Marine engineer Graham Hawkes' latest creation, Deep Flight Super Falcon is a $1.5 million battery-powered winged submarine that looks just like a plane, except it "flies" underwater.
It has a single rear-mounted propeller, looking much like an electric fan, drives the vessel, and a 48-volt lithium phosphate battery provides power. Its thick pressure hull is a carbon-epoxy mixture, and the two passengers aboard ride seated in cockpits fore and aft, observing their watery surroundings through thick Plexiglas canopies.
According to Hawkes, the craft “flies” just like a jet plane, with electric motors controlling for roll, pitch and yaw. It can fly downward at a maximum of 200 feet per minute, upward at twice that speed and keep flying for a maximum of five hours at 4 knots – about 4.6 mph. John McCosker, [California Academy of Sciences] chair of aquatic biology, said the agile submarine will enable him and his colleagues for the first time to follow along with the travels of “whales and dolphins and even super sharks – maybe even the mysterious giant squid.”(Link | Via)
It has a single rear-mounted propeller, looking much like an electric fan, drives the vessel, and a 48-volt lithium phosphate battery provides power. Its thick pressure hull is a carbon-epoxy mixture, and the two passengers aboard ride seated in cockpits fore and aft, observing their watery surroundings through thick Plexiglas canopies.
According to Hawkes, the craft “flies” just like a jet plane, with electric motors controlling for roll, pitch and yaw. It can fly downward at a maximum of 200 feet per minute, upward at twice that speed and keep flying for a maximum of five hours at 4 knots – about 4.6 mph. John McCosker, [California Academy of Sciences] chair of aquatic biology, said the agile submarine will enable him and his colleagues for the first time to follow along with the travels of “whales and dolphins and even super sharks – maybe even the mysterious giant squid.”
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