Killer Whale Submarine a killer personal submersible
Submarines are awesome. A submarine shaped like a Killer Whale is off-the-charts awesome. It can be yours for a cool $100,000.
It's a whale! It's a submarine! It's a whale submarine!
(Credit: Hammacher Schlemmer)Jules Verne had the market on imaginative submarines cornered for many long years. And then Hammacher Schlemmer came along and offered a $100,000 Killer Whale Submarine.
The Killer Whale Submarine can breach from the water, just like a real whale. It has pectoral fins with control levers and a 255-horsepower supercharged Rotax axial flow engine. I can't really explain what that is exactly, but it sounds super cool.
OMG! Get me out of here! (Click to enlarge.)
(Credit: Hammacher Schlemmer)This aquatic beast is also pretty fast. Underwater, it can go 25 mph. On the surface, it can hydroplane at up to 50 mph. I think that's faster than my Prius can go on land.
A live video feed from a camera mounted on the dorsal fin is fed into the cockpit. A four-point racing harness will keep you in place while you're flying up out of the water.
You can fit two people into the Killer Whale Submarine. Hammacher Schlemmer features an awesome marketing image that makes it look like the passenger is screaming his head off and desperately scrabbling at the window.
This is definitely a submarine for people who are (a) rich as all getup; (b) in love with roller coasters; and (c) fans of "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home." Personally, I only qualify as one of those things. Guess which one.
Recommended soundtrack: "Whales Alive," with dramatic readings by Leonard Nimoy.
