More People Have Walked the Moon Than the Ocean's Deepest Point — That Reverses by 2035

The Question

It is one of the strangest scorecards in the history of exploration. The Apollo program landed twelve men on the surface of the Moon between 1969 and 1972 — a journey of nearly 400,000 kilometers each way. Yet the deepest point in our own oceans, Challenger Deep in the Pacific's Mariana Trench, is barely 11 kilometers straight down, and for half a century almost no one had been there.

Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh touched the bottom in 1960 in a steel bathyscaphe, then no human returned for 52 years. The filmmaker James Cameron went alone in 2012. That was the entire list: three people, versus twelve on the Moon. The question now is whether that ranking is about to flip — whether the deepest place on Earth, long harder to reach than space, is finally becoming a destination rather than a legend.

What the Evidence Shows

The reversal has already begun. In 2019, the investor and explorer Victor Vescovo completed the "Five Deeps," diving to the bottom of all five oceans in a purpose-built submersible called Limiting Factor, engineered by the company Triton. Crucially, that craft was designed to dive repeatedly — not as a one-off stunt but as reusable equipment. Through Vescovo's Caladan Oceanic expeditions, scientists, guests, and record-seekers have since ridden it to the deepest trenches, and the number of humans who have reached Challenger Deep has climbed past twenty and continues to grow.

The engineering that makes this possible is brutal. At the bottom of the Mariana Trench, water presses down at roughly a thousand times the pressure at sea level — about eight tonnes on every square inch, enough to implode most vessels instantly. A crewed sphere must be machined from thick titanium to survive it. In several respects the deep ocean is a harsher place to keep a human alive than orbit: cold, lightless, corrosive, and crushing, with no possibility of a quick rescue.

The frontier is not without tragedy. In June 2023, the Titan submersible operated by the company OceanGate imploded on a dive to the Titanic wreck, killing all five aboard. It had used an experimental carbon-fiber hull that was never independently certified, and its loss triggered a sober reckoning across the industry about certification, testing, and the limits of cutting corners. That reckoning — painful as it was — is pushing the serious operators toward rigorously engineered, classed vessels rather than away from the deep entirely.

Why This Is Happening

Reusable submersibles changed the economics of the deep. Piccard's and Cameron's dives were essentially disposable expeditions. A craft that can descend to full ocean depth and be ready again the next day is a different kind of machine — one that can carry many people over many years. Once the vehicle exists, the count of humans who reach the bottom rises steadily rather than one heroic figure at a time.

Wealthy explorers are funding the science that governments will not. National ocean budgets are thin, but private expeditions have mapped and sampled trenches that had never been surveyed, discovering new species and geology on nearly every dive. Adventure and research now travel in the same submersible, and each paying passenger helps underwrite the scientists sitting beside them.

The deep ocean has suddenly become economically and strategically important. Interest in deep-sea mining of metal-rich nodules, plus a scramble to understand climate and biodiversity in the abyss, is drawing money and attention downward. Where there is commercial and scientific reason to go, human presence follows — and the technology to put people there safely is finally mature.

What Could Happen

What Can We Do

The opening of the deep ocean is a story most people can follow, support, and hold to account. A frontier reached responsibly is worth far more than one reached recklessly.

Demand certification, not bravado. The Titan tragedy showed the cost of skipping independent testing. Support and celebrate operators whose vessels are classed and inspected by recognized bodies, and be skeptical of any venture that treats safety certification as an obstacle rather than a duty.

Value the science riding alongside the adventure. Nearly every deep dive now returns new species, samples, and maps. Follow and fund the research institutions partnering with these expeditions; the abyss is still so unexplored that even a handful of dives can rewrite textbooks.

Watch how the deep is used, not just reached. As deep-sea mining ventures push downward, the same access that enables discovery enables exploitation. Pay attention to who is going to the bottom and why, and support strong international rules before the seabed becomes a free-for-all.

Let the reversal reset your sense of the unknown. We often assume Earth is fully explored and only space remains. The trench count is a reminder that the last great frontier is beneath us — closer, harder, and far less visited than the Moon.