The world might be on its way to the first real-life Iron Man sort, of sorts. A new piece of technology helped a British inventor by the name of Richard Browning fly faster than 85 miles per hour, breaking a world record, with his jet packs over England’s Brighton Pier. It is a body-controlled, jet-engine-powered, wind-guided suit and is certainly the closest thing in the real world to Tony Stark’s Iron Man suit. It doesn’t look quite a sleek but the inventor is still working on the technology in every way, from its size to how fast he can go with it, so maybe we will get there one day.
“I’m really pleased with today I’ve done 75 mph before kind of privately in testing,” Browning said after setting the record, as seen in the video from CNET above. “I had hopes that we could get into the 70s here, on the day, in the conditions that were going to be whatever they were going to be, but to go, then, even 10 miles an hour even faster than I’d ever been before — couldn’t be happier.”
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Immediately after setting the record, in true Tony Stark fashion, Browning set his sights on the next steps. “That’s just the beginning,” he said. “We can go way faster.” He has visions of suits flying at 150-180 mph, but says “we’re going to do that in steady, sensible kind of steps. 85’s pretty good for now.”
As for the sparklers seen on his legs in the video above, that was just for dramatic effect and he wasn’t actually controlling them. They just casually made him look more like a super hero. “We thought it would look kind of dramatic,” Browning said. “I wasn’t even aware of them going off. That was somebody in my crew, detonating them remotely.”
The Gravity jet pack system which Browning is using is not available to the public but fingers crossed for it to come available some time soon. In the mean time, Iron Man fans can rejoice over Robert Downey Jr. returning to the role one more time for the upcoming Disney+ series.
