The flyingpenguin is excited to find Deep Flight Submersibles has achieved success in artificial underwater flight.
We have evolved the art of underwater flight for its own sake through three generations of pure fliers. The butterfly has finally fully emerged… Deep Flight Super Falcon, the first production underwater flier.
It seems the name falcon has something to do with Tom Perkins’ Maltese Falcon.
Now available for sale to private owners. The first full productionized submersible capable of sub-sea flight. HOT is currently building a Super Falcon for Tom Perkins, founder of Kleiner Perkins Venture Capital. Perkins owns the largest privately-owned sailing yacht, S/Y Maltese Falcon. Deep Flight Super Falcon replaces the experimental prototype Deep Flight Aviator which was sold to another organization as a decommissioned submersible and they are operating the Aviator without any support from Hawkes Ocean Technologies.
The aviator was named for the late, great Steve Fawcett who intended to use it to set a deep-sea diving record. New investor, new functionality, new name…
Imagine flying to shore in rough weather. This could be the best escape path for inclement or emergency sea-state conditions, as well as an awesome interactive experience in regular ship-to-shore travel.
I was already planning to fly above water, but I might just have to enroll in underwater flight school as well.
CNN tries to make a statement about human originality and the usual nonsense.
“It’s not just that they look like airplanes, they actually are,” Hawkes said. “The machines we build underwater should look like airplanes, not submarines. Airplanes don’t look like balloons.”
He won’t take credit for the idea, saying the idea of a submarine with fins and wings has been thought of before. The 1943 French comic book, “Red Rackham’s Treasure,” included a shark-like submarine with dorsal fins and a tail. Hawkes said that although the idea of wings may have been obvious, “The prize goes to he that does.”
Looks like an airplane? Shark-like is more like it because it actually is underwater, but let’s not forget that penguins do actually fly underwater. Let’s give some credit to the little feathered guys who did it first, eh?
Now there’s a graceful image of a flying machine. CNN also provides some stomach-turning marketing speak.
He said Deep Flight submersibles are designed to be more agile than any creature living in the ocean — with the exception of dolphins.
More agile than a penguin? I don’t believe it. Show me some numbers. Dolphins are certainly not the measure, but it makes for nice imagery. I mean I doubt they’d say it’s designed to be more agile than a killer whale, or a colossal squid. That might scare away potential buyers. After all, the Falcon runs at a max speed of just 6 knots, which is slower than many fish (Mahi mahi like to catch squid at 7 knots), and some squid are known to sprint at 20 knots. Like I said, show me some numbers.