For $1.5M, DeepFlight Dragon Is an "Aircraft for the Water"

Zothecula writes No one with red blood in their veins buys a sports car and hands the keys to a chauffeur, so one of the barriers to truly personal submarining has long been the need for a trained pilot, not to mention the massive logistics involved in transporting, garaging and launching the underwater craft ... until now. Pioneering underwater aviation company DeepFlight is set to show an entirely new type of personal submarine at the 2014 Monaco Yacht Show next week, launching the personal submarine era with a submersible that's reportedly so easy to pilot that it's likely to create a new niche in the tourism and rental market.

Comments

Nice!

[Anonymous Coward]

One single drug run^h^h^h^hdive and the thing has paid for itself.

Re:Nice!

[Qbertino]

One single drug run^h^h^h^hdive and the thing has paid for itself.

How long can it dive? What mods does this thing need to lengthen the dive+travel time to a few days or even a week or two, depending on its speed? Extra Oxygen, toilet substitutes, extra battery packs, stronger motors to tug the drugs, etc.

Could maybe be done, but it's not easy. Truth is, I think by now it's actually more feasible for the cartells to get their hands on decomissioned subs and their former crew. Or something along those lines.

Re:Nice!

[DrXym]

The cartels already have been building their own subs. A luxury toy sub is probably not much use to the for the sorts of loads they want to transport. I expect with a little more time they'd be able to develop autonomous subs that navigate from one point to another completely submerged. Such things already exist in the oil industry so it's not hard to imagine one doing drug runs.

Re:Nice!

[Charliemopps]

Those require crews. This can be piloted by 1 person, and has room for 1 more. So its payload is at least 200lbs. I can think of plenty of things under 200lbs that are worth more than $1.5mil.

That being said, the sub idea is dumb. I'd just sail to the US with a regular boat. My cargo would be under water, towed by a cable. Authorities show up, cut the cable. Very simple.

Re:Nice!

[TWX]

I expect that the cartels have probably begun experimenting with torpedo-like designs for the last leg of their smuggling runs. If you think about it, a length of steel water-main pipe welded shut with a predetermined weight of contraband welded in, balanced for bouyancy a dozen feet below the average surface, with a simple electric battery powered motor and rudimentary guidance system would help ensure that the smugglers themselves aren't caught even if the merchandise is found, and it would also be harder to attribute it to anyone. A deepwater vessel could bring the torpedo in close enough for its final leg of the journey, point it toward a beacon left on by the recipient, and let it find its way in the last bit on its own.

Admittedly I don't really know much about how sonar works in the fairly turbulent water near the surface, so perhaps this wouldn't work so well as I think it would, but if there's no human aboard to get caught then there's no one to testify either.

There are cheaper ways to kill yourself

[Anonymous Coward]

If not having to learn a lot about one of the most dangerous environments on this planet is meant to attract customers, then this is obviously going to end badly.

Re:There are cheaper ways to kill yourself

[Anonymous Coward]

If not having to learn a lot about one of the most dangerous environments on this planet is meant to attract customers, then this is obviously going to end badly.

Calm the hell down. One of the most dangerous things you do as a human is open a car door and step inside.

And like the other 99.9% of potential submarine pilots, you probably do that deadly shit every single day.

There are reasons for that

[dargaud]

Going too deep and particularly up too fast will get you killed. Going underwater is dangerous. More so than being up in the air where the only risk is basically hitting the ground.

Re:There are reasons for that

[Arker]

Actually going up in an airplane too quickly can have the same affect. We dont worry about it because modern airplanes are typically pressurized. This submersible appears to be pressurized as well.

Re:There are reasons for that

[Richard_at_work]

Going too deep will be an issue in itself - I bet this things crush depth isn't all that deep...

Re:There are reasons for that

[Anonymous Coward]

Going up from sea level to space (the maximum possible change in air pressure) is equivalent to surfacing from a depth of 10m. Coming up from a dive deeper than 10m is more dangerous, in terms of decompression sickness, than ascending in an unpressurised aircraft to any altitude.

