Richard Branson Announces Virgin Oceanic Submarine

It's the tripnaut! writes "Richard Branson has just revealed that he intends to build a vessel capable of exploring some of the deepest parts of the oceans around the world. The article further states: 'The sub, which was designed by Graham Hawkes, weighs 8,000 lbs and is made of carbon fiber and titanium. It has an operating depth of 37,000 ft and can operate for 24 hours unaided.'"

Comments

Oh, Sir. Branson

[yeshuawatso]

Sir. Branson, is there anything in science fiction you won't waste your billions trying to make into a commercial reality?

Re:Oh, Sir. Branson

[inKubus]

Sir Branson: *waving excitedly* "Next stop, the CENTER of the EARTH!"

Re:Oh, Sir. Branson

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Quite frankly, you may think what you want of Branson's endeavours, but at least he's trying to achieve new and exciting things. He'd make more money setting up a law firm, a hedge fund, or selling razors with 6 blades, but he pegs himself as a visionary and that's what visionaries do.

I say the world is better off with a Branson that Yet Another Businessperson [TM]...

Re:Oh, Sir. Branson

[kernelphr34k]

I sure hope he finds that giant octopus he speaks of.

Re:Oh, Sir. Branson

[Rik Rohl]

I hope not.

Re:Oh, Sir. Branson

[Z00L00K]

I agree, what he does is to keep a high profile with stunts like these, but it really improves the brand when he is involved in things that is more than just the usual TV commercial. Anyone can do a CGI with a fantasy these days using a pile of money, but putting that money into an event where you are actually achieving something real - or make a difference - then you do both your brand and the others involved a favor.

The submarine will hopefully provide additional knowledge.

"There are no failures, just more data".

Re:Oh, Sir. Branson

[Anonymous Coward]

I say the world is better off with a Branson than Yet Another Businessperson [TM]...

Hear, Hear!

Fixed it for you, but only because I'm nodding in agreement

Re:Oh, Sir. Branson

[buchner.johannes]

There are a couple of good talks about ocean exploration on TED, for instance http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/robert_ballard_on_exploring_the_oceans.html

Re:Oh, Sir. Branson

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Millionaire killing devices from the mind of Branson.

Re:Oh, Sir. Branson

[elfprince13]

Producing some good Sci-Fi?

Re:Oh, Sir. Branson

[Anonymous Coward]

I sure hope not! This guy reminds me of the (Sci-Fi) Tom Swift books I read as a kid. I'd love to be adopted by him. (and I'm almost 40)

Re:Oh, Sir. Branson

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn straight. He would have made a lot more money if he'd stuck to monetising the Virgin brand (rather than licensing it out), and stopped using his funds to prop up his aeroplane business. But that's not his style, and mad props go out to him to refusing to compromise his ideals for the sake of a few more billion that he doesn't need.

Re:Oh, Sir. Branson

[Anonymous Coward]

He couldn't even make the toilets work properly when he was running a train service in the UK. Fortunately, he has been kicked off.

Perhaps the problem arose because the people he associates with are so superior that they have no need for mere bodily functions.

Re:Oh, Sir. Branson

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, he is Clive SInclair with more money and a niftier beard.

Re:Oh, Sir. Branson

[Kozz]

Dear SLASHDOT:
What the FUCK have you done to the layout, styles and scripting on this god-forsaken site? I've tried both FF4 and IE8, but have the same problems:

• * hyperlinks in comments don't work, as if they've got an {onclick="return false} in them.
• * comments frequently do NOT show their moderation scores, and I have to keep opening ancestor comments until the scores are revealed.
• * The right-click context menu doesn't come up in FF4 unless I DOUBLE-RIGHTCLICK.
• * Sometimes when clicking on a comment (to expand from abbreviated mode), parent comments will be opened, and my window content scrolls, causing me to lose the original comment I was trying to read.
• * These <li> elements aren't displaying their bullet-points when previewing comments (and probably not after posting, either), so I've gotta stuff asterisks in front of each of them.

To be honest, I'm not one of those who has been carping about the new layout and design of Slashdot. I'm actually fine with that. But it's got to fucking work. Otherwise I'm ... oh fuck it. I'll probably come back anyhow. But you should know what a shitty job you've done of QA.

Moderators: us low-UID folks get a pass to rant once a year or so, don't we? Yeah, it's a bit vitriolic, but it's all truth.

