This time on "impossible engineering,"
a real-life birdman...
The power involved with the suit is enough to take
that mass supersonic.
...The world's fastest body-controlled jet suit...
This is ultimate integration of man, mind, and machine.
...And the pioneering historic innovations...
I told the people on the ground
that I could thread a needle with this thing.
Yes! Whoo-hoo!
The holy grail of aviation history.
It's a miracle, isn't it?
...That made the impossible possible.
...Captions by vitac... www.vitac.com
captions paid for by discovery communications
Hampshire, England...
The birthplace of flight in the U.K.
Home to one of the greatest aeronautical events
on the planet...
Farnborough international air show...
...where the biggest aerospace players
unveil the world's most cutting-edge technologies.
- This is gate B. - Can we be a bit gentle?
I don't want the engines to fall out.
Well, you know, I'm not used to driving this.
But this year, an ambitious team of engineers
are showcasing something so unique
it could steal the show...
And we're heading onto the runway.
...Capable of making an impossible dream a reality...
Mankind has always had this passion for flight,
always looked up at the sky and thought,
"gosh, I wish I could do, frankly, what the birds do."
...An innovation that will allow man to fly free.
We've had a great history of putting human beings
inside flight vehicles... Helicopters and airplanes.
I think there's something deeply inspiring
about the process of slimming that down to that raw,
kind of impossible point where you,
as an unencumbered human being,
could just float around and move about wherever you like.
The awe-inspiring solution?
The personal jet suit.
The suit consists of five gas turbines.
It's the same jet engines that you see on a jet aircraft.
Together, they produce enough thrust that you could equate it
to around 1,050 horsepower,
about 1.3 times a formula one car.
In terms of straight-line speed, we set the record
at about 32 miles an hour.
It's a Guinness world record.
This infeasible engineering
is the extraordinary vision
of inventor and test pilot Richard Browning...
We have opened the doorway
onto a whole new realm of human mobility
that was previously just the domain of superheroes
in the science fiction world.
...Trailblazing design also shaped
by aeronautical engineer Angelo Grubisic.
With this simple, small amount of equipment,
you can essentially gain
that full three-dimensional control of human flight
that people have been aiming for for the last hundred years,
and I think that's something that's very special.
Weighing just 100 pounds,
the jet suit is made from aluminum alloy,
nylon polymer, and steel.
Twin tanks holding over 10 gallons of jet fuel
feed four micro-jet engines mounted on the arms
and one on the back,
all controlled by a fingertip throttle trigger
and packed into just two flight cases...
Minimal equipment to turn man into a flying machine.
Richard and the team are using revolutionary technology,
but now their jet suit is about to be put to the test
in front of the movers and shakers
of the aeronautical world...
Can you check I'm not twisted?
...in a show where $170 billion of deals are struck each year.
But with human flight, nothing is guaranteed.
I'll kick the back when I'm about to take off.
When you're building the impossible,
the challenges are huge.
Okay, I'm good.
So, how do you launch a man into the skies?
You require a lot of power to produce enough thrust
to get yourself off the ground.
And once airborne, how can you maneuver safely?
We honestly didn't have an idea
of how we were going to do this,
and it was a potential reason why this might be infeasible.
Today's flight is the culmination
of 15 months of development.
But to achieve the impossible and fly like a bird,
the team has had to turn to the pioneers of the past.
For centuries, eccentric aviators have dreamed
of taking to the skies,
building hair-raising contraptions.
In the 1950s, there was a new wave of construction.
Inspired by science fiction,
the goal was to reduce the necessary gear
and fly like a superhero.
But before all of this,
the first successful personal flight
took its inspiration from nature.
Yes! Whoo-hoo!
5-time world champion hang glider
Corinna Schwiegerhausen
is soaring high above the Bavarian alps.
You see the beauty of these cliffs.
It's amazing.
She's only able to fly like this
because of one inspiring 19th-century visionary.
Engineer Otto Lilienthal was the very first birdman.
In the 1870s, he began designing a range of winged machines
based on his studies on the mechanics of bird flight.
Two decades later,
he had constructed the first known hang glider.
Look at this.
This is Otto Lilienthal with his glider.
You see, it's a very simple construction...
Just made from some fabric
and some steel wire and Willow wood.
But engineered with an understanding
of wing aerodynamics,
in 1891, Lilienthal's glider changed aeronautical history,
successfully taking to the air.
