“One Day Longer and Those 13 Boys Would Be Dead”
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page 2 https://archive.is/d6i50
It was mentioned that one of the drivers damaged his gear going in, and that's the case where it's something attached to your body, which you can develop a fair amount of feeling for, like you get used to driving a car and just know how wide it is. I can't imagine how it must feel to drag along a sedated human when you can't see anything. There must have been situations where you accidentally hit some obstacle with one of the kids and then this dreaded feeling of not knowing if you displaced the mask and are now dragging a kid drowning in it's sleep across the mud for another hour.
As cheesy as it might sound, this is one of these rare stories that restore faith in humanity. Absolutely amazing.
I'd be too scared to go through there dry. That's insane.
Here the diver's blog post to accompany these videos: https://www.mikkopaasi.com/post/return-to-tham-luang-cave
I feel good people like that walk among us.
https://multimedia.scmp.com/news/world/article/2154457/thai-...
"Raising the Dead" is about the accidental discovery of a diver in SA, and the recovery efforts there. [1]
"The cave divers who went back for their friends" is about a trio of finns who went back into a Norwegian underwater cave system to recover two friends who got stuck and died there. [2]
[1] - https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/water-activi...
"Last breath" is also a really good documentary about rescue under water https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Breath_(2019_film)
Both of these I rate 5/5
Shadow Divers - The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War II
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-africa-25205914
He was discovered by divers hired to investigate the sinking and recover the bodies.
https://www.deseret.com/2005/8/23/19908025/4-drown-in-cave#8
I had been hearing about the cave, and had been invited to go there a couple of weeks before this happened. I decided not to go because it didn't sound safe. I was concerned about the oxygen content of the air pocket and decided it was too dangerous.
Whoo. This guy must have gone through so much mental stress during this time.
It reminded me of the story of a young Rwandan girl who was about the same age as those trapped boys when she and her family escaped to the Congolese jungle … I can’t remember her name but she ultimately survived and has become a public activist.
She tells her story now frequently and I remember her saying that she though the entire world must have suffered some catastrophe because no one was coming to save them.
Later she found out it was just because no one really cared enough to save them.
Imagine if we treated all lives with such value, and applied the same heroism and bravery to their rescue.
Priorities. Our world could be very different given a reconsideration of what is worth what.
And some of us live more in that world, lucky to have agency, fellowship, resources to make it work.
Humanity is partitioned. Not all sets makes sense.
Word had obviously spread through the local Thai community that he was on the passenger ferry and there must have been 100 of them lining the streets to cheer him for his bravery once he arrived.
It was a really touching thing to see.
^ From page 2 of the article. I Googled for this book but wasn’t able to find anywhere to buy it. Supposed to have been published in 2018. Perhaps no English version yet... was anyone able to find the book?
I’d bet an English version will be not too far in the future (I hope!)
Looks like there's only a Finnish original issue and a Swedish translation published so far.
Thanks! I wonder if it gives as chilling a representation as this article. I will go find out!
In this case a the diver (co-?)wrote a book, so a movie is just another step in that direction and he seems cool with it. It would be shitty though to have a movie in any other circumstance.
(/s, if it wasn't obvious).
> There are only a few of these computer-controlled devices in the world.
From quick googling I found out that this type of rebreather is "certainly the most popular Sidemount rebreather in the world." [1]. It is relatively inexpensive also (7k EUR). Why are there only a few of them in the world then? Is he talking about some special, modified type of it?
[1] https://www.divestock.com/scuba-force-sf2-sidemount-rebreath...
Would not a sonar help? A full spacesuit-like helmet with air to be able to talk via radio? Laying down some flexible tunnels that could be inflated with air or maybe just pumped with clear water to gain visibility? So many ideas come to mind, but they chose the most difficult transport of sedated and tied up kids ever. I assume they had a good reason, but still do not understand it.
