What if everything you needed to survive had to fit through a 3 inch wide hole
newsweek.com
newsweek.com
I read that they haven't told them how long it will be until the rescue shaft will be ready. I'm not sure whether it's better to think that you will be rescued "any day now" or that you are going to have to tough it out for three months with 33 sweaty men.
Fortunately, various companies have made around 1000 job offers for these people when they get out. A nice way to keep the motivated about the future.
This situation is terrible, and god bless those people and their families, but that's exactly what I would demand if I was down there. (given that the government actually gave a shit about me at that point)
This is actually a bit of a fascinating question. Even if you found an appropriate technology, I would think mist cable would break under it's weight (I don't know if it would hanging straight down). Even if you got a cable sown, what would they hook it to? And I'm not sure I'd want to have a cable stuck in the only hole I have that's gotta serve for anything else that I would want to get down there.
Of course, the engineer in me wants to know how well sound waves propagate down the holes, and wants to implement dialup or DSL with actual sound waves
Related articles:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/26/rescue-capsule-c...
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/trapped-chilean-mi...