'Real-life Iron Man’ flies around Media City in £40,000 jet pack

Via manchestereveningnews.co.uk by Izzy Lyons

An inventor dubbed ‘the real-life Iron Man’ blasted into Salford with his self-built jet engine power suit.

Richard Browning, 38, displayed his impressive – and incredibly loud – invention to a crowd of astonished bystanders in Media City .

Browning spent £40,000 building the jet pack, and last month he broke the Guinness World Record for the fastest speed in a body-controlled power suit at 32mph.


Browning said: “Every time I fly, it’s a pleasure. It’s intense, but there’s always this degree of humility. You always have to have respect for what you are doing. There is a chance I could lose an engine just as I am getting off the ground.

“It’s just like driving a formula one car or racing a sports bike – you have always got to have that respect for the possibility that something could go wrong when you don’t want it to happen.

“That dampens the pure joy slightly, it’s not like you are sitting back relaxing having a whale of a time. It’s an intense and very, very engaging experience. There is nothing else in my mind when I am flying.”

Browning, who built the body jet pack ‘for fun’ because people told him it couldn’t be done, now runs Gravity, an aero-nautical business that has been valued at $20 million just six months after being set up.

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