Those "helmets" exist, but helmets as such are used in commercial diving with a tether to the diver. Not very practical to have it running along the cave for multiple divers. The full face masks that allow that are mainly used in open circuit diving and are bulky. I don't know if the pros/cons would make a huge difference.
At one point I believe Tesla or just Musk were planning and developing a pod to carry each boy, but the tunnels and sumps were so narrow that they wouldn't be able to make the turns.
Having tunnels with compressed air to inflate them would have similar issues with the bends. Not to mention the amount of gas and pressure needed to displace all that water.
I guess they took the most direct and logistically available option. I'm sure it will be a case study for the future.
Portable sonar systems with in-helmet displays were put in use by the US Navy only last year: https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2021/03/us-navy-teams-w...
> A full spacesuit-like helmet with air to be able to talk via radio?
Would fuck up your buoyancy, but there are systems where you have only an air pockt around your mouth. But the range would be so low as to be nearly useless inside a cave.
> Laying down some flexible tunnels that could be inflated with air or maybe just pumped with clear water to gain visibility?
Even assuming that you had those already available, laying them would be a very slow process, and they would be a hindrance rather than help in very narrow passages.
The point would be to use them so that there is no necessity to go through narrow passage. The diver says that when boys went in, they walked through wide openings on bottom.
But, they were probably impractical for other reasons.
I'm not even sure what you're envisioning but something lightweight and not bulky that is capable of producing sonar images similar to whatever the detectors were in Aliens doesn't exist. And it was zero viz and in completely zero viz you can barely see your hand in front of your mask, assuming you have illumination.
> A full spacesuit-like helmet with air to be able to talk via radio?
That creates a dead space that fills up with CO2, you'd need to actively pump that out through the rebreather which now creates more things to bash into rock and fail and kill you, plus generates more bulk which is the last thing you want into those tight caves.
You can use a full face mask (FFM) that has comms with a rebreather but in a single file cave there's no point and cave divers know how to communicate in single file in zero viz by touch contact. And there's not much to communicate since either you're moving or you're temporarily stuck and the person behind you can't really help you much. With a rebreather you can also talk pretty well in water if you're just close enough to each other. I've also managed to communicate effectively by talking into a normal scuba regulator as well, without having to write anything down.
> Laying down some flexible tunnels that could be inflated with air or maybe just pumped with clear water to gain visibility?
That would probably take weeks and you'd be fighting the pressure of the incoming water inside of the cave. Air probably wouldn't work at all, you'd need to build a pressure differential airlock so that's likely impossibly complicated. Water might work if you built a reservoir at a higher altitude to gain pressure, but them you need to pump the water up there and you need flexible inflatable tubing that can hold a couple atmospheres of pressure and is large enough for a human, and I think I'd prefer to be surrounded by rock rather than by saran wrap that could fail and I'd get entangled it in the shredded plastic and drown. No thanks. As evidenced by the successful recovery, zero viz can be dealt with.
> So many ideas come to mind, but they chose the most difficult transport of sedated and tied up kids ever. I assume they had a good reason, but still do not understand it.
They're all trained at more or less doing that, they've been through the environment, and they've all been through rescue training to drag an unconscious buddy out of the cave. Strapping the kids down, giving them sedatives and putting a FFM on them solved all the problems of taking someone out of the cave that wasn't trained in diving at all. It gives you the smallest package to drag out of the cave along with giving you access to the kids. The coffin that Musk was proposing was more or less just that. By trying to keep the kids dry, now you have CO2 problems, you need a scrubber in the coffin and you need strong enough walls to deal with the pressure differential, that creates bulk and makes it more difficult to move through the restrictions, and if anything goes wrong the kids suffocate and die and there's no access to them at all.
From the perspective of a trained cave diver the solution that they used was nearly perfect.
Clearly not. Why does someone always have to assume they know better?
> they chose the most difficult transport
What are you even basing this statement on?
> What are you even basing this statement on?
As I understand it, the transport was immensely difficult. The divers and the rescued kids were at great danger. It is unbelievable to me they managed to save them without any special solution.