Re:Oh, Sir. Branson

[countertrolling]

I was hoping this was some kind of new luxury underwater trans Atlantic service

Re:Oh, Sir. Branson

[Anonymous Coward]

Invisible +1 to your comment

Re:Oh, Sir. Branson

[Apocros]

Spot on for at least the first four points... seems like the break happened fairly recently too (this week?).

Re:Oh, Sir. Branson

[slackbheep]

Unable to spend my moderation points due to the witchcraft present in the current layout, but please accept my respect instead.

Re:Oh, Sir. Branson

[linuxwolf69]

Yeh, and here I just thought it was my computer refusing to click xkcd links yesterday... Glad to know it's not just me... :D

Re:Oh, Sir. Branson

[tom17]

"* The right-click context menu doesn't come up in FF4 unless I DOUBLE-RIGHTCLICK. "
This one annoys the HELL out of me. Took ages to discover it and, after many restarts, realise it's not my OS/Browser. Grrr

Re:Oh, Sir. Branson

[CProgrammer98]

ditto. I was going to ask if it was Yellow...

Re:Oh, Sir. Branson

[strength_of_10_men]

To add to this, list:

* I'm not sure if this is an existing bug but there's an inconsistency between the show/hide comment slider and the actual posts shown. I have the sliders set to -1 and it clearly says that ALL comments "FULL". However, I often find that I have to scroll to the bottom of the page and click "Get $X more comments" to actually show all the comments. Annoying.

* for some reason, I can't click the "Post Anonymously" button anymore. I just found this when I modded your comment up and wanted to add to the list.

* when I go to my account page, some of the menus are overlaying each other. It's just a mess.

I'm fine with the redesigned layout but for god's sake, I would expect this of amateurs. I wish the code could be edited wiki-style so that I could just go in and fix it instead of complaining.

Re:Oh, Sir. Branson

[Hatta]

Mark Slashdot.org as "Untrusted" in NoScript. Set your discussion style to "classic" in your user preferences. That will fix everything but the bullet point issue.

Re:Oh, Sir. Branson

[WindBourne]

I agree esp. about ol/ul.

Re:Oh, Sir. Branson

[sleigher]

I was too. Maybe he will figure out a way to make it go 500 mph and offer it as a service. Is it possible to go 500 mph underwater?

Re:Oh, Sir. Branson

[Captain Hook]

Ah ha, that got it, thanks

Re:Oh, Sir. Branson

[Anonymous Coward]

Unlike his megalomaniacally-named Virgin "Galactic", there is actual real technology and precedent for diving to 37000 feet. It's been done in the 1960s.

Re:Oh, Sir. Branson

[SteveFoerster]

Yes, and faster, through supercavitation.

Re:Oh, Sir. Branson

[istartedi]

A better lament against the pile of poo that web design has become, I cannot find. Bravo, sir.

Re:Oh, Sir. Branson

[psyclone]

All of those items affect FF 3.6 as well, except regular right-click still works.

Re:Oh, Sir. Branson

[hodet]

Agreed. The guy just crushes the game of life.

Re:Oh, Sir. Branson

[Ancantus]

I sent a bug report to them the on the slashcode site although I don't know if it took.

It seems the problem (which I think started a month ago) happens when your comment is replying to a comment that is 'minimized'. To click on links (or highlight text) within these buggy comments you have to keep clicking repeatedly on the persons comment, which maximizes each of its parent comments. Only when all parent comments are maximized does the Score show, and you can click/highlight the comment text with ease.

If your know of a place to submit a bug report that the slashdot people will listen, please tell cause I have been fed up with that bug for too long.

Re:Oh, Sir. Branson

[painehope]

Well, why are you complaining? A guy who made billions (mostly by pushing crap bands to idiotic "consumers" [aka sheep] and other socially useless endeavors, IIRC) is now spending his money on making cool tech toys (admit it - this is cool as shit; if it actually works, we're talking about a submarine that's light enough that my truck can tow it but can dive to the deepest reaches of that annoyingly unexplored [I think only something like 50% of the Earth's oceans have actually been explored, and I'm not sure what percentage have been mapped - I should know this, I've worked at Oil & Gas companies, but us IT guys are too busy working so that the guys who studied stuff like this can run their compute- and I/O-intensive applications], massive [covers almost 70% of the Earth's surface] series of puddles that is almost as much of an unexplored mystery to us Mars) rather than stupid shit (like Bill Gates and his quest to fund tribal warlords in Africa) or greedy shit (the last time I checked most billionaires were primarily concerned with making that extra hundred million that they treat like it's the missing puzzle piece that will bring them The Answer To Life, The Universe, And Everything Else). This is just cool, plain and simple. So is the fact that he's trying to make it economically feasible to use turbine/wind energy.

