The fatal accident of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo in October has jeopardized the company's plans of transporting space tourists. Now, it appears that another of Sir Richard Branson's ambitious dream is also in trouble.
In 2011, Virgin Oceanic unveiled its DeepFlight Challenger, an 18 foot-long aero-submarine. Just like with the SpaceShipTwo, Branson's company saw potentials in bringing passengers to the bottom of the ocean with prospective aquanauts being wealthy individuals with enough money to pay as much as $500,000 for a five-dive package.
Branson had hoped that the vehicle would have its maiden voyage to Mariana Trench in the Pacific in 2011. At a depth of 36,000ft-deep, the trench is the lowest known point on the planet and is deeper than the height of Mount Everest. Because of its depth and the risks involved, the abyss only had three human visitors, fewer than the number of astronauts that made it to the surface of the moon. The submarine would then move on to the Puerto Rico trench, which had a depth of 28,000 feet, and then process with dives in the Indian, Arctic and Southern Oceans.
Three years after the deep sea vehicle's launch, however, none of the plans had come into fruition and while this has nothing to do with any tragic incident, the company that built the submarine revealed that it has declined to back the project because the submarine was intended for only one dive and cannot be reused.
Adam Wright, the president of DeepFlight, which designed and built the submarine, said that the Challenger was built for only one dive down the Mariana Trench and under a special contract with Steve Fossett.
The now deceased Fossett invented the vehicle and planned to pilot it to the bottom of the Mariana Trench to set a record for deepest dive and after the supposed one time mission donate the submarine to the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.
"Once Virgin took over the project, the importance of the one-off record dive shifted and they wanted to repurpose the craft. They wanted to do five dives," Wright said. "The problem is the strength of the vessel does decrease after each dive. It is strongest on the first dive."
Last week, a spokesman for Virgin said that the five ocean dives had already been scrapped.
"We were not sure [DeepFlight Challenger] would make it down," the spokesperson said. "That project has been put on ice while we look at other technology that works."
