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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.
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!
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.
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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
In soviet russia dipshits read the article instead of posting stupid ass comments that could be answered be merely skimming it.
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
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?
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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?
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.
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.
"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."
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.
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.
I hope this guy is paying royalties to Tintin's friend : Professor Tournesol. He was definitely first
DZM
Now this is a "submersible sea plane"!
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
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.
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.
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
No need to be rude...
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!"What's happening is that when a comment moderation is reported to you (and also immediately after you submit a comment) the moderation total will reflect the +1 score that you get for being logged in, but the +1 (for a total of +2) karma bonus doesn't show up.
The moderation tallies are actually correct when you look at the lists of comments--you get the bonuses to which you're entitled. If you check your user profile, the correct values are reported there as well. So the system isn't really 'horribly broken', it's just a bit flaky. Someone will fix it eventually. In the meantime, you're not just here for the karma, are you? You just want to contribute in a positive way to the discussion, so don't sweat the totals.
I've noticed this as well. Perhaps the ol' Slashcode isn't up to snuff anymore? Or maybe the number of users is starting to put a strain on the system. I don't have to make multiple retries; I find that waiting a minute for the submission to go through works. If it's not worth waiting a minute to say, it's not worth saying, right?
Aside: I know this is offtopic. I am posting without karma bonus so I'm a smaller target for moderators. ;)
~Idarubicin
Ah, no. Air is compressible until approaching the speed of sound - which is why the speed of sound is what it is. That's also why there is a "shock wave" - since the air is not able to get out of its own way, and is also why it was originally believed that one couldn't travel faster than sound (though it was obvious that there were objects doing so, such as meteors, etc.). Approaching the speed of sound the induced drag rises rapidly - flying through that speed and continuing supersonic required gaining an understanding of how to reduce that drag (the "Coke bottle" shape of some aircraft designed during the 50's was one technique), and also gaining an understanding that the lift characteristics and center-of-lift point would shift - attention to design insured that this point did not deviate farther from the center-of-gravity than the flight control abilities of the time (i.e. - the pilot) could reasonably handle - think about the moment arm becoming greater as the difference between those two points increases. Also, it got much easier as we learned to build engines that could provide greater thrust.