There's also the Nautilus "Luxury Yacht Submarine" from U-Boat Worx [1].
I don't think either of them have ever been built, they're basically just Kickstarters for ultra-rich people.
Edit: There's a link for Migaloo NFTs on OpenSea in the footer and a fanciful floating habitat that looks like a seasteaders wet dream. This does not look like a serious project. The entire site is nothing but renderings. U-Boat Worx at least ships the NEMO submersible so they kinda know what they're doing.
There seem to be a few fancy boat projects that turn out to just be renderings and NFT scams.
Like https://www.pangeosyacht.com/projects, an $8 Billion „Terayacht“ maybe launching in 2033. Until then they sell NFTs for a place in the virtual Unreal Engine version of this (also still to be built).
My favorite in this class was the Phoenix 1000 from US Submarines[1]. As I recall (and someone has worked VERY HARD to scrub nearly every bit of information about US Submarines from the web) they has a really nasty bankruptcy with some very wealthy people upset that they had put down big deposits and ended up with zilch.
The funny about this is that despite all the beautiful pictures, it would probably be a very unpleasant boat to ride in. Submarines by design are not very stable on the surface (think of a cylinder that rolls vs the v-shape of a surface ship that keeps it upright). But underwater, it only does 12 knots. So you have to choose between going really slow or having a smooth ride.
I guess i'd presume that with the billions of dollars someone would probably have to kick at a project like this that that'd use active stabilization[0] all over the place if the hull ended up being too rocky.
admittedly something with that kind of tonnage would have a massive flywheel, but if money isn't a hindrance..
Why is this on HN? This seems like a scam in a sense. Look at the “pressure hull” compared to the numerous openings cut into the outer hull for party decks or whatever, they don’t really connect and the interior space is made to look much bigger than it is. How are they going to constantly dewater the ship when there is water leaking in everywhere? What happens if someone forgets to close one of the 100 exterior openings?
Maybe these are just renderings to market the idea, but I would have no confidence I would get what was advertised if anything.
Then there is the practical and comfort aspect that other people have mentioned.
The only way this is sustainable is if the owner goes out to where the transponderless fishing fleets are and torpedoes them to the bottom of the ocean
I can't recall the details, but there is precedent for someone building large vessels in a shipyard on a river and then discovering that they can't deliver the it because they fucked up their research on bridge clearances.
I think the implication was that nobody bothered to check, which is humorous and so we are willing to jump straight to it. But I suspect the truth is subtler if still as dumb. A tall vessel is likely to have a large draft, so a dry spell may mean bridge clearance but getting stuck on a sandbar (or worse, bedrock). There may be very few days a year where the water level is high enough to avoid sandbars but low enough not to clip the bridge.
The website claims “Design, Construction and Operation according to US SUBSAFE.” I’d want that for my submarine, of course, but I wonder if it’s realistic.
I’d understood that SUBSAFE was a comprehensive program applied to U.S. Navy submarines by the Naval Sea Systems Command, not merely a published standard with which one could comply without extensive, ongoing involvement by NAVSEA, which presumably has no mandate to support foreign yacht builders.
It never fails to amaze me how tasteless and unimaginative your run-of-the-mill rich asshole is. Without even getting into housing, education, or whatever other feel-good virtue-signalling—this is seriously the coolest toy you can think to buy with 10e8-9 USD?
Some of them have the right idea. There's one guy who built a ship to launch cars into space. He flung one that went around the sun and it was pretty funny. He likes blowing stuff up too.
I would swear there was a company in the late 90's that sold luxury submarines. Not submersible super-yachts. I thought it was the neatest thing till I realized you needed like 20 close friends to crew the thing. And far more dollars than I had. But that was like a real diesel electric that could dive to avoid storms and cruise fast on the surface. Definitely smaller than this.
Toys are neat. I dunno, if that's what you want, go for it. I sorta feel like you can do better.
It's a bad idea for many reasons:
- you are spending hundreds of millions for a prototype, on paper all works but in reality to build a reliable submarine you need peoples, experience, tests etc, to avoid something like this:
this sub "only" reach -250m , but that it's anyway mattern of concerns;
- there are serious possibilities they don't delivery, not necessarily because it's a scam, but fore the same reasons of the previous point: technical problems requiring re-designing and re-engineering inflating the costs, burning budgets;
- the success in rescuing people trapped in a submarine is very low, because the environment, because the lack of related technology, experience, etc, see here for example:
I don’t get the idea of having a separate pressure hull for your helicopter hangar. Surely if your submarine is compromised to the point of needing the pressure hull you are long past the point where your helicopter is going to save you.
Helicopter hanger has the largest door into a pressure hull area, it's the largest point of failure - if it fails, it's isolated from the living space (and other sub areas).
I was thinking more that it didn’t need a pressure hull at all, but after your message I realized it would kinda ruin the helicopter xD
I read their adverts to mean that the ship was so expensive even the helicopter got it’s own pressure hull. But I should understand it as the helicopter can’t do without a pressure hull, and the special part is that it’s _separate_ from the human hull.
