Welcome to another episode of our serious SLG meetups by Super Luxury group where we connect with some of the most interesting players in the Luxury market. My name is Alvaro and today we'll be having with us a very special guest. His name is Richard Browning and he's the founder and chiftez pilot at Gravity Industries. And he will be talking about how they are disrupting human flight along with the full story behind his company.
Richard also shares with us all the exciting current projects they have going on and where he sees it evolving. Definitely an inspiring story on how to make your highest dreams come true while having fun throughout the journey. I hope you enjoy it. Hey, what's going on Richard?
How are you? Yeah, good. Thanks very good. How are you?
Very good. Very good. Oh my god. Do you have on the background your Iron Man suits?
Yeah, lots of real as well. They're all fully functional. Jetsuits, yes indeed. Wow, that's amazing.
I'm very happy to have you here today. Thank you for joining. How is it everything going on with you? Yeah, good.
Thanks for your good day. We're doing pretty busy doing all this chaos and stuff. We've been doing a lot more R&D, a lot more research and development over all the lockdowns we've been having over the last 12 months. So, yeah, today we're just working on a new feeling system for these things so we can feel them up way quicker than we used to be able to.
So, yeah, we're pretty good. Thank you. We're very good. Amazing.
And you're currently located in London, correct? We're about an hour and a half out of London. So, about 90 minutes west of London. Yeah.
OK. Well, you have the whole land to make sure that you can apply those really toys, right? Yeah, flying these are in London all the time will be, I don't think, we'd be very popular. They are very noisy.
Exactly. So, Richard, I was just making a quick intro about yourself. You are the founder and Chief Test Pilot for Gravity Industries. I mean, you guys are doing phenomenal with JetTacks.
By the way, I love the brand. I love the logo and I love what you're doing. Lots of inspiration to be shared today. So, question for you will be Richard.
How do you end up, what's your story? How do you end up actually becoming a pioneer and getting into the human flag industry? Yeah. So, my background, I was actually an oil trader in the city of London for 16 years.
That was what I spent most of my career doing. But my whole family background was from the world of aviation and engineering. My late father was a Maverick inventor and designer and aeronautical engineer. His father was a pilot.
My other grandfather, Sir Basil Black, we used to run Western helicopters. So, it was kind of in my, I suppose in my family history. I also spent about six years in the British World Marines' Reserves as well. And that military time taught me a lot about human capability and, you know, believing what you can train your body to go and do.
So, if you put all of that together in a pot, you know, we've quite a lot of, I suppose, you know, I suppose I'm quite an innovator and entrepreneur. I like building and designing and creating things. So, if you put all that into a pot, you end up with this idea back in 2016. Could you reimagine human flight?
Could you go and get a human being to fly? Not by sitting on top of or inside or, you know, strapped to a flying system. Could you not become the flying system? What was the minimalist amount of equipment you could add in order to be able to fly?
And so, that was the journey that started back in 2016. Wow. I mean, it's phenomenal. I see a lot of comments saying, he's the real Mr.
Stark, you know, the Ironman, the real Ironman. So, how has that been as an inspiration? You know, because a lot of these things are reflected into back in the day, in the comics and stories. So, how was that for you?
Yeah, I mean, I can't say my inspiration was trying to build an Ironman 6 or trying to build a vehicle here. I mean, it's very cool that it does look like that. And I can't deny as we've developed it further that, you know, there are bits of it that now start to look a bit like, you know, the Marvel creation of Ironman. It's very cool.
It's a cool target to have, right? But in the original, you know, early days, I was just fascinated by the idea that you could use your brain for the balance and your body as a flight structure. And just, it was also considered, you know, since the days of the original jetpacks, it's been largely considered impossible to do what we've done here in the sense that people didn't think you could carry enough fuel and they didn't think you could kind of hold onto the power and they didn't think that, you know, the engines would be manageable and all this kind of stuff. And I love taking on challenges where they're largely considered to be impossible.
I mean, who doesn't like that? When somebody says you can't do something, there's nothing better than grandeur. Just go ahead and do it, exactly. Right, one time in 20, you can prove those people that they weren't right.
Most of the time they're right, it's damaged. And challenges end up being really difficult. But, yeah, so that's really where it came from. But I mean, I've flown to places like with a team.