He could launch it just by running off a hill,
and then get airborne by playing with the wing
and the angle of attack of his design, and it worked.
Up to today, and not only our hang gliders,
but even the big passenger planes use
just the very concept that he started with his wing.
And it's a miracle, isn't it?
The holy grail of aviation history.
Over five years,
Lilienthal increased his flight distance
from 80 feet to over 800 feet.
He became known as "the flying man".
In my thoughts, I often take Otto Lilienthal up
to our flying adventure.
We all owe him and adore him
'cause he made our free-flying possible.
He planted the seed for the whole history of aviation.
Hidden in a secret location
in the British countryside,
an unconventional team of engineers is bringing
Otto Lilienthal's passion for personal flight
into the 21st century.
Richard Browning's pioneering flight suit may not have wings,
but like Lilienthal's gliders, this engineering step
into the unknown relies on vast amounts of trial and error.
So our development approach
is one of actually having a portfolio
of different attributes to the flight equipment
that we try and progress all at the same time.
Some of them end up unearthing interesting opportunity,
interesting revelations that we never imagined.
Other ones that we thought would be easy
just hit a brick wall, and we'll pause.
Richard first strapped a jet engine to his arm
in 2016,
then tried to take flight with one on each arm,
then two,
before attaching three.
So after really learning from, say, failure...
So, in other words, learning from trying things
and often falling over
and realizing those things didn't work,
that methodology allowed us to learn really quite quickly.
Months of modifications
with state-of-the-art equipment eventually pay off.
Can you get Dave on the fire extinguisher, please?
Small, tantalizing flights show early signs
that Richard Browning's fantastical dream
could become reality.
It started to dawn on us
that actually, this is just the beginning.
I think we can take this an awful lot further.
But to further the jet suit's development
and reach higher altitudes...
...he would need someone with his head in the clouds.
Ready?
Aeronautical engineer
and world-class wingsuit base-jumper Angelo Grubisic
knows a thing or two
about pushing the limits of human flight.
I've always been fascinated with skydiving.
I'm actually getting into wingsuit flight.
You know, essentially trying to experience
exactly what birds achieve on a daily basis.
He's tasked with refining Richard's efforts,
but going from wingsuits to jet suits
poses many problematic questions.
There's been no textbook about how to approach
this particular aspect of human flight.
Angelo and Richard's combined engineering expertise
allows finessing and testing to ramp up.
Okay, Angelo, let's roll.
Hundreds of man-hours increases their altitude.
Now, they can fly as high as they dare.
Despite some ups and downs...
The team has made an engineering breakthrough,
and they're about to reveal their innovation
to the aviation world for the first time.
After less than two years of trial and error,
inventor Richard Browning's team of intrepid engineers
is preparing to debut their answer
to the challenge of human flight.
What we've done is settled on the best solution.
Two engines on each forearm
and one larger engine on the rear.
There's been several leaps forward.
One of those was the angle at which we position
each of the engines relative to the forearm.
So, actually splaying them out slightly gave
a lot more stability.
Moving the engines to the rear rather than the lower legs
also was a huge leap forward as well.
In a matter of months, the team has come a long way.
Richard Browning and his pioneering team have been
hand-picked to demonstrate their visionary innovation
at the Farnborough air show,
one of the most prestigious events
on the international aeronautical calendar.
I never imagined I'd be here at Farnborough
in front of huge crowds,
flying a 1,000-horsepower jet engine suit.
It's quite a privilege.
As the world of aviation watches...
Alex, this one sounds a little funny.
That's the new one.
...Inventor Richard Browning gears up
for one of the biggest flights of his life.
The jet suit's nerve center is a head's-up display
providing in-flight fuel and engine status.
Its range is 4,500 feet,
equivalent to the length of 28 Olympic swimming pools.
A top speed of 31 miles an hour
makes it the world's fastest body-controlled jet suit.
But propelling a combined weight of over 260 pounds
this fast requires an immense amount of force.
At a secure location in Southern England,
lead aeronautical engineer and test pilot
Angelo Grubisic is charged with solving the propulsion problem.
You essentially need to produce a lot of thrust.
There are two major problems to solve.
One is how do you produce enough thrust
to get a human being off the ground?
And then how do you do that in a fuel-efficient way?
For inspiration,
the team looked to the engineers of the past.
Mechanical engineer Dan Dickrell is in Niagara, New York.
This facility is
the bell aerospace company airplane factory.
It's a really impressive piece of history
in terms of airplane manufacturing.