I'm sorry if my comment was misunderstood.
>Later, after the water had run off, you could see that down at the bottom, where the boys walked in, there were much larger gaps. But the divers couldn’t attach anything to the muddy bottom when laying out the guide lines. They had to follow along the ceiling. The only path they found was through the narrow passageways.
As I understand it, they had to use the narrow passages at the top because they were not able to discover the wide gaps near the bottom. I assume some equipment could help with that making the transport easier once a more comfortable path was found.
Or maybe your assumptions are wrong.
> There was even a discussion about leaving the 12 kids and the football coach inside the cave for the whole rainy season and providing them with food and supplies from outside for months.
I suppose building the equipment for few weeks is better than waiting for months to end of rainy season.
My take away from the article is that there could have been many more solutions, some more clever, some involving more gear etc., but they were completely short of time and verified information to come up with other viable plans.
Basically any other plan would have needed more checks, preparation, waiting for the gear to be ready, rehearsal, etc. And as said in the beginning of the interview, they feared the kids would be dead any day. As I get it, that’s also why civilians where chosen instead of the pro rescue team, because they were the only one with appropriate gear and experience at that moment in that place.
As I understood there was mud layer that prevented the divers to navigate near the bottom (no way to tie a string as to anchor point to not get lost in zero visibility, no way to feel where the bottom is, etc.). But not so much mud that only the narrow passage was left.
> And as said in the beginning of the interview, they feared the kids would be dead any day
They would be dead if they did not find them on the last day, as it was considered to stop the search. Once the kids were found and supplied with food they had enough time to plan, prepare, rehease, re-check and execute the rescue.
The rescuer is so diligent in putting things into perspective, especially regarding the future repercussions on cave diving or why they had to do it.
Personally I was only remembering Elon Musk’s jerkiness from the whole story, and am so glad to be reminded there are so many more positive takeaways, incredibly brave and supportive people working together and putting in all they have to make it work despite the odds.
Also RIP the diver who lost his life a few days before while preparing for the rescue.
> If need be, we were to give them another shot of ketamine in case they were waking up.
Im aware sedation slows breathing down, so some oxygen can be saved if human attached to tank is not hyperventilating for hours,
Pretty crazy the kids were sedated and hands bound and feet tied!
One of those things that you have to consider, particularly if you don't know the person that you're trying to rescue is at what point you're basically going to wind up fighting back and possibly intentionally drown the other person so that you survive. If the person is on the surface of the water and you have working scuba gear this can be as simple though as just descending and they'll stop trying to kill you. I've thought about the problem if you're in a cave and someone is nearly OOA and panicking and what would have to happen, but that's unlikely enough of a situation that hopefully I'll never have to worry about it.
Its real obvious to me why the kids were strapped down and pumped full of happy drugs.
«The effect of ketamine on the respiratory and circulatory systems is different from that of other anesthetics. It suppresses breathing much less than most other available anesthetics.[29] When used at anesthetic doses, ketamine usually stimulates rather than depresses the circulatory system.»
Except Elon Musk is a total juvenile jackass. Those words are easy to find. It's a pity he has no shame.
I'm still a fan of what those companies are doing but Elon has destroyed my view of him with his own behavior and words. We should stop turning a blind eye to his labor practices. Likewise, we should give the engineers and other workers that are actually accomplishing these things more credit, vs pretending it's one lone genius. Tom Mueller in particular deserves far more credit.
Musk definitely doesn't shy away from that part to his detrement (clearly he doesn't see it that way). But I'm firmly with the previous poster in that I like what Tesla/SpaceX are doing and attempting, but think Musk is a bit of a tool. The irony is not lost on me that sometimes a calmer figurehead might not have been able to lead to success a company like Tesla and/or SpaceX.
But that's like saying after a rugby game that the left wing deserved far more of the credit than the coach or captain, since they were the one who ran in the winning try.
