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Personal Submarine Cruises SF Bay
LandSonar writes "Graham Hawkes, the guru of the submarine design business, tried out his new submersible sea plane yesterday in SF Bay. Called the 'Deep Flight Aviator'. Article and cool pictures. This craft doesn't use ballast like traditional subs. Flys more like a plane. 'It looks like something NASA might build or the Blue Angels might fly.'"
I was hoping for something more like Sky-Diver from the old UFO series!
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
Didn't NASA already build a space shuttle that traveled above and below the water? If I remember correctly it only made a single underwater trip...
"Good things don't end with eum, they end with mania or teria." - H. Simpson
tcpa SUX!!!!
I was a little disappointed to see that the term "fly" seems to describe how it moves through the water, rather indicate the capabilities of a submersible flying boat... Now that would be cool!
Does it function above water or is this just an analogy
"We have got to make Stan understand the importance of voting, because he'll definitely vote for our guy." - South Park
So, if it's homemade, any chance of getting the plans or trying to figure it
out? I've got a friend who can mold carbon fiber, I wouldn't mind taking a
crack at building one or even a lesser version. How cool would it be to have
one of these?
SealBeater
-- Its survival of the fittest...and we got the fucking guns!!!
I didn't read the article but I saw this Submarine on TechTV last night. Pretty cool. Will cost approx $15,000. Now some people will have to make a choice between buying an over the surface boat or the sub...
The guy said they only used 2 engineers and lot of computer aided design to keep the costs low instead of hiring 50 engineers... It didn't seem to move very fast drifting nice and slow... It is supposed to go for as long as 8 hours on single battery charge and can go 1500 feet deep or something like that....
excuse spelling/gramattical mistakes, if any
If the submarine doesn't use ballast to maintain its depth, it must always be in motion to stay at a depth away from equilibrium. Assuming it is positively bouyant (it floats) the motion of the water over its dive planes would be the only force holding it underwater. This seems a bit limited to me, since you'd never be able to stop and enjoy the view underwater. It's probably because I'd be more interested in the stuff sitting on the bottom of the ocean, rather than the things moving through it, which appears to be the point of the sub.
----
Striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time that his next leap, will be the leap ho
When I'm in a submarine, I don't want anything exciting to happen.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
"tried out his new submersible sea plane"
Not quite...it might feel like a plane in the water, but it's not a submersible sea plane.
Oh, you mean like the same people who do it now? What about me, average joe six-pack? When can I go dive down that there Marianas Trench? I want to see the Giant Squid in it's native environment and stop the Discovery Channel from doing anymore of those specials where they don't find the damn thing...again!. Is this deep sea diving for the masses, or just an upgrade for those who already do it?
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
The article makes a nice mention how 75% of the earth is covered in water. Looks like the ocean is one of the last [easy] frontiers, though will the moon be more practicle? This thing looks like the ship in Star War Episode 1.
Back on topic, I would wonder how deep this version can go. It mentions the depth of a squid of around 1500 feet. The article also reports a second version that will be able to comb the bottom of the ocean. I imagine that will look more like a 747.
What was the name of that bad star-trek like show that was set in the ocean?
--------
Free your mind.
Kickstart
WOW Seaquest is coming true.. I wonder if it comes with an ultra smart dolphin who has a translater hooked to it so i can have conversations with it.
Damn I completely forgot about that show before i saw those pictures...
Who makes you Sig?
SF Bay? Here I thought we were talking about a Flying Sub
Surely I'm not the only one old enough to remember "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea"? (Que sonar pings and violin intro...
The lengths some people will go to...
Lewis and Clark's trek through the Northwest Passage.
All I can say is: What?
I wondered why that sub had autodesk written all over it. A little googling and here is the reason: Inventor
IOException - Can't Speak
According to thei creator's website, they are planning on creating Deep Flight II, which they hope to pilot to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, some 38,000 feet down. But wouldn't the intense pressure and high viscosity of the water at that depth make it nearly impossible to operate on the flight principle? I don't know the first thing about high pressure underwater maneuvering, so perhaps someone else can tell me why this will (or won't) work?