He's gained exclusive access to the site
of the greatest advancement in personal flight.
It's a cool, cool experience to be here right now.
In the 1950s, bell aerospace was attempting to develop
a flight-suit for the U.S. military,
an innovation for the soldiers of the future.
Bell challenged its engineers...
"how do you make a person fly?"
Aeronautical engineer Wendell Moore
believed rocket propulsion was the solution.
In the late '50s, he developed an incredible piece
of military equipment...
The first controllable rocket pack.
So, this is it. It's the bell rocket belt.
It's pretty cool to be up close and personal to this very basic,
yet historic thing. This is not a model.
This actually flew.
Check this thing out.
It's got a polystyrene and fiberglass harness...
That's where the pilot goes.
We see these controls.
There's throttle, there's directional thrusters.
The aluminum foil sort of hoses that come down...
This is actually the rocket... The rocket nozzles themselves.
We swing around the back, we can
Se there's these three storage tanks.
There's nitrogen in there and hydrogen peroxide
in the two outer tanks.
Compressed nitrogen gas in the central chamber
pushes hydrogen peroxide out of the two surrounding tanks,
bringing it into contact with a silver catalyst.
This causes the hydrogen peroxide
to instantly decompose into water and oxygen,
sparking a huge reaction.
That hydrogen peroxide reaction is really, really energetic,
creates a lot of heat.
So that water gets turned into steam,
expands through 5,000 times its volume,
and exits these nozzles at over a thousand meters per second.
This almighty force was powerful enough
to life man from earth.
Extraordinary energy created by chemistry.
So what I have here is effectively a small car
that will be rocket-propelled.
All right, so let's draw in some hydrogen peroxide.
I'm going to add this to these silver spheres.
This makes a lot of heat.
We can see the reaction is happening.
It is propelling the car down the table.
We see the hot gasses coming out,
and even though it's going slowly,
it's the same premise
that's used in Wendell Moore's rocket belt.
We can harness the power of a chemical reaction
and make all sorts of mechanical motion happen.
Science.
Just like the jet suit's team of engineers,
Wendell Moore used the most astonishing science of his day
to launch man into the air.
But in 1961, the bell rocket belt did just that.
Propelling its pilot around 32 feet high,
it reached a controlled 34 miles per hour.
But despite impressive aerial displays,
Wendell Moore's space-age invention
had one major limitation.
The bell rocket belt was not successful in the end
because its thrust-to-weight ratio
was just not good enough.
You only had about 20 seconds of flight time in this version,
and that was not practical in the battlefield.
But Wendell Moore had proven that
personal flight was possible.
It's just that the propulsion system
is what needed some tweaking.
Inventor Richard Browning
and his team of engineers
owe a huge debt to the early rocket-men,
who unknowingly ruled out
the inefficient chemical power of hydrogen peroxide
as a propulsion solution.
But another technology powered by kerosene stood out...
The micro-jet engine.
It didn't take us very long to really settle on jet engines
as a very likely good solution.
It's a very small, lightweight form of thrust relative
to how much it produces.
The power involved is enough to take that mass supersonic,
and the fuel in kerosene is actually extremely energy-dense,
and yet at the same time, not very volatile
and not really that prone to explosion.
It's actually pretty safe as fuels go.
At arguably the most prestigious aeronautical event
in the world,
80,000 spectators and top aircraft specialists
flock to Farnborough air show
to witness the latest innovations...
...including the fastest body-controlled jet suit
in the world, powered by over 315 pounds of thrust,
produced by five innovative micro-jets,
with the potential to one day fly 3,200 feet in the sky.
So, you come down here. We're going to stop about here.
Today, pioneering pilot Richard Browning
prepares to take flight.
You're going to take off and go that way.
- Yep, and you're going to go... - I'm going to go that way.
So, just how do these tiny jet engines
produce enough thrust to get Richard off the ground
and showboating for his captive audience?
If you can imagine, it's like having two Ferraris
at full power, acting on the human body.
That's the amount of power we've got going through us.
It will take some custom work and a healthy dose of kerosene
to make this impossible engineering a reality.
The micro-jet engine.
The tiny solution to a big problem
facing the revolutionary jet suit
and the audacious engineers behind it.
It didn't take us very long to really settle on jet engines
as a very likely good solution.
This kerosene-fueled powerhouse
is not only a comparatively safe option,
but an extremely forceful one, too.
What's expelled from the back of a jet engine is mainly air.
