This thing had better be cool, because it’s going to carry a price tag a little over $54 million. If Jacques Cousteau and Captain Nemo came together to design a ship, then that ship met with the architects of the Millennium Falcon and the USS Enterprise, and they all made a baby ship, this is what that baby ship would grow up to look like. It’s called the SeaOrbiter and it promises to change the way our oceans are explored forever.
The concept is to build a ship that looks taller than it is long, making it a submarine/ship combo that will constantly explore the ocean. It will measure 190 feet above the surface of the water, with an additional 6 levels lying below the surface. By design it will do everything from deploy other vehicles and devices into the ocean for exploration, as well as house laboratories stocked full of scientists in its mobile underwater home. There’s actually a laundry list of random but almost mind boggling features the SeaOrbiter will offer, like serving as a space simulator for training astronauts in a pressurized environment. And it’s all going to be powered completely by wind, water and solar energy.
And if you’re wondering how anybody can afford to design and build such an ambitious project, look no further than the supporters SeaOrbiter is attracting. Rolex, National Geographic and even NASA are just a few names on the list of supporters that have already helped raise 70% of the projected price tag. Construction was given the green light in 2014 with its online crowdfunding success alone, making room for the discussion of building other similar ships.
It’s all a pretty viable use of resources and time considering a majority of our planet is covered in water, yet mankind has still only explored and understands a fraction of our oceans.
A cross section of the SeaOrbiter shows several decks both above and below sea level.