For more cool homebuilt submarines, check out the Personal Submersables web page.
Seeing it gives me a new fevered mantra:
Gotta make money....
Gotta make money....
To mail me, remove the 'mailno' from my email addy.
"Yeah. It smells, too..."
I bet somebody could cook up a hilarious caption for this picture.
"The bionic dorsal fins aren't what scares me, it's the frickin laser beam attched to it's head!"
"Derp de derp."
tried out his new submersible sea plane yesterday in SF Bay.
When I read this, I thought it was an airplane that could turn itself into a submarine! Now that would be cool... you could fly to an interesting spot, and then dive into the water.
Given that this thing is intended to glide like airplane, except in water, I wonder what it would take to make it able to fly in air? Probably a lot of engine power that it doesn't have, and a lot less weight. :(
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
One of the createst commics of all time: Tintin!
"The ultimate personal transportation device, 65 meters (213 ft.) in length with 470 square meters (5000 sq. ft.) of interior space on 4 levels. As proposed, the submarine would constitute the single largest private undersea vehicle ever built."
This would work out great for me, as anything I tried to fly would end up in the damned water anyway.
that they sell those things to the right people, or at least screen the buyers.
I don't want any terrorist group getting a hold of one of those.
If anyone from San Francisco (or California, for that matter) is looking to see the bottom of the SF Bay, I can help you. I have plenty of rope and quick-dry concrete, and I'll be happy to help you experience the natural wonders only the sea can offer.
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
"They wear khaki coveralls with lots of zippered pockets"
Okay, so you're 150 ft under the water when you're homemade sub springs a leak. And what are you wearing to save you? Khaki coveralls. Sure hope they have something helpful in one of those zippered pockets.
If it looks like a plane, and moves like a plane.. it's probaly a sub
This team at Virginia Tech, (I used to be on it) are the three time world champs for a human powered submarine. Check them out, lots of cool videos, and documentation. www.hps.vt.edu
This thing is not as original as it seems.
If you know the comic books of Tintin, there is one album where Tintin and his friend (ship cpt. Haddock I believe) explore the sea in a shark-shaped submarine. It has very much the same shape as this thing, including the windows that have the shape of a half sphere.
So, one of the co-inventors is Belgian comic designer Hergé. And Possibly Leonardo da Vinci too, for that matter.
A couple of issues that don't seem to be addressed in the article:
They must have buoyancy control nearly equal to that of submarines because the amount of energy required using "flight surfaces" to maintain depth would increase hugely as a function of depth. Unlike in true flight, where it doesn't require more energy to maintain an altitude of 2000 feet than 1000, it takes incomparably more energy to maintain a depth of 2000 feet compared to 1000 if you're not using buoyancy control. I'd venture to suggest it's impossible.
Also, in flight a wing uses reduced air pressure above the curved top of the wing surface (Bernoulli's Principle) for most of its lift. Does anyone know if this effect applies in water? Intuitively it seems like it would not.
Martin Caiden wrote a book about just such an "underwater plane" probably 40 years ago....
Water is for all practical purposes uncompressible. It's viscosity at depth will still be similar to what it is at sea level. By the same token, high pressure won't change the aero/hydrodynamics of the craft. Lift/dive force is still going to be the difference between the pressures on the top and bottom of the 'wing'. They will need to design the craft to withstand those pressures and that will change how it looks and handles, but the rules of the game won't change.
Joe
I hope this guy is paying royalties to Tintin's friend : Professor Tournesol. He was definitely first
DZM
I'm guessing that the exact same aerodynamic principals apply to absolutely any type of fluid. As the pressure and relative boyancy changes, the relative speeds at which flight is possible also change.
