This is science meeting science-fiction.
About fifteen years ago there was a short-lived sci-fi drama on NBC called SeaQuest DSV. The oceans were being colonized and were the new Wild West, and the SeaQuest was the supersub called on to keep the peace, do research, find the bad guys, all that stuff. Think Star Trek: Underwater. You can get it on NetFlix, but only the first season is anywhere near watchable. Then the NBC execs got a hold of it and screwed it up.
In the show there was the resident boy genius, Lucas Wolenczak. He figures out how to talk to dolphins, gets himself in lots of trouble, typical plot device kind of character. But one of the cooler subtexts in the show was the idea that if you want to move around in the water better, you need to move like the fish. So he and one of the navigators build a one-person personal submersible based on dolphin hydrodynamics. The show's aquaracer had two jets and a tail that "swam" to provide a rudder and stability, and the whole idea struck me as pretty novel. The running story of the sub was one of the better plot lines in the season.
And now someone's done it. Or come close enough for government work. They've been working on this for some time - you can see the prototype at the site - but now they're in production with two models - one a racing model, and one for us regular Joes. Doesn't look like it can dive too deeply yet, but it's a heck of a start.
Watch the videos of this thing. Hot diggity, I want one!
About fifteen years ago there was a short-lived sci-fi drama on NBC called SeaQuest DSV. The oceans were being colonized and were the new Wild West, and the SeaQuest was the supersub called on to keep the peace, do research, find the bad guys, all that stuff. Think Star Trek: Underwater. You can get it on NetFlix, but only the first season is anywhere near watchable. Then the NBC execs got a hold of it and screwed it up.
In the show there was the resident boy genius, Lucas Wolenczak. He figures out how to talk to dolphins, gets himself in lots of trouble, typical plot device kind of character. But one of the cooler subtexts in the show was the idea that if you want to move around in the water better, you need to move like the fish. So he and one of the navigators build a one-person personal submersible based on dolphin hydrodynamics. The show's aquaracer had two jets and a tail that "swam" to provide a rudder and stability, and the whole idea struck me as pretty novel. The running story of the sub was one of the better plot lines in the season.
And now someone's done it. Or come close enough for government work. They've been working on this for some time - you can see the prototype at the site - but now they're in production with two models - one a racing model, and one for us regular Joes. Doesn't look like it can dive too deeply yet, but it's a heck of a start.
Watch the videos of this thing. Hot diggity, I want one!
