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.

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

[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 !

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.