I feel like some of the schadenfreude towards these submarine guys comes from finally seeing a rich guy attempt to buy their way to a peak experience fail. You can hire an army of Sherpas to summit Everest, you can pay Musk to go to space, but you can’t vulgarly buy your way to the depths of the ocean.
“Vulgarly” is the key. How else would you do it? Train hard? Work your way up through the normal Abyss Corps? It’s definitionally a logistics challenge.
To which the “legitimate” approach of course is James Cameron, personally involved at the forefront of submersibles, as supported by multiple Oscar-winning and/or highest grossing in history movies specifically drawing on that interest. No one would begrudge him, but then again no one could see him going down on a sub piloted by Xbox controller.
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