Liquid hydrogen, air, water, super-dense water, molten lead, just about anything could be used for flight assuming it's not magnetic or other unusual properties.
This underwater glider is the exact opposite of the Mars glider proposals - mars has a very thin atmosphere, but it's theoretically possible to build a plane that would work for efficient exploration on that planet. Of course, the wings would have to be huge and takeoff speed would have to be about 400 miles an hour (see various Science-Fiction books [eg: Venus Prime series] and the X-Plane flight simulator).
It's even possible to go "supersonic" underwater, ie: those rumoured super-cavitating torpedoes that the Russians were developing. Above a certain speed, the wake caused by the nosecone can create a partial vacuum - if you design your rocket-propelled torpedo to "fly" in that vacuum you can go very, very fast relatively efficiently.
Now _that_ would be slick underwater transport.
Lately, Slashdot's moderation system has been horribly broken (mismatch of scores reported to me versus what's in the actual thread) and doing any kind of a submit takes several retries and usually takes minutes to complete.
What's going on here! This sucks!
Why bother.
--way to go GEEKS! That's one nifty little bicycle ya got there!
Now this is a "submersible sea plane"!
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
F/A-18's look way nicer than that.
at the DesktopLinux Summit will be me, slapping you in the head, hopefully jarring the Asshole Molecules in your brain.
p.s. the process described above won't put you in any better situation to get a goddamn job. but man, it sure will be funny.
reminds me of that tintin book...
"Graham Hawkes?'
Graham: Yes?
"This is Osama Bin Laden"
Graham: Oh, hello Osama! My fellow countrymen sure hate you, but we don't judge anyone out here in California. You were just trying to express your opinions and -
Osama: Whatever Graham, how much for a few of those small submarines? I feel the need to 'express my opinion' again.
Looks to me more like Thunderbird 2!
A cheap, small, personal submarine, capable of carring two people--or one person and 200lbs of drugs from Mexico or Canada into the U.S.A. (or 200lbs of explosive, or ...)
Watch the U.S. Coast Guard build lots of sonar installations. Watch the ecologists sue the Coast Guard for what all that sonar does to the sea life.
Watch Congress outlaw personal submarines.
is this something they're taking down, or returning to its spot under a bridge.
About a month ago I was in a SF Bay area marina, checking my 5o5 was still on the trailer after a storm. When I saw two guys wheeling out two J shaped funnels. Turned out these were the crew compartment and they were off to be pressure tested in Texas, Houston I think. I knew what deep flight was but these were meant to be more civilised.
Personally I still prefer the original Deep Flight.
On a side note the bernoulli effect isn't much in use. It's more the angle of attack of the wings. Think diving planes not wings.
*IANAEngineer*
As I understand it, The Bends occur when the body of a diver is subject to the pressures exterted by water at depths. Breathing air is regulated by SCUBA gear such that the pressure increases to offset water pressure on the lungs. This increases the pressure of nitrogen gas in the blood, which expands when the pressure is released.
I have a feeling The Bends would not be a problem in a submersible, depending on one condition - internal air pressure is not raised to reduce pressure stress on the hull. At any great depth, water pressure is so great as to make the benefit of any reasonable air pressure increase negligable.
I think that the hull would simply be made strong enough to withstand the water pressure with internal air pressure remaining at sea level air pressure or thereabouts. In this case, the human body would not be subjected to pressure increases/decreases as the sub dives and ascends.
IIRC, military submarines do not change internal pressure when changing depth. Therefore the Bends are not the limiting factor of dive rate - what limits the rate for military subs is that the steel pressure hull cannot withstand rapid pressure changes without contorting dangerously.
If someone made a deep-sea diving sub with a pressure hull made of a material very resistant to rapid change in pressure, there would be no theoretical limit to dive rate, even with a human inside. *As long as the hull is strong enough to allow constant internal pressure*
I may be very very wrong, but this is my observation.
