If you've ever gone out on a booze cruise and thought "gee, I wish there was less access to fresh air," this one's for you! Dutch submarine company U-Boat Worx has announced an enormous new underwater entertainment venue for up to 120 guests plus a full crew and catering staff.
With a colossal 150 sq m (1,615 sq ft) of reconfigurable floorspace, the "Under Water Entertainment Platform, or UWEP, is conceived as a proper entertainment space that can be set up as an underwater restaurant, casino, wedding venue, illuminati meeting room or whatever else you'd like.
This has to be one of the most spacious submarine designs we've seen. In fact, it might be the most spacious submarine design we've ever seen. A massive 35.1 m (115 ft) long, it's also 7.7 m (25 ft) wide and 7 m (23 ft) tall, with 14 enormous, 4.5-m-diameter (14.8-ft) acrylic windows to look out of, and the exterior is festooned with high-intensity lighting to give everyone a clear view of what's happening outside.
This thing is so huge that the sections at the front and rear are split into two levels – the upper being a stage-like area for extra seating, and the lower sections hiding the pilot's compartment at the front and a catering kitchen and five bathrooms at the rear. If the floor seating isn't fancy enough to make your biggest wigs feel sufficiently special, the bar can be configured with a VIP lounge on top of it, so they can receive the exclusive treatment to which they've become accustomed.
The UWEP's steel pressure hull allows it down as far as 200 m (650 ft) under the surface, which isn't a huge depth in the scheme of things, but it's more than deep enough to really feel like you're not in Kansas any more. This is an entirely electric vehicle, with four 80-kW (107-hp) horizontal thrusters and four 40-kW (54-hp) vertical thrusters to assist the ballast and buoyancy systems. Top speed is a very leisurely 3 knots (3.5 mph/5.6 km/h) on the surface and 2.5 knots (2.9 mph/4.6 km/h) underwater, so we wouldn't recommend using it as an escape vehicle.
Interestingly, U-Boat Worx is going with "high capacity lead-acid" batteries for the enormous 1.2-megawatt-hour underfloor battery pack. This is enough power, the company says, for trips up to 18 hours long, or multiple shorter ones between charges – and a separate emergency battery will keep critical systems online for 96 hours if things go pear-shaped.
The sheer size of this thing should make it one of the least claustrophobic submarines ever built – assuming of course that it does get built. We can't think of many others we've seen with nice-looking spiral staircases at the entry and exit instead of ladders. And it's also designed with a huge deck up top for when it surfaces, although there are large bubble windows dotted along the roof, so you'd want to think twice before standing next to one of those in a short dress.
It's a pretty overwhelming vehicle, really, and the mind boggles to think of how much it'd even cost to rent as an event space, let alone what U-Boat Worx will be charging buyers. Should your pockets be on the shallower end, the company will also be selling shorter 27.1-m (89-ft) versions with two-thirds the floor space, for up to 80 guests plus crew and staff.
Source: U-Boat Worx
