The MK1C looks like a conventional submarine missing its hood, but this electric vehicle is aimed at underwater travel for those already sporting submersible gear.

Marine biologists, underwater archeologists and special forces, the craft lets divers get in and out easily, but travel far faster than they normally could beneath the waves. Its designers claim it is the fastest in the world, allowing people get get lower faster and stay underwater longer as a result.

It can carry three divers at a time, powered by two spinning motors running on four large batteries. On the surface, it can hit 8 knots – below the water line it can go up to 8 knots. The submarine is equipped with breathing apparatus, a navigation system, extra air supplies and a cargo space of 250 liters.

While designed for more official and serious uses, one could have a lot of fun with this – anyone who has gone recreational diving knows it is a pain to jump in and come back out then search for the next spot. With this, you can cruise below the waves just as you would looking at sights on the surface in a car.

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Some drones fly in the air, others zoom across or through the water, but this rare hybrid does both with graceful ease, diving underwater then returning to the skies on demand.

Created by Oakland University’s Embedded Systems Research, the Loon Copter works much like a regular flying drone, and can also land and float easily on the water thanks to a bouyancy chamber filled with air.

However, it can also fill that chamber up, allowing it to sink, then flip its rotors to propel it through the water. To fly, it ejects the ballast and goes airborne again. Faster than a submarine, it can scout in the water, then return to and hover above the surface for rescure or recovery operations.

Its creators are working on extending its wireless range to allow it to go even further below the waves. More from its makers: “Loon Copter is a novel multi-rotor platform capable of traditional aerial flight, on-water surface operation, and sub aquatic diving. The Loon Copter is a proof-of-concept vehicle that demonstrated successful operation in early 2015. The 3rd prototype of our Loon Copter won the 2016 UAE Drones for Good competition in Dubai, which received 1017 entries from 165 countries.”

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Just a few hundred atoms in size, this ultra-tiny submarine measures distances in nanometers and uses light to drive it forward – despite its diminutive dimensions, it has a remarkable top speed of one inch per second, making the sub “the fastest-moving molecules ever seen in solution.”

While the entertainment value and wow-factors exist as well, there are also many potential serious and world-changing applications being explored, from organic nanobots to medical delivery systems.

“Each of the single-molecule, 244-atom submersibles built in the Rice University lab of chemist James Tour has a motor powered by ultraviolet light. With each full revolution, the motor’s tail-like propeller moves the sub forward 18 nanometers.”

Tour’s group has worked a lot with molecular micro-machines; his lab introduced the world to nanocars, single-molecule cars with four wheels, axles and independent suspensions that could be “driven” across surfaces. Assembling at this scale, the material inputs are small but the distances and forces in play relatively huge, opening up a world of tiny possibilities.

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This small, single-seat submarine can dive to a depth of 30 feet, but the best part: its creation cost just a thousand dollars, and its inventor, Justin Beckerman, built it while still in high school – design to build: 6 months.

Should you want to build your own do-it-yourself equivalent, you will need a drainpipe, white ballast tanks, regulators and valves (obtainable from an old soda machine) and three battery systems

For fun, like this inventor has, you can add a horn, radio and ultra-bright strobe lights – it gets dark quickly as you get past a dozen or so feet down. It turns out you can get the job done for around a thousand dollars, just be sure to use lots of marine-grade waterproof glue to keep things air-tight.

A New Jersey native, Beckerman is not new to the realm of investing, having developed a car-cleaning device at age 12 and a video-watching helmet at age 14. He has also built various geeky art projects out of old pieces of technology along the way, scraps not put to more practical purposes, like, say, a submarine. Needless to say, the young inventor plans on majoring in engineering in college.

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Contrary to its name, DeepFlight Super Falcon isn’t a movie franchise or a war campaign. It’s an electric two-seat underwater ‘plane,’ basically a personal submarine for the mega-elite.

A former marine engineer in the military, oil and gas industries, Graham Hawkes is the brains behind the aquatic vehicle. He recently told The Daily Telegraph that he wanted to create something that could “fly underwater.” His vessel, the deftly-titled DeepFlight Super Falcon, features two bubble-encased seats atop a body shaped like a kayak. Its originality lies in its ‘positive buoyancy’ engineering, something not typically seen in submarines. The Super Falcon uses downward lift to send it gliding into the briny depths. This also keeps it moving, but should a mechanical problem arise, it has an auto-return feature that sends it back to the surface.

The Super Falcon’s lithium-ion battery provides eight hours of power and drives the craft’s DC thrusters. Its promise of the ability to “do barrel-rolls with dolphins” may seem grandiose, but it had the schematic strength to win over Red Bull founder Dietrich Mateschitz, who bought one for a cool $1.7 million.

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