
DeepFlight – High Performance Personal Submarines - artsandsci
https://www.deepflight.com/
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cat199
In contrast to renault articles, it looks like someone is disrupting the
narcosub market..

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donald123
"The DeepFlight Dragon starts at $1.5 million and will make its public debut
at the Monaco Yacht Show on September 23. " This is from 2015.

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varelse
What's scarier? The price or the belief that there's a large enough market for
this at that price?

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toomanybeersies
$1.5MM isn't that much on the scale of boats. That much will get you a 16-20 m
(50-65 ft) yacht.

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varelse
Yeah... Nope... Wake me when I can buy a zeppelin (no, not a blimp, a
zeppelin, and throw in a monocle too) for that price because zeppelins.

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wizardforhire
I'll build you a Zeppelin for 1.4m. Do you want plain glass, a prescription or
a smart lens for the monocle?

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SimbaOnSteroids
Its gotta be an AR monocle.

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todd8
Submarines actually move through the water more efficiently than surface
ships, according to my Naval Engineering class: they don't lose energy
supporting a huge wave field on the surface due to a wake and hence experience
less drag. [1]

If they are so efficient, why not use them for transporting freight? Buoyancy
limitations make them impractical compared to container or tanker ships.

[1]
[https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20121128040136A...](https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20121128040136AAexMJE)

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dTal
Can you elaborate on the nature of the buoyancy issue? It seems to me that as
a container is considerably less dense than water (container ships being
mostly above water), you could just add ballast. Is the problem simply that
too much ballast would be required to be practical?

I've sometimes wondered why sea gliders are not used for cargo. Sure they're
slow but the power requirements are so minimal they can actually run off
thermal gradients in the ocean, which must make the operating costs absurdly
low.

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todd8
I'm not an expert in this field, but I did take a class in Naval Engineering
while I was an undergraduate (Math/EE/CS). When the class learned of the
efficiency of submarines this very question was posed to the professor and he
explained that buoyancy issues were the problem. (He was a full professor of
Naval Engineering at MIT so I believed him.)

A few back of the envelope calculations are revealing. A very large container
ship can carry an enormous amount of freight, around 200,000 Metric Tons. A
modern, nuclear submarine, say of the Ohio class, has about 18,750 Metric Tons
of total displacement so it would have to find a way to carry ten times as
much weight as the weight of the entire submarine. Then on a return trip, when
empty, it would have to have enough ballast equal to this weight that would
then need to be discarded where it picked up freight. There probably is a way
to do this, but I can easily imagine that the design issues result in a
submarine less practical than a container ship.

Interestingly, I recently got to visit the aircraft carrier the USS Nimitz
while it was underway out in the Pacific. That was an exciting day;
subsequently, I looked up more information about that ship. These nuclear
aircraft carriers are believed to be the fastest ships in the US Navy.
Submarines (although not actually a part of the carrier group of ships that
surrounds, travels with, and protects the aircraft carriers) travel hidden and
independently along with the group. They scout ahead and hunt other
submarines. To be able to travel with the carriers they must be very fast,
faster than the official, unclassified numbers (about 25 knots). One source on
the Internet says that they can travel at over 40 knots (74 km/h or 46 mph).

I think sea gliders are fascinating. I am curious about where that technology
will go.

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rmgraham
I like the idea behind the Super Falcon model: fixed positive buoyancy with an
inverted wing design.

Like a plane, but with gravity replaced by buoyancy and the Y axis inverted so
the wings "lift" you down.

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amelius
Why not zero buoyancy, and using some kind of expanding airbag for emergency
floatation?

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jleahy
Typically people would use drop weights for emergency floatation, as that's
more reliable.

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dTal
The CSS Hunley used this design, to no avail. It's not clear what went wrong
but I think the larger point to draw is that such a system requires positive
action, with more things to go wrong; it is "fail-deadly". Positive buoyancy
and dive planes are "fail-safe" \- you stop, you float.

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pheldagryph
They should make the first banner video they show "steady", using some kind of
video editing software. It's not super-shaky, but it made me very very
slightly queasy for a second, and I can't be the only one. What if one of the
sufferers happens has $1.5mil to spend?!

Reminds me of SeaQuest DSV. The "Gazelle" (aka "Stinger"), a personal high-
speed submarine craft.

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hello_there
What do these things cost?

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regnerba
According to some other comments, around the $1.5 million mark.

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dboreham
Light gray text on slightly darker gray background is pretty hard to read, at
least for me on this iPhone.

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foodmart
Looks fine to me on a Macbook.

That foreground colours for the main text is not even that light. Only lighter
text is used for the lesser important sponsors sections.

Maybe you need to get your vision checked.

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agildehaus
Dragon, Falcon. Can't they be original in their naming?

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sillyquiet
You would think 'Shark' and 'Dolphin' and 'Orca' would be more appropriate.

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varelse
Kraken, Leviathan, Cthulhu, no?

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regnerba
Can you rent this anywhere? Don't really have $1.5 million to toss around fun.

