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Personal Submarine Cruises SF Bay

Posted by michael on from the down-here-all-the-fish-is-happy dept.

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.'"

4 of 277 comments (clear)

  1. No Ballast? by zer0vector · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    --

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    Striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time that his next leap, will be the leap ho
  2. More cool Small Submarines by TheLurker · · Score: 5, Interesting

    For more cool homebuilt submarines, check out the Personal Submersables web page.

  3. build your own sub by paughsw · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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

  4. It is a common misconception that penguins. . . by kfg · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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