We often romanticize new frontiers in space while forgetting that there’s plenty of exploration to be done on our own hunk of rock. But when Alan Winick was a kid, a confluence of excitement over Jacques Cousteau and the Apollo program inspired an obsession with Earth's greatest depths. Tonight at the Explorers Club NYC (46 E. 70th St., near Madison Ave.), Winick will talk about his life-consuming quest to build a one-man submarine.

The submarine, aptly named Explorer, is sea-worthy and has seen some active duty (I think—information is pretty scant), but it appears to have spent more time plumbing the depths of grade-school classrooms than it has logging leagues under the sea. That takes some of the shine off for me, but if you spend three decades inventing and constructing your own submarine, I guess you earn the right to do whatever you want with it.