Great Machines: Submersibles: Scuba Driving

Marco R. della Cava

06/01/2008

Two frontiers continue to tug at mankind’s innate need to explore: deep space and the deep. Although the former has forever been the playground of brazen fighter jocks and brainy flight scientists, thanks to maverick tycoon Richard Branson anyone with $200,000 will soon be able to hop aboard Virgin Galactic and blast into the heavens.

As for the oceans of the world, touring them largely remains the domain of either well-funded folks hunting for the ghost of the Titanic or adventurers willing to buy personal aquatic toys that for the most part adhere to the function and look of the Beatles’ yellow submarine—that is to say bulbous and cumbersome. Until now.

Two men from different sides of the globe and with radically different businesses and visions have built sub-machines that are sure to turn the heads and lighten the wallets of anyone who has dreamed of cruising in our waterworld autobahns. The sQuba takes its inspiration from James Bond, while the Super Falcon is something old Q would kill to have. Both distinguish themselves from past "underwater cars" in their ability to fly through the water as opposed to driving on a shallow seabed.

In the European corner is Frank Rinderknecht, founder of famed Swiss-based Porsche tuner Rinspeed. Rinderknecht has long been tinkering with automotive concept cars, and his website’s home page boasts a John Lennon quote ("You may say I’m a dreamer") that lays his passion for one-off innovation on the line.

"For quite some years, I’ve had the idea of turning the fiction of the [underwater] Lotus Esprit in The Spy Who Loved Me into reality," says Rinderknecht, who dove into the creation of his sQuba car last June and finished earlier this year. A test run in Lake Zurich proved that the prototype works, and a production run "depends on interested third parties."

At first glance, the sQuba looks not much different than the nimble pocket rocket it is based on, the Lotus Elise (a vehicle that is quite popular with tinkerers, given its selection by Tesla as the platform for the world’s first electric sports car). But the devilishly clever components which make it sea-friendly are in the details.

Turning to Swiss engineering firm Esoro for the heavy lifting, Rinderknecht replaced the Elise’s traditional engine with rechargeable lithium-ion batteries that power three motors—one provides propulsion on land, while the other two drive propellers for underwater touring. Moreover, two Seabob jet drives in the nose help stabilize the vehicle, which is naturally buoyant. Range is about 50 miles on land and three hours in the water.

"Driving the car on the [ocean] ground was never an option because it wasn’t environmentally friendly," says Rinderknecht. Green concerns aside, there was also the fact that the car could not simply dive to any depth its partially carbon-fiber shell could sustain. The sQuba’s two occupants are essentially scuba divers strapped into a sleek Elise, breathing bottled O2. Because staying at depths greater than 20 feet for any long period of time would require slow decompressing to avoid the bends, sQuba is electronically limited to a 10-meter (33-foot) diving depth.For all its sophisticated engineering, transitioning the car from land to sea happens with a charmingly pedestrian touch. Drive into the ocean, and watch it float. Then bite into a regulator, open both doors, and watch the sQuba begin to dive as it takes on saltwater. Surely, couldn’t that be done with a James Bond-like touch of a button? "We could have engineered many fancy systems, but why?" says Rinderknecht. "Sometimes a simple solution is the best. And cheapest."

In contrast to Rinspeed’s decidedly automotive effort is Graham Hawkes’ Deep Flight Super Falcon, the latest personal sub from the San Francisco Bay Area–based inventor of British origin. Hawkes has been building ocean-diving crafts for the better part of four decades, and his most recent brainchild is a $1.7- to $2.5-million winged, two-seat stiletto capable of diving 1,000 feet. Hawkes is busy assembling two in his Point Richmond warehouse, one of which will go to venture capitalist Tom Perkins, who plans to park it inside his epic $100 million sailing yacht, the Maltese Falcon.

The other Super Falcon will become the first in a small, personal-sub fleet that Hawkes plans to employ in what he calls, with a smile, "Ocean Galactic"—essentially an underwater version of Branson’s space concept that would charge five to six figures to expose the curious to remote areas of our watery world.

"Most personal subs are simply about being underwater, and then staring out a small porthole," says Hawkes. "We’re about truly flying and staying with the animals."

The plane analogy is apt. The Super Falcon looks the part with stubby wings mid-ship and, fighter-jet like, horizontal elevators and vertical rudders act as stabilizers. The pilot and passenger sit one in front of the other, their heads popping out of a tight composite glass, carbon, and epoxy cocoon to gaze on sea life through clear semicircles. Hawkes, a longtime ocean explorer, sees camera-equipped Super Falcons as a great way to further our understanding of the ocean and its resources.

But he understands some may want a Super Falcon for bragging rights. "We’re still trying to assess what the market is for [personal] Super Falcons," says Hawkes’ wife Karen, who helps run Hawkes Ocean Technologies along with a tight-knit crew of six engineers and designers. "Tom [Perkins] really kicked it off, and now have more requests than we ever expected, largely from the growing mega-yacht crowd that really isn’t affected by economic dips."

Anyone questioning Hawkes’ ability to make the Super Falcon take wing need only know that sitting a few storage bays away is the sleek imposing craft dubbed the Deep Flight Challenger. More than 90 percent complete but mothballed at the moment, it belongs to the estate of recently deceased adventurer Steve Fossett, whose aim was to take Challenger to its designed limit—the ocean floor, 37,000 feet, or some 16,000 feet past the current manned-sub record.

But that’s John Glenn type stuff. For the merely curious, Super Falcon is a direct route to not just seeing a great white shark in its element, but stalking with one, too. And if he’s not around, there is always the simple joy of sub-aquatic flying.

"I’ve been underwater most of my life, and often the sea is a bit like a poorly stocked aquarium," says Hawkes. "So we’ve added this business of flight. The nature, if and when you see it, is just icing on the cake."

Deep Flight Submersibles, www.deepflight.com
Rinspeed, www.rinspeed.com