Only $15,000 to be trained as a sub-pilot?! And cost so far $1 million?! Looks like I'll have to stay content with a snorkel, mask and fins....
"skate the web"
Looks neat, but theres so little room! Even the most non-claustrophobic people would get worried after being far under water for long periods of time without being able to move around at all.
If they made it into more of a compartment (like subs today use), I think it would become much more practical.
This is one of the most obvious-yet-so-long-in-the-conception inventions I've seen. It really is brilliant. Air is a fluid (from an engineering standpoint) just like water. Why not fly through the water just like you do through the air. I especially liked the dirigible/plane analogy in the article. Brilliant work!
Jacques Piccard and Robert S. Dietz wrote the book on deep water expeditions: Seven Miles Down, The Story of the Bathyscaph Trieste. They predicted the development of small, personal, deep-water, diving-plane instruments. However they cautioned against ultra-deep use, such as at Marianas. They tested in San Diego Bay, among other places.
can't fly. You even see them refered to as "flightless" birds in the text books.
The fact is that they don't fly * in air.*
Watch a penguin "in flight" and this idea is just as obvious as flying machines in air are from watching a hawk soar. I'm only surprised that it's taken this long for someone to actually go ahead and build one.
Nor is the concept unique to the water. There was an experimental plane some decades ago that was a zeppelin shaped like a flying wing. It was heavier than air, but only by a matter of pounds and flew by the lift produced by its wing shape, but was nonetheless dirigable.
I can find no reference to this plane on the web (surprise, not everything is recorded on the web, go figure) but New Yorker magazine once did a piece on it.
The basic principles of buoyancy and lift apply to any fluid medium. All the rest is just commentary and you can find "planes," "zeppelins," "blimps," and even "helicopters" in the natural underwater world as inspiration. Just as you can in air.
KFG
I don't know much about subs, but I've played a lot of that game pirates. I wonder if I built one, painted a jolly roger on it and strapped on some homebuilt rockets if I could become a privateer for the U.S. and earn some bounty. Any o you landlubbers wanna follow me to davey joneses locker? arrrrrr
Does anyone remember a Tintin comic with the exact same type of sub? I think it was Red Rackam's Treasure.
"The maiden voyage of Deep Flight Aviator in San Francisco Bay, they said, ranks with the Wright brothers' flight at Kitty Hawk and Lewis and Clark's trek through the Northwest Passage."
Yeah, and I come from Soviet Russia. The Northwest passage doesn't exist, English.
Since when did news paper policy include 'making shit up'?
... in a 1991 science-fiction book, called "The Steel Albatross" written by an ex-astronaut (here, a Google search for it).
That Steel Albatross worked like a glider, using ballast to gain velocity or emerge, and was used as a spy sub. You can imagine the sense of deja-vu when i saw the article's photos...
The pilot controlled it using a PC... He had to reboot once, before the story was over, of course
No need to be rude...
Can we keep a healthy language over here?
There's little script kiddies all over the place!
Huh? That thing looks a little like the Gungan Bongo from Episode I. Hopefully, the flying sub doesn't come standard with an annoying muppet.
--
Disclaimer: The above statement probably includes half-truths, because real truth is too complicated.
And it brought memories...
Stingray...
Marine Boy...
Anyone else remember that great anime series from the 60's? Kind of like Speed Racer underwater. Of course THEIR subs could also fly through the air as well as underwater and had freakin laser beams too. And that Neptina was one hot mermaid chick. Time to get back to working on that OxyGum patent...
Looked at the photos! And in San Francisco of all places.. Hmmm.. Is it powered by linux? Maybe the Gay Linux conspiracy has some merit fellows?
I forgot about that part :D
-thebigmacd
Yes it does, the air is thinner up there.
it takes incomparably more energy to maintain a depth of 2000 feet compared to 1000 if you're not using buoyancy control.
