https://luxurylaunches.com/transport/gabe-newell-explorer-ve...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/deajusufi/2026/06/13/gabe-newel...
There's nothing comparably easy (for some values of "easy") to monetize underwater, except in shallow places like the continental shelves, and these areas are already being heavily developed (oil, wind).
There are many, many wonders deep underwater, but they are mostly not commercially interesting, alas.
We definitively have stuff to fuck up over there. Those ecosystem that do not know noise or light need disruption and market capitalization
Do it right and you can send the first underwater explorers to Europa.
Hard to find the right way to monetize in the early stages though. SpaceX had a variety of options.
Fugro got a tonne of money for sidescan surveys of large areas north of this Diamantina fracture zone up to the equator .. looking for traces of the lost Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
The search for the missing aircraft became the most expensive search in the history of aviation. It focused initially on the South China Sea and Andaman Sea, before a novel analysis of the aircraft's automated communications with an Inmarsat satellite indicated that the plane had travelled far southward over the southern Indian Ocean.
After a three-year search across 120,000 km2 (46,000 sq mi) of ocean failed to locate the aircraft, the Joint Agency Coordination Centre heading the operation suspended its activities in January 2017. A second search launched in January 2018 by private contractor Ocean Infinity also ended without success after six months.
They tie in with the majors that build and deploy infrastructure for oil, gas, mineral exploration and exploitation.
Make several modular probes and give them fancy names.
Have various support classes like signal relay, charge stations, camera cleaning, resque etc
Sell rent lease the vehicles to customers who get to pilot them in vr.
Create a simulator where one can explore some already explored areas with the probes projected in real time. Create a market for map chunks.
I think it will make one hell of a game.
Roberts Space Industries Legatus bundle costs $48,000 USD and you only get pixels.
If you can have your own exploration submarine without having to deal with all the boring logistcs yourself people will gladly pay many times that and hire other players to do ingame jobs like keeping the signal alive.
If you can build the mothership with investors and crowdsourcing then maintain it with subscription fees and insurance policies it would be hilarious even before anyone finds anything interesting.
I won’t say I think outer space is easier, but the problem space is very different.
You didn't even mention pressure. Space is only 1 atm off of sea level. 100 meters below the surface is 10 atm more than at sea level ... all sorts of cool stuff you might want to explore is way deeper than that.
Less of a problem for robots than people, but still a problem.
As a boat owner, I have had quite a time with salt water issues. Anything with an electrical current going through it exposed to salt and water is subject to serious, rapid corrosion. What you might imagine is "stainless" steel will, in fact, rust (unless correctly passivated and treated). The galvanic scale is not to be trifled with :). I can only imagine it gets exponentially worse the further below the surface you go.
Mind you, if you go the service path you might end up scrubbing toilets or close sampling atomic bomb sites ... so your mileage (and lifespan) may vary.
SpaceX is based on the idea that our planet will someday be uninhabitable, so we need to be ready to colonize other planets. The sooner we start, the sooner we get there.
OceanX might be fun science, but it's not going to save us.
The whole idea that we can simply pop off earth and colonize another planet is literally insane. There is a reason why no governement across the world is treating colonizing mars as a serious mission.
It is the same marketing technique as "AI WILL DESTROY THE WORLD so we must make it" fear-mongering based marketing. Of course a rocket company wants people to colonize mars, doesn't mean its going to "save" humanity.
nobody implied that. some people state the hope for it but that does not include me, I simply explained why OceanX does not satisfy SpaceX's goals.
everybody on this site is interested in the topic of exploring other planets in any solar system. that's all SpaceX is trying to do, but because of extraneous irrational unmet emotional needs people here simply lose their shit when the topic of SpaceX comes up.
Meanwhile, SpaceX will continue to be NASA's primary subcontractor. "Les chiens aboient, la caravane passe." (The dogs bark. The caravan passes.)
Capitalism and stock markets would drive them to become Avatar'esque villains.