This week I installed a new home network, it took me two days and involved switches, routers and about a 100m of cat6 cable, I was pretty damn pleased with myself for the end result, but some please, that’s not enough. Justin Beckerman is one of those people, an 18 year old student from Mendham High School in New Jersey who took it upon himself to build a fully functional one-man submarine, effectively making my networking efforts look like crud.
The coolest thing about this sub is that it actually works, he’s already managed to take it to six feet underwater and while that might not be enough to beat James Cameron’s deep sea dive record, it’s incredible that he built it and tested it successfully.
Justin is no new comer to tinkering with hardware and has had a lifetime of toying with building mini jet-engines, remote controlled vehicles, vacuums and more from household scrap and while this may not be his first attempt at a submarine, it’s certainly his best so far having had two failed attempts before.
The submarine uses grooved plastics and piping and other lightweight scrap materials. It took 11 months to design and build the submarine in his basement, where he also had to construct a custom card to hold and carry the sub. It’s even fitted out with a radio, breathing system, back-up batteries and room to seat one person. His next goal is a depth of 30ft and I wish him the best of luck.
Images courtesy of DamnGeeky
Quite a resourceful youngster. I’d have loved to have played with that when I was 18. Problem was I was too busy chasing skirts to think about such things. Ah yes, the joys of a misspent youth.