Richard Browning spent 16 years in the oil industry working for BP in London and alongside spent six years in the Royal Marine Reserve. But actually, in hindsight his inspiration for the Jet Suit was derived from his childhood, growing up around his aeronautical engineer father, tinkering in his workshop and flying model gliders with him until he sadly died when Richard was 15 years old. His father was a wartime and civil pilot and his Grandfather was Sir Basil Blackwell who used to run Westland Helicopters in the UK.
Richard’s time with the Royal Marines inspired a real passion for human capability and how adaptable mind and body can be when suitably motivated and trained. It was there he hatched the idea that you could potentially achieve an entirely new form of authentic human flight by simply adding the right amount of horsepower and relying on the mind and body for everything else. “I had the pleasure of beginning the journey for no purpose other than the pure joy of the challenge and I hadn’t considered turning it into a business at that point.” said Richard.
WE DARED TO ASK ‘WHAT IF?’
The experimental build process, in the evenings and weekends alongside a busy career started in March 2016 when Richard Browning bought the first jet engine and then advanced through endless prototyping attempts before achieving the first flight in November 2016. Over the next six months the system was further refined and Gravity Industries was ready to be publicly launched in April 2017.
The business secured $650,000 investment within the first two months from Tim and Adam Draper, Tim best known for his early investments in Baidu Inc, Tesla and Skype and Adam best known for Boost VC.
THE REST IS HISTORY
Since launch the Gravity Team have executed over 105 live flight events in 31 countries, set up Search & Rescue and Military collaborations, trained over 50 clients to fly in the US and UK and are scaling towards an International Race Series.
The extended team - made up of over 30 diverse and talented individuals, from engineers to pilots, across five different countries - has enabled the brand to be experienced by over a billion people globally, with video views alone running at more than 60million within seven days of launch.
Gravity Industries Website: Click Here