I think it's really cool that he's doing that rather than the above-mentioned things. Sure, it probably won't change the course of human history (or maybe it will - maybe we'll find a critter down there that has an extremely virulent disease as it's defense mechanism, and therefore creatures that prey on it have evolved a way to neutralize it...and from that we get the cure for cancer and/or AIDS; you never know what can spin off the kinds of scientific research that we'd end up doing if we could access the entirety if the ocean floor as easily as we can our sky - look at all the cool shit that's come about in the hundred-odd years since the Wright brothers, and I'm not just talking about missiles that can vaporize human flesh ten thousand times faster than mustard gas or whatever - hell, the turbines that this sub will be using probably wouldn't be as technologically advanced as they are if military applications hadn't been found for really fast transport of planes, various types of aquatic craft, and plain ole missiles; I'm not saying the uses to which military technology are put are always that shit-hot, but the trickle-down effect of the technology that's developed as world leaders continue to be paranoid, diplomatically-inept, corrupt, and downright evil would-be Masters Of The Universe is often pretty damn cool).

Okay, pardon that ramble. I need to take my medication. But you get my basic idea - he might be throwing money out the window, but it's a window that has some cool applications. And I wouldn't be responding to this if I hadn't been trying to find a way to send you a message that I agree with you about Clinton being a pretty cool president (from a response to one of my posts; note - I wouldn't be that proud of having Walmart based out of Arkansas, bro!).

Re:Oh, Sir. Branson

[Anonymous Coward]

My favorite has been how when I get the digests emailed to me daily, the subjects have HTML-style encoding, eg. &

Re:Oh, Sir. Branson

[coolmadsi]

Yeh, and here I just thought it was my computer refusing to click xkcd links yesterday... Glad to know it's not just me... :D

I saw that happening and figured a workaround to just drag the link to the '+' button that creates a new tab.

Re:Oh, Sir. Branson

[coolmadsi]

* The right-click context menu doesn't come up in FF4 unless I DOUBLE-RIGHTCLICK.

I saw that happening yesterday, right click wasn't working on the text of comments, but it worked fine in the whitespace to the left (although is mostly useless there)

Re:Oh, Sir. Branson

[linuxwolf69]

Wow... learn something new every day... Thanks for the tip :D. I was just typing them in the address bar manually.

Re:Oh, Sir. Branson

[MoonBuggy]

What you say is true, but I'd take a step back for a minute, say "screw the brand", and remind everyone that what he's doing is fucking cool. This is sci-fi territory, the stuff we read about and wish we could try one day. I'd say it's a much greater inspiration to see someone using his billions to do all the amazing things that he dreamed of doing as a kid (not to mention making some of them possible for people who aren't billionaires, too), rather than using his billions to make further billions, and so on ad infinitum.

Re:Oh, Sir. Branson

[RDW]

I was hoping for this:

http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2004-04/trans-atlantic-maglev

'Neutrally buoyant vacuum tunnel submerged 150 to 300 feet beneath the Atlantic's surface and anchored to the seafloor, through which zips a magnetically levitated train at up to 4,000 mph.'

At '$88 billion - $175 billion' it might be a little outside even Branson's budget, but London to New York in an hour is something of an improvement on Virgin's current service.

Just Wow!

[kvvbassboy]

It's really my life-long ambition to do two things: (i) Fly to the exosphere, or at least ionosphere, and (ii) Go to the greatest depths of the sea and explore lifeforms there. If this becomes a relatively cheap reality in the next 30 years, I will definitely complete at least this one item in my bucket list. :) :)

Re:Just Wow!

[subk]

If this becomes a relatively cheap reality in the next 30 years

How rich are you? This sub weighs about 8,000lb, so it might just have room for -A- passenger. A reeaeeaaally rich passenger.

Re:Just Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

Burial at Sea should realise at least one of these, at a very reasonable cost. :-)

Re:Just Wow!

[JWSmythe]

    Well, you can do it. Do you have the budget for it though? :)

    Fly a specially built aircraft up to 60,000 feet. Fire first stage rockets on straight and level heading to accelerate to Mach 3. Drop first stage rockets and switch to ramjet engines. Accelerate to Mach 5, and climb to 80,000 feet. Drop surplus fuel tanks. Engage rockets, and change your vector to "up". You want 0 ground speed, and max climb. If you do "up" right, you have a safe vector back down. To return, maintain an approx 10 degree nose down attitude, relative to ground, with 0 ground speed. As the air density increases, your descent will slow, and when you gain aerodynamic effect again, you can fly home.