Yup, yup, yup. Everything human-usable is going to be in a pressure hull, because a hundred meters of depth is going to absolutely wreck more or less everything. Especially seals. Hangar doors give me nightmares.
They might pressurize the crew spaces, a little, but it's really not possible to crank up the air pressure meaningfully for any duration, too hard on the body, and totally lethal if they come up too fast. On that subject google up "saturation diving" for some frickin' horrors. Those dudes make bank, but whew, talk about earning it.
It's probably a safety concern. A helicopter hangar requires a very large watertight door. Very large doors are less safe than small doors. In the event of failure, better to lose the helicopter than the crew.
The maintenance costs on this would be enormous! I sail regular old boring wind powered boats, and I have to admit, if I could afford this I'd probably buy it!
Saying that though, I have no idea how it would work legally in ports. I'm guessing you'd have to stay on surface in most territorial waters without some kind of crazy custom private clearance.
I live in Australia and I don't reckon authorities would be very happy if you decided to submerge in the middle of Sydney Harbour!
Why? The ultrarich could afford the most environmentally friendly propulsion ( e.g hydrogen for submarines ) . But as if climate change wouldn’t be a thing, the ultrarich simply don’t care about their CO2 footprints. Do they really think they can buy another planet?
Well, it is another billionare's sub after all. They need to make sure the contracts are all paid out and the PS4 controller is in place before it goes under.
I think it's a fantastic ship to smuggle drugs and weapons, so every high profile crime organisation on the planet will desire one, maybe yours, gratis ... admitting they can really deliver the ships without going out of business.
Check out narco submarines - they have people in the jungles of Columbia building submarines that they pack with tons of cocaine (literally), which are discarded after a single ocean crossing. In general, it seems to be more economical to ship illicit materials with cheap/disposable vessels and vulnerable/impoverished people, rather than risking an expensive yacht to government seizure.
In fact, the point I was trying to illustrate is that if they steal your fancy luxury submarine is even less expensive, it's free, gratis, 100% discount. Do you really want a ship that it's seen as disposable delivery system by every single organised crime entity on the globe ?
You don’t want this type of sub for drug smuggling, I chased the smugglers and this massive monster will definitely be harder to operate and disguise than what they use currently.
Following your reasoning an airplane can't be hijacked because it's difficult to operate: in reality you only need a gun to operate anything, in right circumstances.
You misunderstand how many people are necessary to operate a sub at this scale, with all the machinery onboard, for weeks at a time. It’s on the order of a dozen rather than two or three for the current narco boats.
Also, it would be way way easier for us to track this sub versus what’s out there today. It’s way louder, I guarantee.
I don’t know about airplanes, but I’m a SWO qualified former naval officer that was onboard a sub hunting platform that we used to track narco boats and subs in different deployments, so I can tell you about ships and a little about subs since they share many similarities. I guarantee this type of sub isn’t used by narcos.
Yep. It's a giant machine with specialized logistics (supplies and parts) and staff needs, so it has to based somewhere. AI can't miracle away maintenance of such a complex beast, if it were ever built. There's no hiding it under a net in the Bahamas.
I guess like you do for airplanes: the fact a plane can fly don't make it immune to hijacking. Example: you wait the sub is in the port, is moored, etc
That's true, but also consider how the entire world paid attention to the whereabouts of a missing submersible when there were a couple billionaires on board (OceanGate). I doubt the traffickers would want to risk that kind of exposure ;)
I mean, if you're transporting literally tons of cocaine at a go in disposable microsubs, you think the best thing is to attract a lot of attention by (a) stealing a rich, and therefore politically connected, person's submarine that (b) is trivially tracked by the USN?
I mean, size isn't stealthy. And it's not necessary for cocaine. It's the same reason that they smuggled coke on private planes instead of hihacking 747s.
I would find it funny if a country managed to bootstrap its way into high tech manufacturing like that. It sounds like the Columbian jungle would have a lot of demand for good engineering and machining know-how and if they are building disposable subs they'd have a lot of incentive to perfect cheap manufacturing technique.
If the drug trade doesn't work, they probably have the expertise to get involved in navel drones.
This actually seems to be happening already in regards to manufacturing. I read an obscure article a while back about autonomous narco submarines surfacing in Spain, which suggests a certain sophistication and standardization of the manufacturing process [1].
> The [d]rone submarines are essentially identical, suggesting series production of a refined design.
They also found a "narco surfboard" which presumably disguises drug shipments in an abandoned surfboard. In the arms race between traffickers and enforcers, I'd imagine both sides will be continuously developing increasingly sophisticated technology for underwater smuggling, especially given how much money is involved - so I could totally imagine a high-tech manufacturing industry emerge as a byproduct. I would also find it quite funny :)
Smuggling will always be a job for those low on the totem pole. It's dangerous and needs to be inconspicuous.
No, this ship is meant for crazy parties and expeditions. Amusingly, just because it may happen to contain a ton of drugs for their personal consumption doesn't mean they're trying to smuggle anything.
Most of the ocean is dull and there is no much of a point in partying in the darkness of the oceanic waters.
