From email correspondence with Michael Schutte, CEO of Brilliant Boats LLC, about the Poseidon Underwater Resort (mentioned in the book):
The Poseidon project has been stalled for about 6 months due to short-term financing issues related to the financial crisis. It looks like they will be back in business in a few months on this one. The design and engineering is 95% done with a few parts to be reanalyzed in FEA to finalize the construction model. Brilliant Boats was responsible for the design and engineering, as well as interior layouts and systems.
We are now working a semisubmersed offshore platform that will be sited in a national water park in Oman, and an underwater house for a client in Belize.
There is definitely a lot of interest out there for this sector – I have just come back from the Dubai and Abu Dhabi boat shows where we were completely swamped by the media and interested parties. It seems that this idea has finally come of age. The truth is that with the budgets people have to buy toys these days, what we are proposing is just not that expensive anymore. We have recently finished a 60m yacht for which the budget was over 40 million US, and this was a bargain. There are boats in build today that will cost ten times that, and these are toys for individuals.
