SAN JOSE, California (5 Dec 2005) -- Is he a mad scientist or an ocean pioneer uncovering the mysteries of the deep? New Scientist magazine says inventor-engineer Graham Hawkes is on the cutting edge of undersea exploration, and his radical new sub design might supersede all of the world's manned submersibles in a few years. Maybe. You would never suspect it opening the door to his workshop in a fog-shrouded marina in Point Richmond, Calif. A few engineers tool around with Autodesk 3-D software, surrounded by earlier submersible prototypes that have gone hunting for shipwrecks or ended up in the movies. But project "pushing deep," as Hawkes' wife has dubbed it, is meant to take Hawkes to the very bottom - seven miles below the ocean surface at the Mariana Trench near Guam. Why? "Why not?" responds the 57-year-old native Brit. "We know much more about the moon than our own planet." Only one other manned submersible has made it once, and that was 45 years ago. Hawkes' plan is radical for another reason: He wants to speed to the bottom using the same principles as an airplane. Most other submersibles use the old-fashioned ballast system: take water in to sink, release it to rise. In fact, his submersibles resemble two-seater gliders with clipped wings more than submarines. A far cry from Captain Nemo's Nautilus, the Deep Flight winged submersible is small, lightweight with a titanium hull and fast, able to descend at 400 feet per minute (or a little more than hour to the bottom of the Mariana Trench.) And at $10 million to construct, a bargain compared to the tens of millions others have spent. Hawkes himself holds the record for a solo manned submersible dive, but that was for the only slightly more than 3,000 feet he traveled below the Santa Barbara Channel about 15 years ago. (He says he only holds a solo record because the craft only held one person.) He also has competition: the Japanese, the world-renowned Woods Hole Institute on Cape Cod in Massachusetts, and there are reports the Chinese could be at the furthest depths by this time next year. (His few attempts at exploring San Francisco Bay in earlier prototypes ended badly when he ran into things in the murky water.) Whoever controls the ocean floor will have access to untold resources, including minerals and new DNA strands from undersea microbes leaking from sea vents that could advance biotechnology. "Of course, it's about politics," Hawkes said. And for him? "I'm an engineer. It's all about designing a submersible that will get there." Hawkes has another handicap, besides competition: He is far from his goal of raising the $10 million needed to build the prototype. Autodesk has given him Inventor software and some money. Hewlett Packard has donated the workstations. He's trying to parlay undersea fiber optic communications technology he developed with NASA money into a commercially feasible product. And he's offering $15,000, three-day underwater flight simulator schools that regularly sell out. 3Com founder Bob Metcalfe has been a student, hunting last winter for giant squid with Hawkes in the Sea of Cortez. They found none. | | The inventor-engineer, however, is funding most of his private effort so far though another more earthly invention: U.S. soldiers in Iraq are using robot technology he designed to send unmanned, armed rovers to search for insurgents. In the meantime, Hawkes-designed submersibles have been used in National Geographic specials, films, including James Cameron's latest 3-D IMAX film, "Aliens of the Deep." In the James Bond film, "For Your Eyes Only," he played the character Mantis Man, piloting one of his own submersibles. In his spare time, he's run a shipwreck recovery business and in a 1991 search of the Bermuda Triangle caused a more than a minor stir when 10 miles off Fort Lauderdale he thought he found underwater remnants of Flight 19, the squadron of Navy Avenger aircraft that mysteriously disappeared in 1945. The find was inconclusive. By designing cheaper, faster underwater craft, Hawkes is trying to prove that getting to the bottom of the sea could be just as feasible as getting to space, or at least the space station. It remains a tough sell. Hawkes appeared at the futuristic TED conference in Monterey and told those at the high-tech gathering - many of whom are more interested in space exploration - that "your rockets are pointed the wrong way. The future is the ocean." And he admits that so far, venture capitalists and even the David Packard Foundation, which funds Monterey Bay Aquarium underwater research and favors unmanned submersibles, have been uninterested. Not everyone thinks people need to go to the bottom, if a mechanical robot can handle the work. "I've done manned submersibles and unmanned. My feeling is that remotely operated vehicles have the same advantages of manned ones and you can stay down longer," said Dale Graves, former pilot of Tiburon, a remote vehicle of the Monterey Bay Area Research Institute. Some in the field say that while flying may be fast, in the ocean you want to stop and hover. Others, however, consider Hawkes almost a modern day Jules Verne. "He's a visionary who delivers," said Dr. Bruce Robison, senior scientist at the Monterey Bay institute. Robison piloted some of Hawkes earlier submersibles in the 1980s. "It's like manned versus robotic space travel. Ultimately, people are going." |
