When adventurer Steve Fossett disappeared on a solo flight a year ago, he was four weeks away from piloting a winged submersible in a Pacific Ocean dive to the deepest spot on Earth ї the Mariana Trench, the head of the company that made the craft said, CNN reported.
At Fossettїs request, Hawkes Ocean Technologies built the vessel Deep Flight Challenger so the millionaire could try to set a solo-dive record to the Mariana Trench, 37,000 feet below the oceanїs surface, company owner Graham Hawkes told KGO-TV in Richmond, California.
When Fossett went missing, the project was put on hold, Hawkes said Thursday. The craft is stored in a Richmond warehouse.
їWeїd finished testing. All of the systems had been tested under pressure at Department of Defense facilities, and we were four weeks away from splashing it in,ї Hawkes said in an interview. їIt (dive) would have dramatically, dramatically opened the oceans for exploration. It would have been a game-changer.ї