In this case, ejected at 1,600 miles per hour.
The super-powered process starts at the engine's front.
Air flows in through an inlet.
It's compressed, combined with the kerosene fuel,
and ignited, which produces a hot air flow or gas.
Forced through a nozzle, it rotates a turbine,
which helps ingest more air, generating immense thrust.
The team has spent months developing
customized jet engines,
or gas turbines, at their secret test facility.
So, this is the solution.
This represents the ultimate in gas turbine technology.
It spins about 117,000 rpm,
so we're looking at nearly 2,000 revolutions every second.
The gas is coming out the back at over 1,700 miles per hour
at about 700 degrees Celsius.
This is, in terms of brute power,
the highest power density
that you can get out of any particular kind of engine.
To put the power of these engines into perspective,
when we've got all of our engines integrated on the suit,
we're producing nearly a thousand horsepower.
And if you can imagine, it's like having two Ferraris
at full power acting on the human body.
That's the amount of power we've got going through us.
And that's all being produced by these very lightweight
gas turbines, each weighing no more than 1.85 kilos.
According to design engineer Sam Rogers,
this ingenious compact, lightweight solution
radically increases flying time.
The micro-turbine allows us to have a high level of thrust
for a much longer period of time.
We're now into the minutes rather than seconds.
It means we can have reasonable flight time
whilst still having a reasonable fuel efficiency
at the same time.
In little more than a year,
the team has gone from barely getting off the ground
to 4-minute-long flights.
But once airborne, they face another seemingly
impossible problem... steering.
You're not using wings, elevators, rudder.
We're got none of that.
We honestly didn't have an idea of how we were going to do this.
But just how do you control and steer over 1,000 horsepower
strapped to your body?
We honestly didn't have an idea of how we were going to do this.
A solution to their seemingly impossible problem
lies with the innovators of the past.
The space & rocket center in Huntsville, Alabama...
The home of America's first space program.
Veteran astronaut general Bob Stewart has spent
almost 300 hours in space.
Stewart was the first active-duty army pilot
to ever make a space flight.
When you're there, it's a complete sense of freedom.
You can have lunch on the ceiling,
you can lift huge weights, you can get on the side wall
and jump through the middle of the cabin
and try to grab peanut M&Ms as you go.
However, working in space
can also be a dangerous business.
This is mission control Houston.
The hatch is now open.
Astronauts often had to conduct repairs
outside the safe confines of the shuttle...
Mark, we got about 60 to go.
60 centimeters.
...and were tethered to prevent them from floating away,
at the cost of maneuverability.
The primary problem with being tethered in space
is that restriction.
I want to go out here to fix something,
and my tether is 3 feet too short,
and I'm sitting here so close, and yet so far.
You get to thinking, "what if I could figure some way to do"
without that tether, so that I'm no longer constrained?"
Yeah, that's it, and you can head toward the airlock.
In 1984, NASA engineer Charles E. Whitsett
came up with a solution that would free up the astronauts
and allow them to make untethered flights
outside the craft,
an invention that could help out the jet suit team,
known as the manned maneuvering unit, or M.M.U.
With this machine, we could fly freely,
and it is just the most delightful flying machine
that I have ever encountered.
It is the easiest thing I have ever operated.
I told the people on the ground
that I could thread a needle with this thing.
It allowed Bob Stewart and his fellow astronauts
to make the first-ever untethered space walk.
Good boy.
Thank you for bringing me home.
The M.M.U. Gave astronauts complete control
in the most unforgiving of environments.
If I want to roll the vehicle,
I roll it with this axis right here,
just with those fingertip-type motions.
If I want to pitch it, it's a rotation like this.
So, by combinations of these movements,
I can make the machine do anything
I want to as far as the attitude that I'm in.
If I want to go somewhere, I do that with my left hand...
The translational hand controller.
And it is a push-in-the-direction-you-want-
to-go type of control.
This would back me up, this would go forward,
this slide me to the right, slide me to the left,
and push me up or down.
This mind-blowing maneuverability
was down to precision thrust control.
Three thrusters located on each of the suit's eight corners
were oriented at different angles,
producing intricate and effortless steering.
26 pounds of nitrogen
provided propulsion for a six-hour flight.
I felt very relaxed in this thing,
and it was like sitting in an easy chair.
After three space shuttle missions,
NASA retired the M.M.U.
It makes me sad to see
that NASA made the decision to discontinue it.