    These are just "back of the napkin" numbers. Don't bother to work those specific numbers too much.

    Oh, and if you do just happen to build one yourself, even if it wouldn't really work, you'll probably have the attention of plenty of agencies you've never heard of who will either liberate you of your design specs and hardware, or liberate you of your freedom. Calling NASA and saying "Hey, I need a used but serviceable space suit. Because I built a spaceship, and am planning a launch for next Thursday." will either get you laughed at, or picked up faster, either by an agency, or the funny farm. :)

 

Re:Just Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know, there's not one but two space suits sitting at the park (exhibition outside) for some months now, could just get these... :-)

Re:Just Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

You have only two ambitions in life, and you don't even know enough about one of them to know what the challenger deep is?

Re:Just Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

They didn't laugh, but ask for a delivery address and reminded me, to send in pictures.

Re:Just Wow!

[Abstrackt]

If this becomes a relatively cheap reality in the next 30 years

How rich are you? This sub weighs about 8,000lb, so it might just have room for -A- passenger. A reeaeeaaally rich passenger.

That's the great thing about technology: prices go down. For all we know, this could be the next big thing in 30 years time.

37,000 feet deep?

[JWSmythe]

    Really? 37,000 feet deep?

    I did a quick look with an online calculator, and that would be 16,055 psi.

    According to This story, the deepest spot in the ocean is about 36,000 feet deep. But hey, if you're going to take a ride down to the bottom of the Marianas trench, I'd prefer to know that the sub is rated for more than it could possibly do. Maybe he's doing some advanced planning for global warming, so people can visit the ancient underwater city previously known as "New York". :) (ya, ya, I know, not enough water on the planet, ice or otherwise, blah, blah, blah.)

    I do wonder about decompression. 24 hours may seem like a long time, but ascending from that kind of depth is bound to cause some pretty serious problems. I'd bet 16k psi is bound to squish the hull at least a bit.

Re:37,000 feet deep?

[vivian]

Being a pressure hull, it will be at 1 atmosphere internally - there is no decompression for the occupants to worry about, which is the whole point of having a pressure hull.

Last I checked, 37000 is > 35838 feet, which is the actual deepest point in the ocean, so the sub is already overrated for even the deepest depth - let alone the rest of the ocean which is much much shallower - with an average depth of about 13000 ft.

The wreck of the titanic is at only 12600ft. I'd definitely pay a decent sum to go see that thing in a sub if the sub had a decent view-port you could look out of.

Re:37,000 feet deep?

[giorgist]

To add to that, the portholes would not be as intresting as they would have to be rediculously thick so you'd see most things through a video camera and a screen.

Be cool to drive it and chase aroud whatever does live in those depths

Re:37,000 feet deep?

[FrankSchwab]

To add to that, the portholes would not be as intresting as they would have to be rediculously thick so you'd see most things through a video camera and a screen.

Too bad then that it has such a large viewing dome: http://www.virginoceanic.com/vehicles/submersible/

Re:37,000 feet deep?

[Anonymous Coward]

Being a former submariner I can tell you that the pressure does increase as you dive. I always knew when we were diving deep when I was sleeping because i would wake up with the need to piss

Re:37,000 feet deep?

[JWSmythe]

  Even video cameras need to be protected from the water. :) That thick glass (or glass like substance) would be the same, regardless if it were for your eyeballs, or for a camera. At least with a video camera, it could be recorded. "I saw a giant squid monster" means nothing if you say it. If you provide authenticated video, then it's fact (although likely to be debunked by "experts" all over the Internet).

    I still have a thing against getting squished by thousands of pounds of pressure. I'd rather watch the screen from somewhere comfortable naturally around 1 atm. :)

Re:37,000 feet deep?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's highly likely that viewing dome ceases to maintain a 1ATM environment below a certain depth at which point the pilot moves to the titanium pressure sphere locking himself in to a hamster-ball with a conical quartz peephole.

By keeping the Hamster-ball full of a liquid(?diesel?) when not occupied, and by making the viewing dome area's volume less than, or equal to the volume of the titanium hamster-ball, this ballast can be used to brace the viewing dome while the hamster-ball is occupied. This would only impact the trim(distribution of weight) without changing the total buoyancy.

Lead acid battery racks on a sliding track could then be used as a counter balance to compensate. The carbon fiber is for no other reason than bling, ease of transportation, and perhaps fuel economy.

Re:37,000 feet deep?

