Virgin Airlines Chairman Richard Branson is planning to go where no man has gone before — 36,000 feet into the sea.
Branson is set to dive into the deepest parts of the ocean in a new custom-built submarine named the Virgin Oceanic, that he will co-pilot later this year. The 5 dives will feed trip data back to Google Earth, Google’s free 3-D mapping software, as well as scientists from USC, the University of Hawaii, University of Alaska, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California.
“Our mission for Google Earth is to create a virtual mirror of the world and help users learn and understand about the world they live in, including the oceans,” said Google spokeswoman Anne Espiritu. “With this expedition, we hope to better understand the unique conditions and ecosystems that exist in the oceans and share them with the world through Google Earth.”
The 18-foot Virgin Oceanic submarine will be driven by Branson and Chris Welsh, a pilot and Orange County entrepreneur, and take five dives over the next two years. The first expedition is scheduled for later this year with a 36,201-foot plunge into the Pacific Ocean’s Mariana Trench, which Virgin says is the deepest unexplored point on the planet. Later trips by the Virgin Oceanic sub are planned into the Puerto Rico Trench in the Atlantic Ocean (28,232 feet deep), the Molloy Deep in the Arctic Ocean (18,399 feet), the South Sandwich Trench in the Southern Ocean (23,737 feet) and Diamantina in the Indian Ocean (26,401 feet).
All total, the submarine should end up diving deeper than any operating military sub, deeper than a sperm whale and much deeper than the Titanic’s final resting place.
