>And if you do need a manned platform, the deep sea oil industry now operates hundreds of them. It might be cheaper for scientists to simply piggy-back on those

>And if you do need a manned platform, the deep sea oil industry now operates hundreds of them. It might be cheaper for scientists to simply piggy-back on those. Not that much cheaper. At least in the US based oil companies I have worked with, the cost of sending even one person to an offshore platform can easily exceed 20k USD. Everyone on the platform has to have extensive safety training. Only a few training facilities are setup to do things like Helicopter Underwater Escape Training [1] so the cost is pretty high. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHTk3JNtMlw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHTk3JNtMlw