[mosb1000]

I think the idea is the dome will be made of quartz (their page implies as much) to withstand the pressure. It doesn't look to me like there's room for a "titanium pressure sphere" as you suggest.

Re:37,000 feet deep?

[hat_eater]

OMFG someone has been plunging my house into the abyss while I slept! Every night through my ENTIRE LIFE!!1!

Re:37,000 feet deep?

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking of all this, wouldn't it probably be easier to make waterproof systems, then flood the whole insides of the vehicle with water?
Obviously the people will be wearing suits.
This way, pressure inside could be increased significantly without (much?) damage to the people inside.
You could increase the water pressure to values that humans are known to be safe in.

Food could be eaten through straw from packets that can be inserted in to a helmet.
Essentially a space-suit designed for long-term expeditions. (which can be plugged in to sub if needed, for say, sleeping)

Until we get breathable liquids like in that film with the aliens, it is the closest we'd get to it.

Re:37,000 feet deep?

[delinear]

Of course, if you solve the problems of getting eyeballs safely down to that depth then you've automatically solved the problem of getting a camera down there (the reverse is not necessarily true).

Re:37,000 feet deep?

[timeOday]

Wow, that doesn't look anything like deep sea vessels I have seen. It's... sporty.

Re:37,000 feet deep?

[AnotherBlackHat]

Even video cameras need to be protected from the water.

It's not the water that's the problem, it's the pressure.
And the pressure is mainly a problem for things with air in them, like you and your eyeballs, CCDs, not so much.

Re:37,000 feet deep?

[JWSmythe]

    I'm pretty sure a camera would have a crush depth somewhere not as deep as the pressures they're expecting. If it weren't, you could wrap it in a ziplock bag, and drop it down on a rope. Well, a 37,000 foot long rope. Maybe that'll weigh a little bit. :)

Re:37,000 feet deep?

[ATMD]

It may be able to withstand static pressures at the ocean's deepest points, but as soon as you start moving you get dynamic pressure from the bow wave at the front. If it was going fast enough, it could easily experience a pressure head of more than 37000 feet at the nose. Plus, craft like this will be built with a decent safety factor, hopefully at least 2.0, so the people inside it don't die if the engineers get their maths wrong.

Re:37,000 feet deep?

[vivian]

There are three strongly limiting factors when breathing compressed air, that makes me really doubt that submarines have a pressurised atmosphere significantly greater than 1 atmosphere when they dive.
These are:
1) Breathing air at > 1 atmpsphere pressure means you would be absorbing nitrogen, and for the long dimes that submarines can stay under water, you would easily reach saturation levels which would require long decompression stops when surfacing, or else risk giving the entire crew the bends.
2) At even relatively shallow depths, you start sufferig the effects of nitrogen narcosis - if you were breathing air at 3 atmospheres, which is the equivalent depth of 20 meters of water, the effects of nitrogen narcosis would already be being felt - causing your reactions to slow, your thinking to start becomign coudy, and your judgement possibly impaired. These effects increase the deeper you go.
3) At greater depths, 60 meters or more, the pressure would be 7 atmospheres, and the partial pressure of oxygen (20% of the air) is 1.4 atmospheres. At this concentration or higher, oxygen is toxic and you can suffer the effects of oxygen toxicity in as little as a few minutes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_toxicity#Signs_and_symptoms

Even if you kept the pressure to say, 4 atmospheres, the equivalent pressure that 30 meters of water places on it, this would only allow the sub to dive 30 meters deeper than if it was kept at one atmosphere - so there is no real advantage in pressurising the air inside the sub, and a lot of disadvantages.

I think your nocturnal bladder pressure was caused by something else.

Re:37,000 feet deep?

[RockDoctor]

I'm pretty sure a camera would have a crush depth somewhere not as deep as the pressures they're expecting. If it weren't, you could wrap it in a ziplock bag, and drop it down on a rope.

Actually, to a first approximation, you could. Probably. But you'd have to start with a pretty large $ziplock$ bag.

Say that your camera, on the bottom of the Marianas, has a volume of 0.001m^3 (1 litre), at a pressure of about 1100 atmospheres (11km = 11000m ; 10m of seawater ~= 1 atmosphere) inside the $ziplock$.

At 550 atmospheres / 5.5km it would have a volume of 0.002m^3 ...
275 / 2.75 / 0.004
137 / 1.37 / 0.008
[SNIP : working]
1.07 / 0.011 / 1.024

Oh, that's convenient ; around surface, you'll need around a 1m^3 bag for your 1 litre camera. That passes a 1000-odd factor check, which I should have done first.

