Hacker News Reader

Comment by pencotts | Hacker News Reader

BBC interview with John Volanthen is here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8p8XFvRJD7Q

Meanwhile Vern Unsworth, one of the other divers, comments on Elon Musks submarine... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TmjpIkVDrU

Hearing all the negativity around this makes me a profound sort of sad.

Here's a guy with some pretty unimaginable resources. He tries to use some of the resources for good, and a bunch of people go out of their way to get upset at him for it, and then laugh when what he tried to help with didn't work.

People slinging all this mud are the reason others are hesitant to help.

Sometimes, particularly in disaster situations, the most help you can give is to stay away and let the people who can do the most good work without distraction.

The original intent of the rescue, judging from the Washington Post version of this article, was to have the two rescue drivers carry the kid between them as much as possible. It was realized when they were transporting the first kid that said transit mechanism was impossible, as the space was too cramped to do that; the operation then had one diver carrying the kid, swapping divers frequently because that's a very physically taxing job.

Between the weight and the length of the sub, it's clear from descriptions of the rescue operation that it was completely unusable. Any attempt to use it would have had a very high risk of it getting wedged somewhere in the cave that would have made the cave impassable. And guess what? Pretty much everyone who had some sort of experience with caving commented that the sub idea was unworkable when it was first announced.

Just because you want to help doesn't mean you can help, and you shouldn't give someone a pass on their actions just because they're trying to help. As the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Of course you should stay out of the way. But on the other hand, if everyone stayed out of the way, nobody would actually help. Do you see all those miles of hoses? Where do you suppose those came from? Did you see the discarded pile that were 8cm instead of 10cm? Who is mocking the fire department that donated those? What about that silly convenience store that shipped in all the Spam to feed people who would prefer to eat roast beef? Should we mock them for all the Spam that got thrown away?

When you and I sat in front of our monitors to see what others were doing, some people took inventory of their resources and offered whatever they could in the chance that it might be useful. They were willing for it to be thrown away if it wasn't useful.

I'm not here to apologise for Musk. I'm here to praise everyone who donated food, tanks, hoses, pumps, skeds, submarines, money, housing, or their life. Thank you.

Now that the crisis is over Musk's opportunity has arrived. Work with some experts in quiet to see if better solutions can be developed. And put some money behind it.

I hope he takes that opportunity.

Except the system they actually used, keeping the kids strapped to a stretcher, was not that far from the submarine idea. Just open, lighter-weight, and probably a bit more flexible. But you still have a kid placed within a container that the divers transport through the cave.

The main problem with the sub was that the rescue started earlier than expected, so there wasn't time to iterate. That isn't Musk's fault.

I wouldn't be surprised if the idea to use the stretcher arose after the sub idea was mentioned.

There's plenty to criticize Musk for (labor practices, hyping Autopilot recklessly), but it seems absurd to rewrite the events in Thailand in order to do so.

The stretcher system that was used is apparently a fairly standard piece of rescue equipment, and also looks to be smaller and more flexible.

Given that experienced cave divers, including cave rescue divers, were involved with the rescue operation, saying that they needed Musk's sub idea to suggest use of a standard piece of rescue equipment is absurd and comes across as trying to steal credit.

I was very skeptical of his involvement because I have seen similar situations at work. When I was a consultant I often worked on emergency situations where you had to bring systems back online quickly. Sometimes the CEO would come in and say "You can get whatever you want" and suddenly you had all these important people who didn't know the situation ask questions and give suggestions. Now you had the problem at hand and you had to baby these people in addition. Once the problem was solved the CEO and his people took credit for the fix and went away despite in reality only causing problems.

There was simply no time for the people on location to look at Musk's stuff and testing it. It would have been a big distraction from the work at hand.

So far I would rate his involvement as pure PR stunt. However, if he kept working on this now that the crisis is over and worked with experts on something viable for the next rescue he would be really helpful. I don't know if that's happening and to be honest I have my doubts.

"However, if he kept working on this now that the crisis is over and worked with experts on something viable for the next rescue he would be really helpful."

The rescue started earlier than expected. If it had been another week or two there would have been time for more iteration or for the project to be scrapped.

He can work on it now. This is not the last cave rescue. Doing it now is less glamorous though.

People’s issue isn’t with Musk trying to help, it’s Musk trying to help as a thinly-veiled publicity stunt. If Elon Musk has reached out quietly to the Thai government and asked what he could do with his resources and connections to help, THAT would have been using his resources for good. Throwing a bunch of your money at a cool-sounding but absolutely useless project that nobody asked for while making a lot of noise on Twitter about how helpful you are is pure self-aggrandizement, and that’s what people are reacting to.

"absolutely useless project that nobody asked for"

The rescue effort started earlier than expected, so there wasn't time to iterate on the design. There's plenty to criticize Musk for but it's dumb to comment if you don't know the sequence of events.

Please limit the amount of duplicate comments.

One of the rescuers said it wouldn't have got 50 ft and that Musk had no clue what it was like in the cave. Pure PR, just like a bunch of us said in many threads about his submarine heroics on this site.

Sorry you couldn't see through it.

He is Musk. He is under the media radar. It's kind difficult for him to do thing quietly. Also, he initially didn't want to help

>I suspect that the Thai govt has this under control, but I’m happy to help if there is a way to do so

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1014509856777293825

I don't think you are quite understanding why people are negative towards Musk. It's not that he tried to help. It's how he went about it. He inserted himself into the problem, he turned it into a Tweetstorm PR campaign. And eventually came up with a "solution" that wasn't feasible. The people who were asked to come and help are the domain experts. Stay out of their way and let them do what they do best.

From the article it sounded like the rocket sub was only part of what Musk tried to contribute, and he also offered tunneling equipment, an escape tube system idea, and advanced ground penetrating radar. No matter how feasible any of these were, or if he went about it in a tacky way, it's a lot more than I did.

But, understand that you don't have to do anything. The rescuers are trained to do what they did. It is perfectly ok to let them do what they do.

And batteries for any power equipment like pumps.

" And eventually came up with a "solution" that wasn't feasible."

Please don't comment if you don't even know the sequence of events in Thailand. The rescue started sooner than expected. Had there been a longer wait there would have been time to iterate on ideas.

How desperate are you to defend this guy that you repeatedly post the same information which, hilariously, contradicts a rescuer on the ground. So much astroturfing.

I'm going by what was reported by the rescuers.

I think that this guy issue is that on top of being in high pressure high stakes situation that require cooperation of huge amount of people, he had to deal also with that submarine thing.

I don't know whether you had experience with clueless dominant people trying to help you, but it usually sux big time. And I mean, it sux and slows down in low pressure low stakes situations.

Given that they did use a stretcher and sedation, the submarine thing doesn't seem as far off now as when I first saw that linked video. Is a sked flexible to fit around twists in a way that the tube thing wasn't? Sked is obviously way less bulky overall, but is it still pretty rigid once rolled up?

> He can stick his submarine where it hurts.

Classy... Seems a bit unneccesary

He is not exactly nice on Musk....

And yet they actually used what could be seen as an open version of Musk's submarine.

A very humble hero. Thanks for linking, I enjoyed this interview.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com