I've flown in places like Comic-Con, we've done stuff with Adam Savage. Instagram and social media. So, you know, actually, I've come to learn that science fiction, you know, comic book, Marvel or DC, that kind of thing, and the comic book world is actually, I suppose, a really good realm that represents a human creativity where, you know, you don't care about physics or money for a period, you just go and let your imagination run wild. So actually, I've probably taken more inspiration from that world in the years since I built this and recognized the original source of inspiration.
It's incredible. I mean, what you've been doing so far, and I see that you've been taking some celebrities and interested people to test on this life because you guys also offer the test-light academy, right? You call to these places where people can actually go and fly. Yeah, so we have a place in the UK.
It's basically at the Goodwood Estate, so people go to the Goodwood Festival of Speed and Goodwood Revival. It's an amazing private state in the UK with a horse racing circuit, a motor racing circuit, it's where you have Spitfires, and they still have run Spitfire experiences there. It's just an amazing place. That's awesome.
When do we have you here in Miami? I mean, it's beautiful. I've just imagined to just fly around with these things around here. That'd be amazing.
So, I'm just trying to think, I'm pretty sure I've done a flight in Miami. I'm trying to remember where it was, but I'm sure I've flown there. Yeah, I'm sure we've done a flight in Miami. It was at the beginning of last year in one of the conventions.
I mean, this was before COVID started. Yeah, yeah. It's crazy because we've done 111 flights of events in 33 countries. Just imagine, you know, I'm right in front of Styl Island, one of the islands here, the most popular islands in Miami.
I'm just thinking to go with one of these jetpacks between the islands. Just, well, how far is it? What's the distance out of interest? Oh, don't bite.
I mean, it's really close. So, I'm sure you've seen your videos in the distance that you've been flying over are much larger than what I will see here. So, that's the time. You get a couple of interesting boats along, like speed boats or something.
Just fly outside. That'd be really fun. We can do that when we're all allowed out again. We'll make it happen for sure, Richard.
Now, just that for curiosity, because this is not something that everybody can do. It's a really expensive, I guess, experience to have. So, in terms of luxury, I guess also I've been seeing this question a little bit. How much is it to do?
One of these flights. So, the cheapest training is about £2,000, which is about $3,000, maybe $2,500, that's for an experience. If you want to do a full day, it's more like about £7,000, which I think is now about $9,000 US or so. So, we've got quite a waiting list now of people wanting to come and do it, but that's quite an intensive thing.
We're building an electric training suit, so it's still on the tether, but it'll be a lot cheaper for people to be able to come along and actually learn how to fly, but using the electric version, once they can fly that, then it will be a very short process to then learn to fly the jet one. Some people to be clear learn to do this in the morning. We've had some people do it within an hour or so of turning up. It's like watching children learn to ride bikes.
It's very much one of those things that you can relax into and feel intuitively. So, yeah, and then when people have graduated onto that, or graduated in terms of being on fly, we then do custom build certain people their own jet suits. And the last ones we sold were about $440,000 US. It's mostly, it's not really our main aim to sell them.
It's a little bit like Formula One cars. It's like Ferrari FFX or whatever it's called, FX6, where you've already built up for people that they know, and even then they don't really give it to you. You have to kind of ask them to bring it for you to a track. We're a little bit more like that only because we don't want people going and kind of abusing them and doing something silly and dangerous.
Because to be clear, you can't just keep going up if you're in a big sport. Yeah, it's very exciting when you just went over, because those are the questions, you know, because you do this experience. Beautiful, you love it. You want to get certified.
You get certified. Now you want to get your own jetpack. You do it if you want to. But in terms of permits, I mean, can you just fly anywhere or how does it go?
Well, I should say, even if you don't get one built, if you can fly with us, then we have a lot of cooler people now, including people like Baguels, who can come along. We give them a suit and then they join us flying at an event or they join us in one of the race series next. We had a race in the funeral set up in March, which was going to be our launch of the race series. It's still going to happen, but we're going to wait until COVID gets off if everybody's back first.
But the idea is if you qualify to grace, then you can turn up and just go crazy with us flying over water and be the other real life superhero. You know, that's the idea. But in terms of permits, you know what? We've worked with the Civil Aviation Authority in the UK, the military version of that in the UK, and also the FAA in the US.