Now, practically, this isn't unmanageable. Silly, but not unmanageable. The crinkles would get a bit awkward.

At this point, your camera is penetrated throughout by air at around 1100 atmospheres. Which shouldn't, in and of itself, stop things working. The batteries might contain sealed objects that might blow ; the exposed surfaces of the sensors might not like so much oxygen (or nitrogen) ; the mechanical parts of shutters might not like the viscosity of the atmosphere. And you could still get a water leak.

But in principle, there's nothing wrong with putting an optical instrument into a $ziplock$ bag and taking it to depth. It's just that the buoyancies get a bit practically awkward. Which is why I just spent £200-ish on a water-tight (to 40m) AND balanced housing for my wife's camera. That can handle those crushing pressures. My right supra-orbital sinus, on the other hand, does not like more than about 0.15 atmospheres of pressure difference across it's bones.

How this decision went down

[Anonymous Coward]

"Mr. Branson! James Cameron isn't doing that submarine trip to the Mariana Trench after all, since earthquake aftershocks make it too dangerous!"

"Perfect! I'll have my own submarine built and go there myself. That smurf-lover has been in the spotlight too long, it's time to remind the world who the real crazy rich guy is! Earthquakes don't scare me."

Trieste / Mariana Trench / January 1960

[KC1P]

Why are we pretending this hasn't already been done? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathyscaphe_Trieste

Re:Trieste / Mariana Trench / January 1960

[oenone.ablaze]

Yeah, to clarify for everyone: this is notable because it's the first mobile submersible that can operate at those depths—the Trieste brought two passengers to the Challenger Deep, but it was only capable of descent and ascent, not powered lateral movement.

Re:Trieste / Mariana Trench / January 1960

[Samantha Wright]

It was also, according to that linked Wikipedia article (which is strangely unclickable on FF4) only down there for twenty minutes. Not a very exciting experiment.

Re:Trieste / Mariana Trench / January 1960

[countertrolling]

Not a very exciting experiment.

I'm probably going out on a limb by saying, the hell it wasn't! No sense of adventure you have, my dear.

Re:Trieste / Mariana Trench / January 1960

[KC1P]

Exactly! The really amazing part is sending a manned vehicle some place insane. We (humans, I mean) were really good at that back in the 1960s -- an impressive number of crazy stunts worked on the first try.

Building something with motors and a decent oxygen supply would also be very cool, but the truly awesome part is withstanding the pressure and it's already been done, *fifty-one years* ago. So why should Branson get so much credit for something which, so far, is just a painting anyway?

Dome

[maroberts]

It's my impression that Branson has taken over the sponsorship/ funding and involvement for a project called Deep Flight Challenger started by Steve Fossett (Rest In Pieces) I'm still trying to work out if the sub will actually have a large see through dome, or whether that will be replaced by some other material and rely on cameras for external visibility. If it is going to have a large see through area, what the hell is it made of?

Re:Dome

[mosb1000]

The website for the submarine says the dome will be made of quartz.

Re:Dome

[Anonymous Coward]

If it is going to have a large see through area, what the hell is it made of?

Transparent aluminium

Re:Dome

[Hitokiri Battousai]

i.e. aluminium oxide, a.k.a. sapphire/ruby, fyi.

Re:Dome

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems that "quartz" is the go to answer for this question. Wikipedia can't seem to make up it's mind on if the trieste used quartz or acrylic.

...units of measure

[mriya3]

37 000 feet = 11 277.6 meters
8000 pounds = 3 628.73896 kilograms
24 hours = 8.64 × 10^12 shakes

Re:...units of measure

[$RANDOMLUSER]

20,000 leagues = 111,120 kilometers

Re:...units of measure

[Anonymous Coward]

111,120km = about 2 trips around the world, underwater (presumably the Nautilus didn't go up on land and follow the equator).

Immaculate, too!

[Anonymous Coward]

Richard Branson Announces Virgin Oceanic Submarine

Does this mean the sub will no longer be virgin after it's christened?

Re:Branson is a Liar and a Fraud

[Anonymous Coward]

We'll take Branson on this side of the pond if you Brits will take Donald Trump in exchange.

Dumbing down?

[jandersen]

Well done, mr Branson! One of the few who dare, nowadays.

