Sir Richard Branson Quietly Shelves Virgin Submarine Plan

An anonymous reader writes with news that Sir Richard Branson's goal of diving to the deepest part of the ocean has been put on indefinite hold. "Sir Richard Branson has quietly shelved his latest adventure: an ambitious plan to pilot a submarine to the deepest points of the world's five oceans. The entrepreneur had a grand scheme to explore both space and sea. But his plan for the first rocket ship charging passengers for trips to the edge of space is in jeopardy after the craft crashed during a test flight, killing a pilot. Now Sir Richard's dream of exploring the lowest points on Earth is also on hold. Virgin Oceanic's DeepFlight Challenger submarine was unveiled in a blaze of publicity in April 2011, with Sir Richard describing its mission as 'the last great challenge for humans.' He had hoped the 18ft-long submarine, designed to 'fly' along the ocean floor, would make its maiden voyage to the bottom of the Pacific's Mariana Trench – at a depth of 36,000ft, the lowest known point on Earth – by the end of 2011, or failing that, by 2012."

Comments

Simpsons did it

[ArcadeMan]

Maybe he should ask James Cameron to borrow his deep-diving submersible.

Re:No so easy as throwing money at it, is it?

[wagnerrp]

The Apollo programme was 4% of GDP, by itself

The Apollo program cost ~$20B, over the better part of a decade, during a time when the US GDP was rose from around $600B to $1T. So, it used roughly 0.3% of the GDP over that time period.

Re:No so easy as throwing money at it, is it?

[DerekLyons]

The Apollo programme was 4% of GDP, by itself.

4% of the Federal budget, not GDP - and even then, it only touched that value for two years.