The thing is that Musk makes things happen. Not in some lame and purely money driven field like crypto or ad tech - but genuinely moving the needle in combating climate change.
I feel I have to cut him some slack and laud his achievements, even though he comes across as a person you would involuntarily punch in the face for his hideous behaviour.
He’s chief engineer at spacex for starters.
~~He may be credited as chief engineer at SpaceX, but that doesn't mean he's meaningfully contributing to actual engineering efforts.~~ He's also credited as a founder of Tesla, despite not actually being involved in the founding of that company.
Whatever his history is with other people or whatever his personality flaws or weakness, he's the real deal.
[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/eviden...
Nonsense! Engineer is an education, not a job title. It's no different than Musk calling himself Doctor. He either went to school for years to become an engineer or he isn't one.
It's ok to express an opinion about Musk either way. You can not like him for all kinds of reasons. But he actually wrote video games as a kid growing up. He wrote code at his earliest startups and a lot of it.
You know as well as I do that when talking about building a submarine (and linking to SpaceX discussions) "Engineer" isn't meant as someone who made a video game back in the day. It has zero percentage to do with code.
With that said I'm also sure you know that Software Engineer isn't seen as a "real engineer" (and I'm in the same camp as you FYI). It is more like Medical Technician versus Doctor. In most countries you need a license besides an education to b a "real engineer" and Software Engineers cannot get one. The whole job title is a misnomer, just like Engineer in American English has become it seems, though some Board of Examiners still sue you if you try to call yourself an Engineer without a license[0].
I did not write a single word that was positive or negative about Elon Musk in the comment.
[0]https://eu.starnewsonline.com/story/news/2021/06/10/former-w...
In the UK the term is meaningless too, but CEng isn't. You don't become a Chartered Engineer until you've done the education but also have monitored professional practice experience.
But what you described is just being a CTO. That's an important job, but is still separate from being chief engineer.
From that Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/eviden...
Where would we be right now if [pick any inventor] had listened when the experts said, "it won't work"?
An inventor's job is to have a big imagination. A successful inventor usually has enough of an engineering background to test their hypothesis and refine as needed. Most of them also know how to gather highly educated minds to help them.
Many successful inventors do not have deep academic backgrounds, because often those educational backgrounds tell them only what is impossible, not what is possible.
He calls himself that, sure. Elon is a smart guy, and that's why I think he positions himself the way he does. He doesn't want to be Bill Gates, he wants to be perceived as a man of the people. A dudebro who happens to be rich. That's why he's smoking joints with Joe Rogan on camera and tweeting about WSB.
There is zero percent chance that Elon is actually doing any technical analysis or design for SpaceX.
He calls himself Chief Engineer for the same reason Trump claims to be a master-level deal maker. They're narcissists cultivating their respective cults of personality, and the legions of sycophants just lap this stuff up.
He's an engineer, and there's a bunch of engineers who worked with him who will attest to that.
He's not, and all those quotes from that reddit thread I know you're thinking of are very careful to dance around the point.
He's not an engineer.
It's full of quotes saying stuff like "he understands a lot about spaceflight and aerodynamics" and similar weasel statements.
In the US, going to school to become a Graduate Engineer does not make you a Professional Engineer.
We also need to hold him to account when Musk tries to ruin the lives of his employees who speak up about what goes on in his companies. He even tried to frame one of them as a mass shooter to police[1] in an effort to get them SWAT'd.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-03-13/when-elon...
It's happened so often, that we must assume it's their standard method of operation.
And whether that call was made by Musk himself or someone he instructed to ruin that persons life doesn't really make a difference. The fact is that Musk himself or one of his bullies lied to the police and they got away with it.
Does he? Can you name three cases?
> He (and his staff) have again and again attacked journalists, former employees, and anyone else who said anything bad about Tesla or Musk.
Again, can you name three cases where Musk went after a journalist or former employees, and we know, beyond reasonable doubt, that the victim was right - and not, in fact, lying through their teeth?