But, what is it that always tends to make American articles appear so downright stupid? Why are numbers and sizes always dumbed down to something you hope the average Joe Sixpack might get his head around? Like "8000 pounds" rather than "4t"? Or "37,000 ft"? Or, in other articles, numbers like "100,000 million billion" - is it just to make it sound impressive? If so, it doesn't work, it just sounds like toddler-talk. I would expect people who are able to understand subjects involving big numbers, are also able to understand the meaning of prefixes like "k", "M" and "G", and even (shudder) metric units.

And, of course, I can understand feet and pounds; it's just that every time it feels like yet another example of America wanting to show everybody that they are too bloody high and mighty to follow the lead of others. No, I don't hate America, and I do know that Americans are good and decent people; but then, why not show off all those good sides you guys have?

Re:Dumbing down?

[Xest]

"Well done, mr Branson! One of the few who dare, nowadays."

Oh I think there's plenty who dare.

Just not many who have enough money and dare. He's unique in that he has money and dares ;)

Re:Dumbing down?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a subtle difference between being daring and being suicidally depressed ...

Re:Dumbing down?

[ciderbrew]

A suicidally depressed person wouldn't be bothered with the things Rich does.

Re:Dumbing down?

[icebrain]

How is saying "8000 pounds" "dumbed down"? Or "37000 feet"? I'll grant you the silly thousand-million-billion-gazillion stuff, but using standardized units is by no means dumb.

Dumbing-down measurements happens when they start making comparisons using units like "jumbo jets", elephants, Libraries of Congress, average-sized cars, etc.

Re:Dumbing down?

[smellsofbikes]

>I would expect people who are able to understand subjects involving big numbers, are also able to understand the meaning of prefixes like "k", "M" and "G", and even (shudder) metric units.

While I feel the same way, and so do a lot of my friends, telling people that I rode 5 megameters on my bicycle last year, or that I'm going to drive 2 megameters to Canada next week, makes them frown. I can't imagine that anyone would find it smooth or intuitive to talk about megamiles. It's much easier to understand a base unit with very large scalars than much less-well-known prefixes and a scalar between 0 and 9, and while kilometers, for example, isn't designated as a base unit it functions as one in people's minds when they're talking about driving distances. I think the same thing happens with tons: people know how much a pound is, and may even know that 8000 pounds is roughly double the weight of their car, but most people don't have any good feel of what a ton is even if you tell them it's 2000 pounds. Sure, it's just math, but for a lot of people the added distance of having to do that math changes the idea from "that's a lot!" to "is that a lot?"

Re:Dumbing down?

[Anonymous Coward]

As a stupid American, is that 4 tonnes or 4 tons? Why not "stone", which Branson, a Brit, should be quoting weight in. Good thing they didn't cite the length of the vessel in feet: defined as the average size of pieds of the first ten guys to walk out of Church on Easter Sunday

TOO LATE

[Anonymous Coward]

the atlantic's bottom is full of oil since 2010 and the pacific was just contaminated with, they say, 7.5 million times the normal radiation at japans shores... :(

Necessary

[pasv]

To boldly go where no man has gone before...

failed.foibles, endless wars, shutdown welcome

[Anonymous Coward]

just go. never mind pretending to disagree over & over with yourselves, & your other selves, while continuing to lie to each other, & everybody in the world, about your fatal selfish .5billion pop. eugenatic, & weapons peddling agendas. just go.

Passengers?

[android.dreamer]

I would love to ride a large submarine across the Atlantic if it was like a Royal Caribbean cruise or like a Virgin Atlantic Upper Class flight. This would be all kinds of awesome, especially if it had large windows and cool lights to see Ocean life. He is already making Virgin Atlantic. Why not make Virgin Oceanic for passengers?

Re:Passengers?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's not much life in the middle of the Atlantic. Most of the pretty fish are native to reefs and confined to shallow depths near the coast.

Re:Branson is a Liar and a Fraud

[ciderbrew]

Two words. First word starts with HUGE F. ;)

FF4 unclickable workaround

[Anonymous Coward]

With my FF4, it's also unclickable. Double-click with the right button brings up the context menu, however. From there, one can open the link in another tab.

Re:FF4 unclickable workaround

[delinear]

Same here - I also noticed that the "post anonymously" checkbox doesn't seem to work. I assume this is linked to my install of FF4 yesterday, I'm sure it was fine previously.

Re:FF4 unclickable workaround

[psyclone]

Also affects FF 3.6

I know he's British...

[Anonymous Coward]

but I can't help picturing Branson as the real life version of Saxton Hale.

Vertical excursion

[srussia]

I wonder who holds the record for largest vertical excursion on earth (not space) over a lifetime?

