Musk’s mini-submarine ‘not practical’ for Thailand cave rescue, say authorities | Hacker News Reader

Musk’s mini-submarine ‘not practical’ for Thailand cave rescue, say authorities

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25 pointsTomte30 comments

Well they're all out now, thank goodness. Musk at least tried to do something and he did it quickly. Where was say, the US Navy?

In the end it seems they dropped full air tanks at regular points long the route out. A super stressed kid can probably go through a tank in short order. I would expect they used one or more of those underwater battery powered pullers so they wouldn't have to kick for the full distance.

Simplest is often best in these things but don't throw shade on Musk just because he made an effort.

I'm a fan of Musk and what he is trying to achieve through his current company endeavors. But it seems crazy to commend Musk for this particular set of actions. Imagine Musk coming up to you telling you how he can save your burning house by enclosing your house in a super technology bag to prevent oxygen while your local firefighters are already trying to put out the fire out with hoses.

Not saying Musk's effort is bad but he doesn't deserve the publicity IMO. The volunteers like the one who discovered the kids and the one that died trying deserve magnitude of credit more because of what they have done.

I think there are so much negative remarks is because in Engineering, functionality and practicality is the most important.

> Where was say, the US Navy?

Well, 1 former SEAL was dying trying to get the kids oxygen.

Musk didn't do anything but tweet about this. He deserves no credit, no praise.

That man was a former Thai Navy SEAL, not a US Navy SEAL. Both nations have SEAL teams.

To be pedantic, he was a Thai Navy Seal (the unit in questions is nicknamed after an animal: it's not an acronym).

That's not pedantic, it's actually informational. Up until now I was surprised that Thailand also had SEALs. Your clarification makes the whole thing make sense now :-)

I don't think people are mad that he mad an effort, but that he made a highly publicized effort.

There's no reason he couldn't have done everything he did but not talk about it, at least not until after the situation was resolved.

Porque no los dos? Doing good is doing good. Regardless of the motivation.

Although it's still a net good, I consider it distasteful to do something good solely or mostly for the publicity it brings, especially in cases like this where it took extra effort to publicize it.

Had Elon Musk not made a big deal about it but a media company found out and publicized it, I wouldn't blame him for that.

But he didn't do good, except for himself. What he made was apparently useless.

>Well they're all out now, thank goodness. Musk at least tried to do something and he did it quickly. Where was say, the US Navy?

At the site actually helping the rescue operation:

>http://insider.foxnews.com/2018/07/09/thailand-cave-rescue-f...

>https://www.defense.gov/News/Article/Article/1569955/dod-per...

>http://time.com/5321829/thailand-cave-missing-boys-soccer-te...

Instead of taking advantage of a high-profile crisis for a self-aggrandizing (and as noted here ultimately practically useless) PR stunt.

This Musk cult of personality is getting ridiculous. Perhaps if you spent a little less time worshiping Musk you might have known about the actually useful efforts of others like the US military.

> Musk at least tried to do something and he did it quickly.

You're talking about self-promotion, right?

> Where was say, the US Navy?

Staying out of the way and not distracting people with some brand new tech no one was familiar with.

He didn't just try and fail, he disrupted (hopefully briefly) the people performing the rescue operation. He did more harm than good.

They let him in the cave? Really? I hope he at least gave lots of money to Thailand for that publicity stunt.

But Hacker News said it wasn't PR,and that Elon was going to rescue the kids and we'd all eat our words!

2 articles about the useless submarine made the front page. Zero about the uselessness of it,and zero about his disgusting behaviour towards a journalist the day before this stunt started. As planned.

Yes, you certainly know better than Dick Stanton, of course https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/10166843660831907...

Oh okay. We should accept Musk's instruction to disregard Thai officials and instead accept this snippet of an email he provides which still only shows Stanton saying the effort might be useful days ago. I guess The Guardian and ABC just don't know as much as the glorious Musk:

>http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-10/thai-cave-rescue-elon-...

>https://www.theguardian.com/news/live/2018/jul/10/thai-cave-...

I contributed as much as Musk did to this rescue operation. Where's my parade?

What exactly are you arguing? You admit it could have been useful, but because they decided to go ahead with another approach because of the circumstances, the effort is useless? Do you also not do backups because, hey, I've never lost data...

Can we have some nuance? Nobody is having a parade for Musk.

Elon Musk Defends His Rejected Mini-Sub Plan for Thai Cave

https://nyti.ms/2NCzvi6?smid=nytcore-ios-share

>He said the expert was Richard Stanton, one of the first two British cave divers to reach the soccer team, and Mr. Musk shared an email in which Mr. Stanton had asked him to “please keep working on the capsule details.”

>But a spokesman for Mr. Stanton said Tuesday that the cave proved to be too narrow for the mini-submarine.

Crazy how the Thai official in charge doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and now Stanton doesn’t know either! Why is the world conspiring against Musk with these lies?

Where’s your messiah now?

Yeah, such nuance. Implying that I hold Musk as a "messiah" because I'm defending a backup plan that Musk was asked to continue working on, against people that apparently knew in their heart it was 100% doomed to failure from the start and instead like to shit on people because they tweet about what they're doing or some shit.

Musk should have known how this would play out, but I don't think he's self-aware enough for that.

I'm certainly happy they had no use for the sub, because it would have meant the situation had worsened and they had to change the plan, some kid being incapacitated or whatever. If it was too narrow after all, they would have had to keep widening the cave, which they had done in places.

The cult of Musk on Hacker News really is disturbing. The messiah can never be wrong or commit an error.

"Leaving here in case it may be useful in the future."

I hope they make him pick up his litter, too.

And absolutely nobody was surprised.

I wonder what a donation of the equivalent value of that thing would have achieved?

I wonder if you donated the time spent writing your comment to a worthy cause what could have been achieved? /s

That line of reasoning is snarky, but not particularly useful.

I have no problem with the OP's line of reasoning.

It's obvious that Elon Musk has a larger than normal ego. I'm sure that this hands-on attempt to help probably greatly satisfied that ego but it seems reasonable that a monetary contribution could have done as much or more good while also appearing less selfish.

There was absolutely no reason for Musk himself to actually go to the cave either. Send some expert engineers along with your sub, sure, but I have no idea what help he thought he would be providing in person.

That's not the reasoning I critiqued.

You can apply the ole "oh, but if only said human effort was directed toward charity" line of thinking to every activity, which means it isn't a very useful line of thinking.

The actual line of reasoning being applied is not that, though - it's a very specific case where effort was already applied toward charity but a different kind of effort could have been applied for greater effect had the applier been solely interested in helping and not inflating their own ego.

I don't think it is at all clear that an engineering solution here is a priori a bad idea. It is possible that an organization that can land rockets standing up has better than average engineers.

i wonder how much better the world would be if instead of jerking off you spent that time working at a soup kitchen feeding the homeless and hungry.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17496306

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