I ask because there is documented history of the reverse happening. Consider:
1. Top Gear did a hit piece on their first car, lying about its range (55 vs. 200 miles). This doesn't sound serious until you realize that, back then, people didn't believe in electric cars, mostly because of range worries. This kind of bullshit was arguably life-threatening not just to Tesla, but to the entire EV industry.
Anyway, Tesla sued for libel and lost[0]. Here's a kicker: they lost because the judge deemed Top Gear is an entertainment show and not documentary, therefore they're not obliged to be factually accurate.
2. The incident with Top Gear made Tesla install telemetry in the cars given out for test drives; this came in handy few years later, when John Broder from New York Times decided to publish a hit piece on Model S[1]. Tesla then released data from the logs, directly contradicting the story, and demonstrating that Broder put in extensive effort to fabricate the bad results he then reported on.
I can't blame them from being a bit sensitive after situations like these. For the past decade, there were, and still are, a lot of people standing to make boatloads of money from bringing Tesla and the EV market down.
--
[0] - https://www.wired.com/2012/02/tesla-vs-top-gear/
[1] - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/feb/14/tesla-pos...
It annoyed the hell out of them that after driving for few laps they have to wait for hours to charge the car to do few more laps.
Musk's ego simply couldn't swallow the fact that show which is being watched by 300 million people regularly slanted his baby. Luckily in this case, his enemy wasn't some lone expert diver but BBC with team of expensive lawyers, hence the result.
Aren't there legal systems to make sure that's being done right? Is "we" some labor inspectors?
If you want to give credit to engineers, where does it end? There are millions of engineers in the world doing important things. Crediting that many people will dilute the value of it all.
"We" can be past, current and future employees, who might not contact or work with labor inspectors out of reverence to "the mission" or Musk himself.
It came out later that the private investigator was scamming Elon Musk, and lied to him about finding damaging information. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/oct/08/elon-musk...
Bizarrely, Unsworth's lawyer was L Lin Wood, famous for later apparently having a mental breakdown and supporting conspiracy theories accusing chief justice John Roberts of pedophilia and murder, and being asked to undergo a mental examination by the state bar of Georgia.
L Lin Wood's handling of the Unsworth trial was widely panned as incompetent. Unsworth is clearly a hero, and Musk inserting himself into that situation and permanently tainting Unsworth's name was unconscionable.
https://reason.com/2020/12/31/pro-trump-lawyer-tries-to-impl...
https://reason.com/2021/01/31/treating-lin-woods-wild-conspi...
https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-defamation-win-mis...
My son was a big fan of Elon, the "cool rocket guy". But after his comments about Unsworth he asked me "Why did Elon say that stuff about the man who is a hero?" My son is a Thai boy living in Thailand, close the the same age as the boys who were rescued. Sadly I had to walk back the idea that Elon was a good role model.
I thought Unsworth should have sued Elon in Thailand. It wouldn't have meant much since Elon would never travel here again. But in Thailand defamation is a criminal offense that carries jail time. And since Unsworth is a national hero there's little doubt the court would have found in his favor and Elon would have had an outstanding arrest warrant. Again, wouldn't mean much unless Elon forgot about it and ended up traveling to or through a country that would arrest him on behalf of Thailand.
Elon is a good role model, he's not perfect though. I'm not sure why so many people blindly put him on a pedestal assuming he should be superhuman - especially at the abnormal level of pressures and responsibility he has.
I don't know about that putting on a pedestal thing. Musk is a brilliant guy, but has demonstrated that he has a pretty rotten character. IMO, a good role model for a kid really needs to have good quality of character above all else.
How is hiring a 3rd party to investigate the underlying libel not a good initial response? Especially if he could easily afford it.
While Thailand is certainly within their rights to run their justice system how they want:
1) The punishment doesn't in any way fit the crime.
2) "He's such a hero" is a terrible reason to do something. Focusing on who the person being wronged was is a bad path to justice - it is better to focus on what the perpetrator did.
