautical engineer.

His father was a pilot, so I guess it was in the blood.

[Narrator] But fulfilling his dream of flying

required real physical demands, too.

I spent some time in the Royal Marines Reserve,

and the time in the military

and all the sports I pursued after that

taught me a lot about the capability

of the human mind and body.

I'm no great athlete, but I did learn a lot about

how, if you focus the human form on a challenge,

whether you want to be an ice skater or a gymnast,

or whatever it is, it's amazing how this machine

can be adapted.

I got to the point with this calisthenics body weight

training where I could support my own weight

in a number of different kind of unusual positions

like flags, for instance.

And I thought, well, if you just replace that hard structure

that I'm holding onto with actually a form of thrust,

I can hold my body in any number of different

kind of flight positions.

So as ludicrous as that sounded, I thought,

well, let's just go and experiment with it.

[Narrator] First, he needed to figure out how to stay

suspended in the air.

[Richard] The form of thrust I landed on

was gas turbines.

Gas turbines are notorious for being very small

form factors, extremely aggressive.

One gas turbine weighs five pounds

and puts out about 50 pounds of thrust.

[Narrator] So in 2016, Browning started testing

different components and variations.

[Richard] So having experimented one,

we went to two, and went to four,

and it was getting increasingly compelling.

[Narrator] But things didn't always go quite so smoothly.

[Richard] There was lots and lots of trial and error

and constantly failing, to be honest,

and learning all the time from those safe fails.

We got to a point where we managed to achieve a flight,

and that was two engines on each arm

and an engine on each leg.

[Narrator] But there were basic problems at every stage.

Starting with the decision to have engines on each leg.

There's a number of interesting challenges

with that model.

The problems included the engines being only

three or four inches off the ground

in terms of the exhaust thrust.

The violence of air coming out of those engines

at about 1,000 miles an hour, hitting even concrete,

you could see a smooth concrete surface

would start to become pitted

from the sheer violence of that air.

And yet, as you move them away,

the violence of velocity drops off.

There's also the challenge of having the engines

on the legs, in that if you happen to vector

your arm engines anywhere near the intakes

of the lower engines, we realized that your

inducted air is going in, and that would then

spike the exhaust temperature.

You could see a little puff of sparks

and the engine would just shut down.

So that was another good reason for not having

the engines down there.

And finally, the strange human behavior we learned,

which is that when your feet feel

the ground has left them they almost want to peddle

and scrabble around looking for where that surface is.

That's not helpful when you've got 50 pounds of thrust

coming off each leg.

And those problems let to the solution of actually

moving those engines slowly up the body

and then consolidating them into one,

and essentially that created a skirt

all at the same altitude on the body

which can be likened to the three legs of a tripod.

There's thrust coming out of each arm,

and then essentially a third leg coming out of the back

of your body which provides that uncanny stability.

And that's how we learned to fly.

I can step you through what the components are.

So you've essentially got an arm mount.

Your arm goes inside that aluminum, 3D printed tube.

You've got a micro gas turbine on each side,

and you've got the same on the other side, obviously.

And round the back and there's one more engine

which is roughly the power of these two together.

On the front here you've got a lot of electronic control

systems, and the batteries, which aren't plugged in here.

Those batteries actually run the starter motors

and the glow plugs.

And then on the sides you've got a couple of fuel bladders.

We've also got a helmet.

It's an especially lightweight one,

and the extra addition to it is a heads-up display system.

So inside there you can see the lenses which actually

paint over my vision the fuel and engine data.

That data gets to the lenses by this little device.

That takes a wireless feed from the suit

that shows me everything to do with the engines

and everything to do with the fuel

to give me an idea as to how close we are

to running out of fuel, for instance.

[Narrator] Last year Browning set the world speed record

for a body-controlled jet suit,

clocking in at 32 miles per hour.

He says the suit can actually fly much faster

and higher than they've ever attempted.

But for now, they're playing it safe.

That's because even at lower speeds and altitudes

there are still risks.

The fuel is either diesel or jet fuel.

They're fundamentally the same fuels.

Jet fuel sounds scary,

but it's the same kind of stuff as diesel.

It's actually not prone to forming vapor clouds,

it's not really explosive.

In fact, you're really hard-pushed to even ignite it.

And even if it did burn in an uncontrolled way,

you've certainly got probably 10, 15 seconds

before it becomes a big fire.

Every single time we fly we have fire extinguishers

around the place.

In two years of doing this

we've never used a fire extinguisher.

So I'm not worried, but I have a respect for,

the fire aspect of this.

The heat aspect of it, it's funny, but if you get

a hair dryer and you press it against your head,

you're gonna burn your head.

Hold it like two feet away and it's cold.

The specific heat capacity of air is so poor

that actually the heat dissipates really quickly.

And I've even swiped those engines across my leg

with these heavy cotton flight trousers on,

all it did is just slightly singe the very top surface

of the fabric.

It didn't do anything.

So from a heat and fire point of view,

it's really not a significant concern, but we manage it.

[Narrator] He's more concerned with falls and collisions.

[Richard] It's akin to riding a sports motorbike.

If you gun that at 80 or 100 miles an hour

around small, twisty roads and come off, it's gonna hurt.

If I'm 10 feet above the ground and got an engine failure,

I simply go downward.

There's no scenario where our system can suddenly,

in an uncontrolled way, gain height

or shoot off to one side.

You simply drop out, which is not a good thing,

but we've always gotta allow for the potential

for a extremely unlikely mechanical failure

of one of the engines, and then in which case you do fall.

That's why we keep the height fairly limited.

Speed-wise, we can easily do 35 miles an hour.

We've gone quite a big quicker in testing,

but again, for most of what we do,

by the time you've done 35 miles an hour

you've gone a long way away from probably

the audience or the area you're flying.

So by then you're coming back again.

We push the limits a little bit more over water

because that's a bit more forgiving if you fell in it.

[Narrator] So Browning's jet suit is no longer

just a pipe dream.

But what exactly is it for?

They recently started custom designing and selling them,

but at a price tag of about $440,000 a suit.

It's safe to say it'll be out of reach for most.

But that could change.

[Richard] As we improve the efficiency and the ease of use

then there is the potential for,

I don't want to say mass transit straight away,

but we have developed something that allows you

to move human beings around

in a completely unprecedented way.

[Narrator] One of the biggest challenges

for bringing down cost?

Designing suits that are more fuel efficient.

This model currently burns about a gallon of fuel a minute.

That's one of the reasons they're working

on an electric version.

And a set of wings that, when deployed mid-flight,

will generate lift more efficiently.

They're also hoping some competition might spur innovation.

[Richard] Throughout history when two human beings

have said, I think mine's faster than yours,

that does push the envelope.

So next year, 2019, we are building out

a race series for this.

[Narrator] Yes, a racing series.

Think Formula One, but with jet suits.

[Richard] We've already had several pilots

flying the record so far as five minutes,

five minutes of air time.

So we can have a bunch of young guys and girls

go and actually racing 1,000 horsepower jet suits

over water to keep it safe, but doing something

that only people have seen before, really,

in a Marvel film.

And that is gonna push the boundaries like nothing before.

I think for the immediate future it'll be entertainment,

it'll be inspiring people, and it'll be really fueling

the journey onto creating a revolution in human transport.