Take your eight closest friends for rides on your very own submarine. Provided you have a lot of money, of course. A company called U-Boat Worx makes underwater vehicles you can launch right off your yacht. Most of their models fit two or three people, but the newest, which we learned about from Gizmodo, fits nine.
The U-Boat Worx website doesn’t include pricing information, which means they’re probably very expensive. If the terms U-boat and submarine make you think of cramped, dark places, think again. These versions are nothing like naval vessels. The Nexus looks like a pretty comfortable way to tool around the ocean. It also looks a bit like a fancy espresso machine.
The submarines can dive up to 650 feet. That’s about as far as sunlight penetrates, so there wouldn’t be much to see below that depth anyway. You won’t be competing with James Cameron’s dive to the deepest part of the ocean, which is over 36,000 feet deep. But you still get to explore the ocean.
The Nexus scoots along at about 3.5 miles per hour. Its battery lasts 18 hours before it has to be recharged. But there’s also no bathroom onboard so dives probably don’t often last that long anyway.
The video below, and others on the U-Boat Worx YouTube channel, show off their product line’s features. Personal submarines for every use, from ocean research to cocktail parties! The personal submarine market has more options than you might think. Including some shaped like sharks and, of course, the James Bond version.
For the rest of us, we’ll have to be content watching videos of amazing underwater creatures or going on virtual reality dives.
Melissa is Nerdist’s science & technology staff writer. She also moderates “science of” panels at conventions and co-hosts Star Warsologies, a podcast about science and Star Wars. Follow her on Twitter @melissatruth.
