Necker Nymph, the next step in liveaboard submarines

First the Seahunter (then Argo) had the Deep See, an underwater sub which 2 passengers could go down to 475m/1500ft around the Cocos island area. Critics have said that it's not a real dive experience (but I personally loved not having to get into a wetsuit and shoot a hammerhead with a 70-200 lens dry!).

Then Rinspeeds Squba Lotus gave James Bond fans a bit of a jolt but was impractical as it'd probably get stuck in the loose sand on the beach.

Trust Richard Branson to market a new toy for his Necker Belle yacht, which is based around his Necker Island resort (a place I don't really get since it's really balinese houses rebuilt in the caribbean?). The new tourist submarine, the Necker Nymph allows 2 scuba divers to buzz around a coral reef (max bottom 30m/100ft) with a pilot for a couple of hours. The Hawkes Ocean design is technically capable of going down to 11000m/36000ft but I'm guessing all Atlanteans are extinct so it'll never see the bottom of the Marianna Trench with passengers.

Still a cool toy to have.

Graham Hawkes is cool - he used to come give presentation about Deep Flight to the Naval Architecture program at Cal.

Cheers

James

The one thing I was never sure about with that design - they say it's "capable" of hitting these huge depths, which I assume is a trade-off between the "lift" achieved by speeding thru the water and crush-depth on the hull while maintaining a typical surface type pressure internally (but its a small tube cross-section so can probably go deeper than larger naval subs, hull can be much more single-bore design vs more seams, etc.

So...how fast do you need to be going to hit that max depth, and what are you really seeing at that speed? As I understood the design they're using the foils for negative lift vs. carrying any real ballast, and maintaining internal pressure much as a traditional sub does, which means if you stop you start your ascent, right?

Still a cool toy to have.

That is why I put in adoption papers with Branson. Told him I am out of my terrible twos and teens and already housebroken. So far so good and my papers have not been rejected. Considering Trump had a restraining order against me fairly quickly when I put in my papers with him, I think I have a shot this time

Man I want to be him when I grow up...

Man I want to be him when I grow up...

I think a big part of what makes him "him" is that he hasn't grown up himself. And I mean that in a good way.

I think a big part of what makes him "him" is that he hasn't grown up himself. And I mean that in a good way.

Very good point. I like the guy, he knows how to enjoy what he has and also uses money for some good causes. More power to him....