Graham Hawkes Introduces Underwater Flight

Google Tech Talk March 23, 2010 ABSTRACT Graham Hawkes Introduces Underwater Flight: State-of-the-Art Vehicles to Explore/Survey the Unknown Territory of our Ocean Planet Presented by Graham Hawkes. Renowned ocean engineer Graham Hawkes has achieved his goal of creating a new generation of lightweight, cost-effective manned and remotely operated craft, including the world's only full ocean depth manned vehicle, which will open the oceans to all depths for exploration, science, and industry. The Deep Flight project started in the late 1980s as a program to provide cost-effective vehicles for deep ocean access. Graham Hawkes decided that to move efficiently through the 3-dimensional space of the ocean territories, future undersea craft had to sprout wings (fins) and fly. Future craft would also have to be one-tenth the weight of conventional vehicles, thus eliminating the need for a costly mothership. Tearing up everything he knew about submersibles, Hawkes made the same transition sub-sea that the Wright Brothers did in air, moving from ballooning to an ultra-lightweight, more controllable and flexible design of fixed wing craft. Since that time, Hawkes has built five generations of Deep Flight submersibles, including the worlds only full ocean depth capable manned vehicle for the late adventurer Steve Fossett; a sleek underwater flier for venture capitalist, Tom Perkins; and a new class of open cockpit craft for entrepreneur, Sir Richard Branson. Graham Hawkes, an internationally renowned ocean engineer/inventor, has been responsible for the design of a significant percentage of all manned (and more than 300 remote) underwater vehicles built for research or industry worldwide, including the Wasp and Mantis Atmospheric Diving Suits, the Deep Rover research submersibles which were recently featured in the James Cameron 3-D Imax film, Aliens of the Deep, and the Deep Flight series of winged submersibles. Mr. Hawkes has founded six high technology companies, including Hawkes Ocean Technologies which is the only organization in the world that has developed technology to access all depths of the oceans. Mr. Hawkes currently holds the world record for the deepest solo dive (3,000 feet), which he achieved while test piloting his Deep Rover submersible. He also claims to have killed James Bond in the film For Your Eyes Only.