And actually, we formally don't qualify as an aircraft and we formally don't qualify as a drone. So strictly speaking, we don't fall in their jurisdiction. Now, that's not to say that we would then disregard them. We've actually worked really closely with the FAA and the CAA.
They have kind of informally posted that this is really cool. Well done for managing it in a safe and controlled way. You know, we never would have done all of this pilot training, all of those events if we didn't have a decent safety record. But they've actually said that carry on self-regulating, we don't go anywhere near any other aircraft.
We don't fly or other people, we don't fly at a property. You know, most events, we barely go higher than the street lighting, you know, from a safety point of view. So actually, we don't pose a risk to other aviation or other members of the public. So therefore, they would never write this down, but they're very happy to keep an eye on this, but support us in what we're doing.
So that's really cool. You don't actually have to have a license to be able to do this. You get licensed by us. Cool.
So what's your vision, Richard? Because I'm just imagining, you know, you just said, oh, we don't fly with properties and everything, but I'm just imagining, you know, could you just think yourself, getting into your jetpack, flying from one place to your home directly, landing at home, there we go. Like, what's your vision for the company? I mean, look, you can do that.
But I mean, it's a bit like taking an Indy car or an Asgard. You could go to the shops in an Indy car or an Asgard, but people don't just because it's kind of a mad thing to do. We can fly several miles. I mean, we've done 85 miles an hour before.
You can fly several miles over any terrain you like. You know, you could do whatever you like with this. It's just, we never lose sight of the safety aspect. A lot of people say, how high can you go?
Well, technically, you can keep going up until you run out of fuel or you can't breathe because it's too thin of air. But there's just no reason to do that. Actually, you know, when you go above 20, 30, 40 feet, it starts to get extremely dangerous, even over water. And actually, to the audiences, you've enjoyed performing to all over the world, there's no point in going really high because you don't become a human anymore.
You're a little black dox and just a pro. Even the military see no real need for us to go very high because actually you're more of a target up there. This is just a tactical bound piece of equipment. So you shouldn't be up there anyway.
So, but you know, to answer your question, yes. I mean, even the motor cart started out as a noisy, inefficient, crazy joke compared to a horse and look where it evolved to. So I do kind of suspect that whilst we're very much enjoying, you know, entertainment, training clients, racing like superheroes, doing military and such a rescue work, actually this could evolve gradually to the point where it increasingly gets more and more mainstream, especially with, you know, the electric, you know, the world of electric vehicles getting better and better. Just to be excited about the new things you can do, be excited how your parents or grandparents are now on Netflix, you know, that would have happened, right?
So I think there's a human predisposition to being obsessed with what we've lost and not embracing the new things that have come to us. So, you know, safety, reputation and financial. If you can keep getting back up, keep exploring, keep innovating, keep trying. I think that's, you know, that's what I learned as a trader for 16 years, you know, I was running a trading book and it was all about that actually.
It's very similar mindset to what we do from an engineering point of view. Shain that I think that this is really nice up, you know, I'm listening to you, so thank you. I do appreciate again your time. I know your time is very valuable.
I see your, your machines back there waiting for you to get in and fly up. So I look forward to seeing you here in Miami or meeting your London either in LA. Definitely, let's make it happen. I'm gonna put in the comments everywhere how they can find you, reach out to you, but is there any specific way that if somebody wants to learn more, where can they go?
Yeah, so if it's flight training, then if you go to gravity.co or nearly every single social media site, they're particularly Instagram or even on TikTok, which is kind of funny. Take on Gravity, that is our main tag. And I won't write the final one, but the final one is Gravity Industries. If you look for that on YouTube, there's loads on YouTube.
I just put up a big STEM video, so something for school teachers and students and stuff to you. So that's quite a fun new thing we've been doing. Very good. So yeah, find us at all of those things.
Well, thank you much. Richard, it's been a pleasure having you here. I wish you all the best. Have a very successful year.
Looking forward to seeing you soon. Thanks very much. Talk to you guys soon. Thanks again for everybody tuning in today.
We hope you enjoyed it. And remember, embrace it's beautiful success in life. My name is Alvaro and I'll see you next time.