And about six of us guys went to the bar
and had a beer and cried about it
because it's a lovely flying machine.
Though successful, ultimately untethered flights in space
were deemed too risky.
But the M.M.U. Will forever remain an icon of space flight.
When you reach far and you try to grasp things
so far beyond your capability, and you make it work,
that is a great, great feeling.
Richard Browning and his team are familiar
with that sense of triumph.
It's exciting and exhilarating and certainly focused the mind.
They'll draw inspiration from the revolutionary ideas
behind the M.M.U. To launch man into the future.
Much like the manned maneuvering unit of the '80s,
Richard Browning and his team
are also directing thrust to maneuver their jet suit.
But unlike the historic M.M.U., it's the pilot who moves,
or vectors, the engine's nozzles to give precise control.
To our surprise, what started to bear fruit
was not the idea of individually
controlling the throttles of each engine.
It was not vectoring them with adjustable nozzles.
It was actually vectoring them using your arms.
The geometry of those arm mounts is very, very specific,
and suddenly, it unlocked a huge amount of stability and control.
It feels entirely planted.
The solution is to have three main points of thrust
to form a stable tripod of air.
All five engine nozzles are fixed.
Those on the arms can be adjusted by simple movements,
creating a stable three-point vector control system
unique to the jet suit.
So, this is the solution that we've found worked best,
creating that three respective controls.
So, one, two, and then three on the rear.
And then between those three,
you balance all of those thrust vector.
For example, to lose altitude, you flare out the engines,
which are operating at 100% all the time,
and it will reduce your vertical thrust vector
and you will descend.
As you bring the arms in,
you're increasing your vertical thrust vector,
and you'll start to gain altitude.
And then very small changes in those thrust vectors
are enough to actually initiate roll or sliding side to side.
And it's all to do with weight-shifting
and thrust vector control.
Maneuvering these cutting-edge jets
is finessed for hours above the safety above water.
Shadowing a nimble jetski proves the perfect way
to fine-tune this skillful control.
But with any flight, the stakes are high.
It's critical that pilot Richard knows all five engines
are operating smoothly.
Engineer Alex Wilson is facing this communication challenge.
When you're flying along at 30 miles an hour,
10 feet above the ground, it's quite important you're able
to monitor the amount of fuel that's left in your tank.
It's quite a critical thing.
You don't want to drop out of the sky
because you've run out of fuel.
Alex and the team's solution
wouldn't look out of place in a Sci-Fi movie.
The jet suit employs the latest engine control unit engineering.
State-of-the-art electrical systems monitor
and control each engine to optimize efficiency.
An ultra-lightweight carbon helmet and visor
with built-in display are wirelessly linked to the suit,
constantly updating the pilot with engine and fuel data.
The control board is the brains of the whole system.
That monitors all of the five engines' data
so that you can package this into the most important
vital systems information to send up to the heads-up display
so Richard can monitor his temperature,
his rpm, most importantly, his fuel systems
so he knows how much fuel he's got left.
So head-up display.
All right, so this is a new one, where we've taken...
Alex is continuously developing
the electrical systems.
Do you want to try it on?
Yeah, I do.
He's currently testing improvements
to the heads-up display...
So, how does it feel now?
It feels perfectly normal. It's really nice, yeah.
...mind-blowing technology first used by fighter pilots.
All vital information is projected
in front of the pilot's eyes. - This solution is brilliant
because it's focused right in front of you.
So, I can stare right ahead, I can look wherever I'm flying,
and then still be able to see all of my engine systems
in real time without needing to focus.
And it just overlays it over my normal vision.
Without this head's-up display,
this whole venture would be so much more dangerous.
It's like flying a plane without a cockpit.
But to stay at the cutting-edge of new technology,
the whole suit must also be developed to the Max.
When working on something as advanced
and futuristic as a jet suit,
we need a manufacturing process that can live up to that.
And will the team's showcase flight rise to
its impossible challenge?
It's happening. He's about to take off.
Farnborough in Southern England...
...where innovative engineers...
Okay, I'm good.
...are showcasing their phenomenal jet suit
at one of the world's greatest air shows.
It's pretty special every time I fly this
anywhere, really, even in testing.
But to do it in Farnborough, the home of British aviation
and in front of a big crowd and on a runway
where so many other amazing aircraft are flying,
it's exciting and exhilarating and certainly focused the mind.
It has taken hundreds of hours of testing
to get to this stage.
Throughout the 15-month process,
evolving the suit has been vital.