Re:Vertical excursion

[Overzeetop]

I know an architect who would like to do this: an 8 month trip "starting" at the sea floor and ending at the top of Everest. He's looking for sponsors and maybe a reality TV segment to fund it. I think he has an early-20s son who he wants to do it with. The most expensive part is the beginning, as getting a ticket on a research sub is (iirc) in the $250k range. It'd be a cool trip to say the least.

Agreed

[Anonymous Coward]

We need a Branson now especially in an age where scientific exploration (ie NASA) may be neutered due to budgetary constraints. I hope he succeeds.

Link works fine with FF4 here...

[Ellis D. Tripp]

As does the AC checkbox....

No seamen please

[coinreturn]

A virgin full of seamen, please!

Re:No seamen please

[colinrichardday]

What about a virgin full of semen?

Re:No seamen please

[coinreturn]

Yea, that was the pun; I intentionally misspelled it.

Re:No seamen please

[morgaen]

I like what you did there. You took a joke and you explained it. Hilarious.

Re:No seamen please

[Anonymous Coward]

The Naughtilass?

Why bother

[Anonymous Coward]

Why bother,
all he has to do is to learn to astrally project!
I've done it you can, we all can...

Steve Fosset

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems like Branson isn't the initiator to this project as much as he'd like to give the impression of. According to http://deepflight.com/subs/df_challenger.htm, it was built for late Steve Fosset, and the entire thing was a Hawkes/Fosset project from the start.
Kudos to Branson for picking up the ball though.

Re:Branson is a Liar and a Fraud

[tom17]

"For Sure!"?

Great

[WindBourne]

what he is doing is allowing science fiction to become real. I say GREAT! Seriously, Gates and his buddies saying that they want to spread their wealth could do far far more humanity if they would focus on building large things that are typically done by gov. For example:

• 1) go in with several other billionares and develop multiple electric car companies, in which the frame, drive train, etc. are all the same, but the body is different. Once multiple car companies are established, THEN give each a copy of the core IP and they go about and compete.
• 2) How about building a high-speed monorail train? Maglev is overkill. It is not rolling resistance, but air resistance that is the issue. However, the linear motor is useful. So, do monorail with seraphim motors.
• 3) How about spending some money on SpaceX, DreamChaser, etc? Or Bigelow Aerospace and ILC Dover?

It is people like Branson, Elon Musk, and Paul Allen that are making REAL differences to the future.
Musk gets credit for starting up CHEAP solar installation, Cheap spaceX, and of course, getting the electric car industry going.
Allen gets the credit for getting cable industry into the net, and getting private space going by funding Scaled Composites X-Prize winner.

Allen contrasts against Gates in that Gates pushed Boeing/L-Mart into building EELVs in expensive fashion promising them that he was going to use them for his satellites. Well, we all know the status of that.

Re:Great

[LongearedBat]

+5 !!! Now I wish I hadn't spent all my mod points.

Re:Branson is a Liar and a Fraud

[ciderbrew]

:) and another :)
erm... .. close.

This craft will be useful, in special ways

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps Branson wants to be uniquely able to retrieve the flight recorder
"black boxes" from his Airbus planes after they crash as a result of failure of
their computerized flight control systems malfunctioning.

There will be more Airbus crashes as a result of flaws in the flight control
systems. Scoff now, because later you will only be able to shake your heads.

Mod parent up!

[Intrepid imaginaut]

+5 please.

Re:Branson is a Liar and a Fraud

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny how this has been marked down. Virgin's outsourced web cleaning operation woke up?

Check the facts.

Richard Branson announces more cheap publicity

[Anonymous Coward]

The way it works it this: Branson offers the Virgin brand to a newsworthy enterprise and in return Branson's brand receives huge publicity in the media, worldwide, and keeps the hundreds of Virgin companies in the public consciousness. That kind of publicity is worth millions and he gets it on the cheap just by plastering the rocket/plane/car/boat/balloon/submarine with the Virgin logo.

It's a simple trick and you will be taken in by it again.

Complain about this by email, not just here!

[Anonymous Coward]

Complaining here isn't likely to help. It feels good, but it's probably not useful in solving the problem. If they were regularly reading each article on the site, they would have noticed the problems themselves by now. Send them an email!

Newspaper Headline

[DG]

The headline I saw in a local paper about this story was - and I'm not making this up - "Virgin Penetrates Deep".

That, right there, makes this story full of win.

DG

Slashcode impresses low-UIDer

[hicksw]

but not favorably.

Have you tried it with lynx?
--
You get what you settle for.