Re:There are reasons for that

[AlecC]

It is designed aircraft-style with positive buoyancy. So you don't flood tanks or anything like that, you "fly" down using control planes to keep you down just as an aircraft uses wings to keep you up. So, just as an aircraft will descend to the ground if the whirly bits stop turning, so will this return to the surface.

Not so much personal

[Jesrad]

The idea of a "personal submarine", IMHO, should be more along the lines of this kind of thing. Just build it yourself !

Re:Seriously?

[ultranova]

Hardly. What he's said is: "!E(x) hasredblood (x) && handskeystochauffeur(x)", which is equivalent to "A(x) !(hasredblood(x) && handskeystochauffeur(x))". Since according to you you already fail the first part of the conjunction by not having red blood, the second part is not constrained by it.

In other words, you can hate driving as much as you want, since you don't have red blood ;).

The coral will need guard rails around it

[jimbolauski]

A tourist with 30 minutes of training piloting a sub near coral reefs is a bad idea, the pilots will be looking at all the neat things and not paying attention. Depending on how powerful the currents are they could get swept out and run out of fuel fighting the current. These things are far from idiot proof and you should expect drunk or stoned college students on spring break to be using them. It's a great idea until you realize you are giving dumb-asses a $1.5 million dollar vehicle to drive through priceless and breathtaking wildlife sanctuaries, while we are at it let's start renting out Bugatti Veyrons to drive through the Louvre.

Re:The coral will need guard rails around it

[wagnerrp]

So give the thing a low power sonar system and automatic collision avoidance system. Give it instructions that if the battery gets below a certain point, it shuts down the engines, auto-surfaces, and starts up a rescue beacon.

Re:Seriously?

[jimbolauski]

Let me help you with what he said, "No one with red blood in their veins buys a sports car and hands the keys to a chauffeur". Now because you are not a car person I suspect you wouldn't know what a sports car is. Most sports cars are two seaters, the few that are four seaters an infant would not have enough leg room, the back row is strictly for lower insurance rates, so you would be sitting in the front seat of your chauffeur driven sports car, not a typical chauffeur chauffee relationship. Secondly sports cars are not very comfortable they have low profile tires, firm suspensions, and rigid seats, they are designed to drive fast around corners not smoothly on the highway. What you want for your chauffeuring is a sedan, suv, or van.

What an Idiotic Design Concept

[the monolith]

Please bear in mind that 'Water, for all intents and purposes, is an incompressible mass.' We teach this to student divers.

Look at the following points...

Fore-planes - they are curved and cannot act in an 'aerodynamic' manner (wings create lift by causing air to reduce in pressure as the air moves in a longer path over the wing than under it,) so they are really just flow directors, and the curves will create permanent turbulence and disrupt flow behind them - the forward vertical thrusters.

Forward vertical thrusters - turbulent flow will create beta on the blades (uneven flow vectors to different blades) destroying efficiency. The fenestration/cowl that surrounds the thrusters will cause turbulence also.

Forward hull - the hull immediately around the area of the forward thrusters is voluminous and bluff to the flow of water when under way. Turbulence and drag will ensue, and this will run toward the stern gear - thrusters, aft planes, pusher thrusters and elevator.

Stern vertical thrusters - similar flow conditions will exist for these units as they exist for the forward units.

Pusher thrusters - will receive all turbulence created by gear that is forward of their position, and reduce efficiency accordingly.

Elevator - single piece curved flow director, similar to the fore-planes in intended down-thrust effect. Same problems of turbulence and drag. Potential for anti-asynchronous oscillation from turbulence caused by all equipment forward of its position.

I saw the previous version of this craft, the Super Falcon, when it came for a demonstration in Jordan in April 2011, and was unimpressed with what I saw. This concept version is not an improvement. They should get proper designers to work on it, not people that just happened to see an aircraft, or read a few pages of Wikipedia.