I read that a typical load in a narcosub was worth about 100 million dollars and a narcosub itself costs 2 million dollars. Two narcotrips will not only pay for the submarine but also make a huge profit, your idea that smuggling is for those low on the totem pole and that it has to be dangerous is something that you invented.
The boats they use for this smuggling are the least seaworthy vessels I think I’ve had the pleasure to experience. We caught one go-fast because all four engines died and it was sinking, so they radioed for our help since we were already chasing them. These were very unsafe boats. The dudes onboard are not very important, their qualifications were they had been fishermen before and had families to hold over them to ensure the drugs got to the destination.
I think that the future for the drug smuggling is computer controlled submarines, and I'm not even talking about AI. I think drug producers will pre-program a route for a submarine that will autonomously navigate until the destination where it will be picked by a receptor.
I read that it's extremely hard to spot submarines, I can only imagine the kind of things that will be smuggled once there are functional submarines of the size of a big fish.
Navy, we were technically under coast guard command during interdictions though. It was also ten years ago or more so they’ve probably upped their game by now on both sides.
I don’t know about automated subs though, as three guys in a shitty boat can’t really be beat on price. An automated boat would be easier to catch if it was spotted but I suppose you could also put some trap on it to sink it fast when it’s boarded. We were only able to capture one semi submersible because they are very easy to scuttle.
It can simultaneously be true that smuggling is performed by people deemed expendable, and that the kingpins behind them might purchase an extravagant vessel made for partying if they think it will improve the rate at which they successfully smuggle their illegal goods.
If you bring a submarine to market, intelligence agencies and smugglers will absolutely be interested in it.
That said, this is a submersible. If I understand correctly, that means it doesn't operate independently, but in tandem with a conventional vessel. So that may be far less useful.
This one doesn't go anywhere, that's just a number on a web page. It sounds impressive but not so impressive that it is unbelievable, which is good for the business of schlepping NFTs.
It's beautiful engineering (if real), but all I can think about is the number of people that could be fed, housed, and educated for that amount of money.
The world could be made a permanently (slightly) better place instead of building this.
Money flows, it doesn't disappear, and if it isn't spent it might as well not exist -- but the spending affects the allocation of real resources, like steel, batteries, and shipbuilders' time.
It's ok if there's an excess of materials and the shipbuilders have nothing better to do.
More likely it will slightly drive up the prices of batteries, etc. And maybe the yacht builders would have otherwise gone to work making sailboats for normal-rich people, or gone into defense, driving down the price of labor there, and allowing taxpayers to get their next destroyer for a hair cheaper.
Or, worst case, there'd be no demand for these shipbuilders, and they'd have to reskill as something else. Maybe they know how to do fiberglass layups and would try making surfboards, I don't know.
In short, I don't worry so much about wasting money per-se, as about luring people and resources away from better uses.
Kind of like VC's role for the last 20 years. "Greatest minds of my generation", etc.
The people building it will be fed, housed, and their children educated with that amount of money. Jobs are what the world gets out of this sort of thing.
Jobs are a cost. Production and education, material and intellectual wealth are what matters. How we get those involves work and thus (some) jobs, but please, let us not mistake the means for an end.
And jobs are an opportunity cost - the people who would be working on this supervillain fantasy are not doing anything else. What could they, or would they be doing instead?
If building a submersible superyacht adds to the world, then well and good. Personally, I find the opportunity cost to humanity of doing so highly suspect. But I don't think I, or anyone, has a perfect picture of all the knock-on effects from particular money flows. (I think this is why a free market can have benefits.)
Jobs are not good because they are jobs, they are good because of what they accomplish, and should be measured by that yardstick.
Thank you for providing me with another perspective. I see your point.
It does still feel like a poor use of the world's finite resources, but I completely understand how it's not the individuals place to allocate resources effectively.
Well, the world is a better place for all the shipbuilders who work on this project. And a better place for their families. And all the businesses that they spend money in. And the communities that collect tax from them, isn't it?
In the name of efficiency I'd say we should cut out the middleman here and set an appropriate tax rate for potential customers of the mega yacht submersible.
Yeah billionaires will never actually effectively spend all of their money. Rather than try to entice them into buying increasingly ridiculous things, we should just make being a multibillionaire financially unviable so that the money is distributed better to begin with.
Perhaps if the tax rate truly rose to somewhere near 99% as individuals reach the billionaire mark, we'd see whether these folks truly are philanthropists or if they just play them on TV.
Military diesel subs have snorkels so they can run their diesels when they are at periscope depth. If they need to go deeper (or don't want a radar-reflecting snorkel sticking up over the surface) they shut down the diesels and rely on batteries. Traditionally huge banks of lead-acid batteries, not sure if newer subs use Li batteries.
I don't think either of them have ever been built, they're basically just Kickstarters for ultra-rich people.
Edit: There's a link for Migaloo NFTs on OpenSea in the footer and a fanciful floating habitat that looks like a seasteaders wet dream. This does not look like a serious project. The entire site is nothing but renderings. U-Boat Worx at least ships the NEMO submersible so they kinda know what they're doing.
[1] https://nautilus-submarine.com/