Thread: Richard Branson plans deep submarine dives

Richard Branson plans deep submarine dives
NOAKI SCHWARTZ
Last updated 09:09 06/04/2011


Billionaire adventurer Richard Branson (right) and his team member and pilot Chris Welsh pose aboard the Virgin Oceanic Expeditions deep sea submarine.

Billionaire adventurer Richard Branson has unveiled a new single-person submarine that he said will be used to set new world records by exploring the five deepest parts of the world's oceans.

Branson said that over the next two years, the solo craft will go to the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic's Puerto Rico Trench and South Sandwich Trench, the Diamantina Trench in the Indian Ocean and the Molloy Deep in the Arctic Ocean.

Branson's fellow explorer, Chris Welsh, plans to make the first descent later this year to the Mariana Trench, which at 10,972 metres is deeper than Mount Everest is high. Branson then plans to explore the 8534m-deep Puerto Rico Trench.

While the pilots for the other three trips have not been chosen, Branson said they hope to set as many as 30 Guinness World Records with the dives.

"The last great challenge for humans is to explore the depths of our planet's oceans," the Virgin Atlantic founder said at the Newport Harbor Yacht Club.

A news release said there was only one frontier left for Branson's Virgin brand, which has reached "the seven continents of the earth, up into the jet stream and soon, even into space."

"If someone says something is impossible, we like to prove it's possible," Branson said. "I love learning and I'm just very fortunate to participate in these kinds of adventures."

Branson unveiled the submarine, a nearly six-metre long, white-and-blue airplane-like craft with stubby wings and a cockpit.

The carbon fibre and titanium craft will be capable of cruising for about 10 kilometres and can stay down unaided for 24 hours. The sub and its accompanying catamaran cost an estimated US$17 million (NZ$22m).

Branson said his so-called Virgin Oceanic expedition will have a scientific and educational purpose. He hopes the voyages will help to educate the public about mankind's impacts on the world's oceans and marine life.

He is partnering with Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute and Moss Landing Marine Labs in Northern California as well as other research institutions. Scientists hope to study the tectonic plates and eventually use lander vehicles to bring back water, microbes and possibly small creatures from the ocean depths.

"We have 800 pounds of moon rocks and not one drop from the bottom of the ocean," said Alex Tai, Virgin Group director of special projects.

The dives will be dangerous and the pilots will likely be down in the dark and cold ocean depths for hours with little communication with the outside world. Rescues will be impossible, Welsh said. Still, he was clearly more excited than wary of the prospect, saying there is a magic to exploring new places.

"It's like going to the moon and having the lunar rover to explore around," Welsh said.

The dives also will be recorded and uploaded to Google Earth, said John Hanke, the Internet search engine's vice president of product management.

"Our mission for Google Earth is to create an interactive virtual globe and enable users to visit places that they've never explored, including the world's oceans," he said.

The submarine originally was commissioned by Branson's close friend and fellow adventurer Steve Fossett, who died in 2007 while flying a plane over the Sierra Nevada. Fossett had intended to complete the first solo dive to the Mariana Trench, Branson said.

Branson also said he plans to create a larger submarine that can hold more people and offer trips to tourists for a sizable fee.

Last year he unveiled a three-person submarine called the Necker Nymph, which is available for US$2500 a day for guests of his private resort in the Caribbean. The submarine, created by San Francisco-based Hawkes Ocean Technologies, is capable of going almost 30 metres deep. In a subsequent interview with Popular Mechanics, Hawkes officials said they were also working with Branson on submersibles capable of high-speed deep sea travel.

Branson has also been working on a space tourism venture with the construction of a US$209 million spaceport in New Mexico. The British businessman has said he expects to launch the first suborbital flights from Spaceport America between mid-summer 2011 and spring 2012. Many of the 500 people that have signed up to be astronauts have expressed interest in being "aquanauts," he said.

While most of the country is still dealing with the daily realities of a struggling economy, University of California, Berkeley professor Robert Reich said the super-rich are richer today than they have ever been and there is a market in selling them new adventures.

High-end retailers such as Tiffany & Co. and Neiman Marcus continue to do well despite the economy, he said. And even as NASA experiences budget cuts, the extraordinary wealthy are willing to pay small fortunes to go into space or into the depths of the ocean, said the public policy professor.

"People who are selling to the super-rich basically can't lose," said Reich, former Secretary of Labor during the Clinton administration. "Richard Branson can dig a hole to the centre of the earth and charge a million dollars a day to go through it and he'd find people to take him up on the offer."

