I'm out of the loop on this one. What happened?
A bunch of super wealthy dudes (including a bloke who went to space with Mr. Amazon and two members of one of Pakistan's biggest petrochemical families) got into an obvious death trap after signing a waiver that said that there's a decent chance that it'd kill them and now that it's gone missing multiple governments are spending millions of dollars on an attempt to rescue them on the off chance that they're actually still alive because the lives of the wealthy matter more than the lives of normal people.
Or maybe it has to do more with the region in which they're lost. The USCG is typically very good about aiding anyone within their AOR, no matter their socioeconomic class. This should be framed more as "why isn't Europe/Greece doing their jobs" than "why are the USCG/Canada actually doing their jobs".
The US federal government values the average citizen's life at something like ~$12 million. This is mostly for policy like if 1,000 people a year die from something, say an unsafe ferris wheel design, a solution that would save them costing more than (1,000*12,000,000=)$12 billion would be rejected and considered not worth the economic cost. If the solution were cheaper, and cost like $500 million, then with good lobbying and a reasonable administration, it could easily become a new regulation.
Generally speaking if 5 anybodies went down like this submersible, you'd expect at least some millions to be spent in recovery missions.
The ~$12 million figure is what the NHTSA is currently using for its purposes.
Maybe they're afraid of the families of the rich suing them /shrug
Since the CEO went down with his s̶h̶i̶p̶ sub, the lawyers will have to get creative.
The passengers signed a waiver to confirm their knowledge that the submarine is an "experimental" vessel "that has not been approved or certified by any regulatory body, and could result in physical injury, disability, emotional trauma or death."
https://web.archive.org/web/20230619230915/https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65934887
oof
This is gonna be turned into a movie so fast...in fact I bet the rights are already been sold to a studio.
