I suspect the cost of the sub is just a small portion of the cost of an expedition. A ship to get everything there costs a lot of money.
Yes the mother ship apparently they rented from a Canadian company. No idea what that cost. But for sure expensive.
I read that 46 people had been down to the titanic in that sub previously so looks like 9 previous passenger-carrying trips.
I am quite sure Oceangate have a spreadsheet with the build costs and running costs and revenue and staff costs in it, all that stuff. I'd imagine that might get subpoenaed if (when) there's a lawsuit.
I think Rush was partly motivated by pride and hubris that his way was new and innovative and he Clearly didn't like to be told "it's dangerous, it's a bad design to mix carbon fiber with titanium especially in a cylinder design, this is well known".
So I think he carried on partly as a ' F You' to the rest of the deep dive community and partly as he needed the 750k revenue per trip to make a profit on the whole venture.
Can you imagine what the previous paying passengers who went down on that sub are feeling now? Like they literally cheated death, literally dodged a bullet. Not only that.... Their bodies are instantly pulped. Nothing left for families to bury.
I don't think there will be any rich passengers any more willing to take that kind of risk with any company now, so yes I'd say Oceangate have singlehandedly ended commercial deep dive submersible trips for paying passengers.
If you wanna go yourself then fine, but don't risk other people lives.
Regulations bound to change on these vessels I'm quite sure, and that is probably about the only good thing to come out of this whole sad fatal incident.