From submersible superyachts to underwater restaurants, the future of travel lies beneath the waves capable of staying submerged for several weeks, the M5 will have an acrylic pressure hull design.
While Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos battle it out in the new race for space travel, there are pioneering adventures to be found closer to home. Underwater travel is opening up to offer astonishing and elemental experiences for those seeking a new perspective. Personal submarines may not be a prerequisite superyacht toy, but there are few to rival the luxury of the new limited edition Project Neptune, the spectacular result of a collaboration between Aston Martin and Triton Submarines.
Developed in conjunction with Red Bull Advanced Technologies, who also developed the Aston Martin Valkyrie ‘hypercar’, the three-person Project Neptune is exceptionally agile, can reach depths of 499m and stay underwater for up to eight hours. While its sprint speed of five knots may be positively slow by Aston Martin standards, it is four times the acceleration of Triton’s flagship 3300/3 model.
Project Neptune’s custom interior includes hand-stitched leather and carbon fibre trim, and Aston Martin’s in-house design team have conceived a range of three designer specifications. Bespoke options will also be available via Q by Aston Martin, the company’s customisation service.
If a submersible toy isn’t enough, how about a superyacht submarine? Austrian company Migaloo calls its 165m M5 a “private submersible superyacht,” and it’s no exaggeration. Capable of staying submerged for several weeks, the M5 will have an acrylic pressure hull design—built to U.S. Navy submarine standards—with multiple MTU generators and lithium batteries.
With room for 2 Owners, 12 guests and 19 crew, for a total of 32 people, the M5 is the ultimate James Bond fantasy, with a helipad, a garage for tenders and toys, a cinema room, gym, spa, wine cellar, library, several bars with windows to the sea, and a games room. If you want to explore the ocean’s depths further, the M5 has two minisubs, and when you resurface, you can relax using the outdoor pool and Jacuzzi as well as the beach club. And if the M5 isn’t quite big enough, the M7 extends to 280m.
It’s not just superyachts and submarines taking underwater exploration to the next level. While underwater restaurants have become increasingly popular in the Caribbean, ‘Under in Norway’ became the world’s largest when it opened in April 2019. Designed by Oslo and New York- based architecture firm Snøhetta, the 40-seater fine dining restaurant resembles a sunken concrete periscope, submerged on the craggy shoreline of Båly on Norway’s south coast. The 495-square-metre restaurant is fronted by a huge panoramic window that gives visitors an astonishing view of the marine life in the North Sea and the drama of the weather outside. The concrete of the monolithic structure has been left in its raw form to encourage algae and molluscs to make a home there, which in time will create an artificial mussel reef to help purify the water and naturally attract more marine life.
The full edition of PURSUIT – FUTURE OPTIMISTS can be found as a digital flipbook here.
