We All Live in a Yellow Submarine...

Well, my sister Trish alerted me the other day to the growing popularity of private submarines, so I just had to check it out.

As Bloomberg had it a few weeks ago, in an article by A. Craig Copetas:

The ocean floor is the final spending frontier for the world's richest people. Journeying to see what's on the bottom aboard a personal submersible is a wretched excess guaranteed to trump the average mogul's stable of vintage Bugattis or a $38 million round-trip ticket to the International Space Station aboard a Russian rocket.

Well, I might quibble here. I think I'd equate the trip to the Space Station with owning a sub, but Copetas points out that the submersibles have the advantage of being secret. Most of the sub-makers' lips are sealed about who their clientele are. Loose lips apparently sink sub makers.)

And just when you thought that the industrial manufacturing sector had abandoned the U.S., there's Oregon's U.S. Submarines, maker of at least some of the 100 private luxury subs that are running silent and deep pockets. There's also Washington's Olympic Tool & Engineering, which designed a sub for Paul Allen. Exomos is a Dubai-based maker of custom subs. (I guess when you buy a sub, you want one that's bespoke: none of this off-the-shelf sub buying.)

Maybe it's not just the secrecy angle that appeals to our civilian submariners. There's apparently at least a little frisson of danger that goes along with it. (And not just the danger of getting stuck on the bottom, or breaking apart under pressure, or running out of air.) There's the little matter of depth charges.

Herve Jaubert, the CEO of Exomos, is quoted in the Bloomberg article as saying:

``Side sonar scanners are always mistaken for torpedo tubes...Government agencies make visits to see if there are torpedoes aboard our boats. Owners are supposed to let authorities know when they're in the area. They often don't, and it causes problems.''

Here's what the sunk cost would be:

Jaubert's 10-passenger sub costs $15 million. A gymnasium is optional. U.S. Submarines' mid-size model is the $25 million Seattle 1000, a three-story-tall vessel with five staterooms, five bathrooms, two kitchens, a gym, a wine cellar and a 30- foot-long by 15-foot-wide observation portal. It has a range of 3,000 nautical miles.

3,000 nautical miles on your hands.

That's a lot of time in which a submariners fancy can turn to love. (And all that energy to expend if you cheaped out and didn't spring for the optional gym on board.)

But apparently the native denizens of the deep get restless when they see submariners having a little underwater go at it. Dolphins have been known to bang their snouts up against the love nest window when they see a little love making going on that doesn't involve them. (Remember that wacky George Scott movie, Day of the Dolphins? Well, I'm a sucker for talking animals - like Bea and Pa in the movie - so I enjoyed it. One of Pa's lines is, "Fa [George Scott's character] loves Pa." Well, Fa may love Pa, but the Pa's of the world apparently don't cotton to fantastically rich submarine owners shagging their trophy wives without pulling the curtains closed.)

I cruised around a little on the U.S. Submarine site.

They claim that their ride can take you "to unseen regions of the deep ocean in perfect comfort and absolute safety."

Depth charges and charging dolphins aside, how can you guarantee absolute safety? Am I the only person who remembers The Thresher. And The Kursk?

 Anyway, US Sub has a wide range of offerings. There's the entry level Triton 2-3 passenger submersible "designed for launch and recovery from megayachts, but it is lightweight enough to be trailered. " Then there are several classes of luxury subs that run all the way up to The Phoenix 1000.

The ultimate personal transportation device, 65 meters (213 ft.) in length with 470 square meters (5000 sq. ft.) of interior space on 4 levels.

Which would give it a bit over four times the floor space, and two times the number of levels. So it might not be that bad to live in a submersible. But, as they say, if you have to ask the price you probably can't afford it.

If you don't want to sail the seven seas, US Subs also has something called a SeaRoom, a "permanently anchored "floating residence" that puts one floor underwater.

A new lifestyle, dramatically different from your peers. Peaceful, exploratory. And why not? After all, none of us live forever.

Although you might live longer in the SeaRoom, given that it's only partially submersed, so the U.S. Navy probably wouldn't be taking pot-shots at it.

In any case, the private submarine is just another example of how the other 0.000001 percent lives in a parallel universe where money is no object, and nothing, but nothing, is too outrageous to spend it on.

For the record, Paul Allen's submarine is yellow.

I'm enough of a cornball that mine probably would be, too.