Dr. Fringe 
Anyone who has seen the Avenger’s films has probably thought the same thing: “Man, I wish I could get my hands on one of those suits.”
No, I’m not talking about Black Widow’s skin-tight stealth suit, or Thor’s medieval-esque pauldrons of armor, I’m talking about the ordnance-covered, bullet-deflecting, skyrocketing suit that Iron Man wears.
Probably one of the most awe-inspiring science-fiction inventions, the Iron Man suit stands above most of the other fictional options, likely due to the fact that it almost seems doable. With enough money, ingenuity, and time, one could hypothetically make a suit capable of at least some of the feats that Iron Man’s is, and amazingly enough, someone has!
Or rather, two people did. One, a well known science advocate and host of the television show Mythbusters by the name of Adam Savage, and Richard Browning, an ex-marine from the company Gravity, worked together to create what would appear to be the closest rendition of the legendary Iron Man suit to date.
Richard Browning first made headlines when he developed a jetpack that gave one the ability to fly to heights as high as 12,000 feet using five mini-jet engines, and reach a maximum speed of 32 mph. According to Browning, his initial idea to develop the suit was not inspired by the movie, but he confesses, there were some “wonderful parallels.”
We agree, Browning, and so did Adam Savage.
Co-host of the infamous show Mythbusters, Adam caught wind of the flying contraption, and decided that he would contribute to the invention by building it a corresponding Iron-man titanium suit.
Titanium, an expensive, high-strength, low density material, is difficult to work with, but with the assistance of a specialized titanium 3-D printer, the Tony Stark-like Savage managed to build a fully functional bullet-proof suit that looks almost identical to the Iron Man suit from the movies.
“If Tony Stark was not fictional and he was making an Iron Man suit right now, this is precisely how he would do it, and this is the exact technology he’d be using.” Said Savage.
Unlike Stark, however, Savage is a safety-first kind of guy, and decided that Browning, an experienced jetpack user, should be the one to test the suit and jetpack combination, to see if their collaboration had been fruitful.
And to the amazement of onlookers, Browning flew the titanium suit into the air, stayed in flight for a few minutes, and then landed safely, without falling over.
As clunky and awkward as he appeared when walking in the suit and jetpack combination, when Browning took flight, it was hard to spot the difference between the CGI of the Avengers film, and the reality that these two made possible.
Hopefully the suit will be available for purchase by the average citizen. It certainly seems like a lot of fun!
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