A submarine displaces its own volume of water, and has a lift proportional to the difference between its weight and the weight of that volume of water at that depth. The density of the sea water hardly varies between the surface and the bottom (the pressure goes wayyyyy up, but water is largely incompressible), so the buoyancy is nearly the same.
Therefore the amount of energy needed is largely the same also; independent of altitude, for a fixed volume submarine, since you're only really fighting buoyancy to go down.
Also, in flight a wing uses reduced air pressure above the curved top of the wing surface (Bernoulli's Principle) for most of its lift. Does anyone know if this effect applies in water? Intuitively it seems like it would not.
Gee, I don't know, mister; ever heard of a propeller? That's a set of wings that rotate under water. Get a clue.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"I was 20 years old and watched the Challenger accident live. Your lame attempt at humor missed.
How many people do they actually expect will be able to ride in that thing without going spastic? The very thought of putting myself 100 feet underwater in that thing sends me into overload.
-----
"Cogito Eggo Sum: I think, therefore, waffle."
My uncle bought an old Soviet Diesel (circa 1950 design) back in 1994 for scrap. It cost him only 25 thousand and he was gonna bring it here and turn it into a floating restaurant, but Uncle Sam said fuck no so he sold it to the S. Koreans for 500 thousand and they rebuilt it into a museum piece (I think). I heard the retro fit cost them about 2 million. So I dont think a personnal sub is silly or out of the question. 2 million is a lot of money, but I bet a cheaper less accurate rebuild could have cost them under a million and would have been more than workable.
I worked with these guys in high school up into this summer. H.O.T and Autodesk did some agreement with my high school where we got copies of Autodesk Inventor for free in exchange for drawing parts for the sub. It was a big PR thing for Autodesk. My classmate helped design the rudder system (Hawkes called it as fine as a "swiss watch") and me and a couple buddies modeled the mechanical flight system/joystick. I still have the Inventor files(no inventor though :( ) My friend who made the rudder eventually went to UCB and stayed on with the sub crew, designing and modelling parts. He got me a job with H.O.T's sister company which makes remote control gun platforms. :) Last I saw the sub it was about 80% complete. It's crazy they got it done...there was a joke around the gun company that it would never be finished. Hopefully I will go back and work for them this summer :-). Maybe I can get a ride...lol
Is that Bill Gates in cockpit #1?
Blue1000_thrusts-Caplet
SF Brown Cucumber Seeker
GayNautilous
In The Navy...
400fathom-homo
two fags in a pod
and my favorite...
HomoJet - "Our mission is to explore the depths of Gaya's vents *stretching* from the gaseous crusty ventral deep-ocean environments to the many excretions on the surface."
Just toss the parts into your tub. No assembly required. :-)
And yet...
Q: Why are the dolphins off FL so smart?
A: They got a new teacher
Q: What's worse than finding broken glass in baby food?
A: Finding astronaut in your tuna.
No, that was a conventional propeller sub that just happened to look like a shark.
Woah.
Look at the fartboxes on the two men in that there submersible dildo!
All you lurking sub-mariners know why!
I guess this has nothing to do with going to see the Submarine Races at Stanley Park in Vancouver????
so will this help the drug trade?
I sure hope so, the prices i'm paying are outlandish.
make drugs not war.
I was ten years old and thought it was pretty cool. Especially all the cool jokes that came out in the weeks afterward.
What does NASA stand for?
Need Another Seven Astronauts!
What were Christa McAuliffes last words?
Whats this button do?
I better start packing my bags and my fudge; I'm headed to San Francisco!
I hope I can meet ol' Kike an' see if he'll gimme a ride on his next trip to the Gay BSDM Parade held annualy in San Francisco.
Oh Boy! My bisznatch is everyone's bisnatch, just letting you al' know.
Heh, am I the first to think of this joke?
nice project, however to aid geek appeal, the should have chicks in skin suits or somthing....oh wait this some San Fran Queen thing?
(fortunately, the original web page is not up anymore.)
Where I come from, a Blue Angel ain't an airplane.