- AP

this bloke never stops must be nice to have that sort of cash

his earlier version the Necker Nymph, which would possibly be useful in the Gulf of Thailand



Virgin Limited Edition enters the underwater world, welcoming Necker Nymph, a DeepFlight three-person aero submarine. Likened to an underwater aircraft, this open cockpit winged sub is the first of its kind to hit the market

^ thats idiotic, if not a piss take - open cockpitted subs? Your foking ear drums would explode first; or your lungs.

how come if i want a plastic carrier bag from the shop , the greenies want to hang me ,but this lad Branson is planning space tourism, with a 1000000 gallon fuel tank ,and now also wants to rake the coral on the sea floor with this contraption ,
and yet the global warmists say nothing to him ....

^ you don't have his bank balance when you have cash the do gooders seem to look the other way

bet that jet ski con man from phuket ,would love a few of them subs ...

and yet with all his money, Branson wasn't interested in buying some old u-boats from the Germans.

Good luck to him - may as well spend it - just like the rest of us he could die tomorrow

"no pockets in a shroud"

HD Quality Teaser Trailer of Virgin Oceanic's flagship sub! Disclaimer, this is simply an animation of the sub's potential capabilities, and in no way should be assumed to reflect a real mission.

Originally Posted by blue

bet that jet ski con man from phuket ,would love a few of them subs ...

Thailand has plans for a submarine.

I believe there are plans to explore the floor of the Gulf of Thailand.

edits from an article on the Branson sub - link in header for full story

Descent to Challenger Deep
Glenda Kwek
April 13, 2011

Engineering challenges

The last human explorers of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean were Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard, in the US Navy's Bathyscaphe Trieste, in January 1960. (Unmanned descents were undertaken by the Japanese submersible Kaiko in 1996 and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution's Nereus in 2009.)

But the Trieste, which was 18.4 metres long and had a sphere with steel walls 12.7 centimetres thick to withstand pressure of up to 1250 kilograms per square centimetre, was bulky compared with the Virgin Oceanic's DeepFlight Challenger submarine.

The Challenger is designed by Mr Hawkes, who also created the Deep Rover submersibles used by film director James Cameron in his IMAX movie Aliens of the Deep, and is just 5.4 metres long, 3.8 metres wide and 1.7 metres high.

The pressure at the bottom of the Mariana Trench is up to 1000 times normal atmospheric pressure at sea level.

To combat this, the Challenger - named after the deepest point of the Mariana Trench, the Challenger Deep - is made from 3630 kilograms of carbon fibre and titanium, its creator said.

It has a quartz viewing dome that not only gives a 180-degree view, but will also be able to withstand almost 6 million kilograms of pressure, the weight of three space shuttles. This durability is enough for the craft to withstand the pressures of the Challenger Deep, Mr Hawkes said.

The submarine is pressurised at one atmosphere - the same pressure a person experiences at sea level - so the solo pilot does not need to wear a special suit.

And while the Trieste could only plunge straight down into the Trench before heading back up again, the Challenger is expected to dive downwards at 107 metres a minute, reaching the bottom of the Trench before "flying" around unaided for up to 10 kilometres in 24 hours.

Mr Hawkes said he designed the sub to use the downward lift of its wings, instead of ballast, to propel it through and down into the ocean. It takes off like a plane, by speeding on the water surface at about two knots before it dives nose down.

In the dark depths of the trenches, the submersible uses low wattage LED lights and laser "feeler" beams instead of wide arc lights so that it causes as little disruption to marine life as possible, Mr Hawkes said.

Creatures of the deep

What Sir Richard and Mr Welsh see when they make their descent is expected to be spectacular.

Scientists previously believed the bottom of the oceans were barren deserts.

But following studies by scientists Howie Sanders and Robert Hessler, the first of which was published in 1967, it became known that the deep sea was rich with life, just like other shallower waters.

"There'll be a lot of new species that have never been seen or discovered before, I have no doubts about that," University of Western Sydney marine biologist Dr Sebastian Holmes said.

There willl be varieties of strange looking crabs, starfish and fish, which can cope with the immense pressure because they breathe liquid, rather than air.

And there could be ancient life forms that moved to the depths because there is less competition for food.

In this "sub-optimal habitat", the giant squid, which has been found off the coast of Australia, the giant isopod and the coelacanth could survive, Dr Holmes said. The coelacanth existed almost 400 million years ago according to fossil records and was believed to have gone extinct 80 million years ago until it was found off the South African coast in 1938


The five trenches Sir Richard and Mr Welsh hope to explore are the:

• Mariana Trench (about 11 kilometres deep).
• Diamantina Trench in the Indian Ocean (about eight kilometres deep).
• South Sandwich Trench in the Southern Ocean (about 7.2 kilometres deep).
• Puerto Rico Trench in the Atlantic (about 8.4 kilometres deep).
• Molloy Deep Trench in the Arctic Ocean (about 5.6 kilometres deep).

The Challenger submarine will be pressure tested before its first dive, with Mr Welsh at the helm, into the Mariana Trench later this year.

Sir Richard will then pilot the second dive into the Puerto Rico Trench. The five expeditions are expected to take place over two years.