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Build Your Own Submarine
Nerobro writes "There's a group of geeks out there who are bound and determined to build their own submarines. In fact, there's a large group who have been successful. The most interesting is Cartsen Standfuss's CSSX-1. There is a mailing list, owners group and sizeable archive of information at psubs.org."
Impressive as the linked submarine is, it's just like a military boat: a steel cylinder. As useful as such a thing may be as a weapons platform, I can't imagine anybody riding in the thing for pleasure.
My own fantasy of a personal submarine comes from the Nautilus in 20000 Leagues Under the Sea. The most important feature: a glassed in drawing room, furnished with overstuffed chairs and oriental rugs, from which I can survey the unfolding panorama of the sea as I smoke seaweed cigars and sup on lobster tails whilst I plot my revenge on humanity.
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Structural failure leading to implosion!
Even at just 100 meters depth, you don't get much warning of a hull failure. One buckled plate becomes a total breach in about 1 second.
Deeper than 100 meters, I'm told that the water entering a breached hull hits you rather like a steam-hammer with most unpleasant results.
These things are great so long as you keep positive pressure (the difference between tin-can and crushed tin-can). However, keeping that pressure is probably defined as a 'blood-difficult' thing.
An automatic buyancy system is a great thing to have in an emergency unless the only thing it drags back to the surface is submariner soup
Fair play to this guy for having a go; he's definately got guts. I seem to remember that Germans used to be rather good at building these things.
As for homebuilt aircraft, barring structural failure, in an emergency you tend to have one major thing on your side: Time
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.