Seaquest is coming true.. I wonder if it comes with an ultra smart dolphin who has a translater hooked to it so i can have conversations with it.
I wonder if it comes with an "elite" password cracker otherwise known as Lucas Wolenczak. Yes, the man who could guess your password, no matter how complex, in three tries or less.
Be aware ladies, despite his youthful looks, he's actually 29!
I hate to burst your "bubble," but from the standpoint of aerodynamics, air behaves as an incompressible fluid until you get close to the speed of sound. So air and water work in much the same way at typical speeds.
The best diplomat I know is a fully activated phaser bank.
-- Scotty.
Live as in at the Cape or live as in sittin in front of the tube?
Either way, big deal. A good percentage of the population saw the event. Spare us the posin.
Yeah Tux...
before someone connected my penguin observation to Linux.
Let's just say that "Blue Screen of Death" takes on a whole new meaning 1000 feet below the surface of the sea.
Would *you* risk it?
KFG
Perhaps slashcode is not tolerating a longer delay between Perl scripts...not a Perl coder, so I dunno...but I've been cancelled out of a couple MetaMod submissions in the last two weeks as well.
db
Cig:
ôô
Like the moon, no one has been there since.
Lay off the liquor, gramps.
in water the same aerodynamic rules apply to a degree. the curvature of the wing still causes the air/water to travel a greater distance over the curved top of the wing, therefore moving faster than tha air/water on the flat bottom of the wing. this creates the low pressure area on top of the wing. -- I would consider turning the wing over for underwater flight. Then the wing could assist a bit with bouyancy controll(assuming the sub tends to float "out of the box"). This becoming a mute point if you want to remain stationary at a fixed depth.
question: Is the water wing more efficient due to water density being a constant as opposed to air which can be compressed? Perhaps more lift but also more drag?
Knock off the fag jokes please! Ya gotta right to say what ya please but if I want to experience anti-gay rhetoric I'll go the "700 club" website.
Let's please not disparage types of people here.
Reminds me of the story of the Turtle. Very similar tactic, only over 200 years ago.
Suddenly, the hairy finger of a familiar monkey tapped me on the shoulder. It was time.--G. T.
by Anonymous Coward
'nuff said
SCUBA is the best thing you'll ever do with your clothes on.
/another/ $3000 for my USPA license and $5000 for my rig...*sigh* (not that tech dive gear is any cheaper)
nope, sorry, i have to argue with you on that one. i have SSI Deep Diver and PADI Nitrox certs; i'm working on Drysuit and Decompression so I can dive the doria next summer. i would have agreed with you on SCUBA being that much fun, but last summer i took a trip to SDLI...screw that, there is *nothing* you can do in the water that is anywhere near the rush you get stepping out onto 13,500 feet of air - i could see Long Island from manhattan to montauk. i still love SCUBA, but now I'm trying to scrape together
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
His New Yorker essay on the plane is one of my favorite bits of magazine writing. Obviously he was working on the book at the time too.
KFG
Knock off the fag jokes please!
Ah, c'mon, have a sense of humor! Of course, the jokes in question are really stupid, so maybe that's not such a good suggestion after all...
As a former U.S. Collegiate national skydiving champion and a former professional diver; and as the President of U.S. Submarines, Inc., I can tell you that having your own personal luxury submarine is way cooler, and way more fun than diving or skydiving - at least when you get a little older.
Cruising the depths with a gorgeous babe, some champagne, good music and the uw lights going simply cannot be beat. It's an amazing experience. See ussubs.com
He's not the one trolling you. I am. Reposting his information does nothing to keep me from replying to you. In fact, the only thing is does do is confirm again and again that you:
1- are troll-able, at the same time you mock other people for replying to your trolls.
2- are immature. like a six year old. although, I had guessed that already.
3- are borderline stalker, for even tracking that poor kid down. Remember, he's probably just an immature kid like yourself.