Countless design alterations have created massive challenges
for design engineer Sam Rogers.
Bringing the flight suit to life
really wouldn't be possible
without a very reactive manufacture process.
Some of the main challenges are to be able to test
and iterate very, very quickly,
and keeping ahead of anyone else who might be developing
a similar technology is very beneficial.
If the jet suit's team is to keep ahead of the game,
they need a super-fast build technique.
When working on something as advanced and futuristic
as a jet suit, we need a manufacturing process
that can live up to that.
Fortunately, one of history's engineers
can provide the solution.
In 1983, American Chuck hull
came up with stereolithography...
...an extraordinary layering process
which focused a beam of ultraviolet light
onto liquid to form solid structures.
The value to that is you can see your design errors,
you can get feedback, you can change it quickly
and have another one.
Hull's innovation would evolve
into what is known as 3-d printing,
a game-changing invention
that is now allowing the jet suit's engineers
to build the impossible.
The starting point is selective laser sintering,
or S.L.S., an efficient process
used to prototype new parts in plastic.
We used the nylon s.L.S. Process
to test-fit some of the arm mounts,
and then if we're happy with the fit,
then we'll move over and build this in metal,
because the metal process is significantly more expensive
than building something in polymer.
Printing in metal involves trailblazing engineering.
A computer-generated design is brought to life
by layering powdered titanium in the metal sintering machine.
So, in here, we have the receptacle
where the powder is stored.
At the bottom of this,
there's a plunger-type mechanism that will rise,
and this will cause the powder level to rise at the top here.
This mechanism, called the recoater arm, ,
will then drag a layer of powder over the build plate.
This very thin layer will then be scanned with the laser.
Today, the lab is prototyping
some new, intricate designs.
The laser operates at 3,034 degrees Fahrenheit,
instantly melting each minute layer of titanium.
The layer thickness depends on the material.
This can range from 20 microns to 40 microns.
20 microns is 20,000ths of a millimeter thick.
Once melted, another fine layer of titanium powder
is dragged across to repeat the process.
This precision layering builds a complex design
in one single structure.
Detailing on this micro-turbine housing
would simple not be possible with conventional manufacturing.
And that's how it would look like once it's completed.
This will comprise of about 5,000 layers
and probably take about two days to build this part.
3-d printing speed
and seemingly impossible detailing
are making the unlikely dream
of the gravity-defying jet suit a reality.
It really makes a huge difference
on top of what we would be able
to do with standard manufacturing methods.
It really removes the limits of what we can create
and design for the flight suit.
But with the aeronautical community watching,
will this 3-d-printed, gravity-defying jet suit
rise to the challenge?
At Farnborough air show,
Richard Browning makes final preparations for a flight
that must impress the aeronautical community.
If getting off the ground safely wasn't tough enough,
today's routine is choreographed with the team truck.
Of course, you know, when you've got a truck coming towards you
at quite a speed, you know, you've got to have good control
and make sure that at no time
do you ever even consider moving in front of that truck.
It's happening. He's about to take off.
Whoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!
Finally, the jet suit is launched...
...propelled by five miniature jet engines.
Come on, Richard. Come on, Richard.
Encased in cutting-edge materials,
Richard's seemingly impossible flight
rockets to 30 miles per hour.
It's a daredevil climax...
Whoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!
...completed with pinpoint accuracy.
It's great. I mean, it's an amazing venue
to be flying around in.
Everything ran very well, felt smooth.
Yeah, it's really good, actually.
Very pleased indeed.
The personal jet suit's
successful Farnborough debut
will ensure they land firmly on the world stage.
As an aerospace engineer, it's phenomenal.
It's the ultimate project.
To be building these systems, wearing them and flying them...
It's just a dream come true.
For this ambitious aeronautical team,
the sky's the limit when it comes to impossible engineering.
Being able to actually touch
and hold this machinery is something that
I've always really wanted to do from when I was very young.
And to be able to actually get up close to it,
feel it, see how it works is a real privilege.
This system is unlike any of
the human flight systems we've seen before.
Controlling all of the thrust,
having it directly onto your arms
is just so much more exciting and so much more inspiring.
By building on the work
of the pioneers of the past,
overcoming huge challenges,
and pushing technology to even greater heights,
these engineers are succeeding
in making the impossible possible.
Some of the technology could well create
an entirely new direction for human mobility.
I think the suit opens up
a doorway to an entirely new world,
and I'd like to think our journey has been all about that.