So I hope the courts in Thailand would have found in Musk's favour.
Leaving aside that Thailand's defamation laws are largely a club to stop people criticising the government and not really intended for use against people like Musk.
Another funny thing about it is that the truth is not a defense. So even if Unsworth was a pedo and Musk could prove it, that would not be a defense against a defamation case. All that is needed is to show that the person making the defamatory remark intended to cause the victim to lose face.
I mean, there are a bunch of people who either inherited a billion dollars or married into it, and, not being psychopaths, they just decided to spend that money doing good and have done with it. That seems pretty easily to be "less bad" than somebody like Bill Gates, Elon Musk, or Warren Buffett who set out to acquire wealth..
I guess if you've got a really out-there moral utility function maybe saving the eyesight of a million children or whatever counts for nothing while making a slightly better toaster oven is a 100% goal achieved, but outside that I can't see any way Musk could be the "least bad billionaire".
Actually I can see a case for a different weird utility function if we also had some billionaires who got wealthy from scientific discoveries or mathematical breakthroughs or philosophical insights. If Martin Hellman had earned $100M per year since the 1980s for licensing fees from DH kex he could be a billionaire and we could argue about whether that's an important thing to give to the world. Or if Judith Butler had become fabulously wealthy explaining to people that gender is a social construct, she'd be a billionaire and we could argue whether that was great. But in reality we do not pay philosophers or cryptographers billions of dollars, that sort of money goes to somebody like Musk or Bezos.
"L Lin Wood's handling of the Unsworth trial was widely panned as incompetent. Unsworth is clearly a hero, and Musk inserting himself into that situation and permanently tainting Unsworth's name was unconscionable."
Bizarre! I saw his suits when I went digging through the post-election hootenanny. Incompetent would be the gentlest way to describe them.
Unsworth - who knew the cave system - said that Musk's idea was impractical and a PR stunt. Both of those claims are valid and came from a reliable source. During a crisis, there is no particular need to be polite to people getting in the way.
It is easy to see what is going on and that it isn't in good faith. Look a his breached commitments during the Flint water crisis (filter every home to below FDA levels), coronavius (produce ventilators), Peurto Rico huricane aftermath, and more. He as a common pattern with these kind of events.
And Vernon did not initiate the Twitter fight, he gave an interview and suggested Musk "stick his submarine where it hurts". Musk took to Twitter where he has millions of followers to strike back.
The tweets are deleted but somebody saved a screenshot: https://twitter.com/RickyReports/status/1018597245275557888?...
You can call each other names and fight.
Musk has gone beyond that and accused Vernon of being a pedophile and marrying child bride.
Maybe it was the heat of the moment. But then some days (or weeks) later he followed up with "I'd bet my signed dollar (that Vernon is a pedo)" (or something like that).
Musk intended to destroy Vernon with the pedophile accusation. There is no doubt of that. This is pre-meditated plan to destroy a person with the pedophile accusation.
For some reason, there's no outrage from tech companies though. People are still praising Musk as usual. I'm looking at you all the CEOs like Jack Dorsey and etc.
I miss the good old days when such accusations were extreme. Reporters would hesitate to say the word pedophile on air. Airing such an accusation would almost certainly trigger a serious defamation lawsuit. News outlets would instead talk of unspecified personal accusations. Now, thanks to a certain popular letter-based conspiracy theory, calling any public figure a "satan-worshipping pedophile" doesn't even raise eyebrows.
Is is "popular letter-based conspiracy" or "letter-based popular conspiracy"? I'm slipping on my royal order of adjectives.
Electric cars wouldn't be anywhere near where they are today without him - whatever we may think of his personality, the advancements in tech and environmental impacts for generations to come are real.
The defenders come out of the woodwork at approximately the same moment the attackers do.
> The need for a certain portion of the internet to defend Musk at all times is absolutely weird.
is no weirder than the certain portion of the internet that needs to criticize Musk at all times. In fact, the people that feel the need to interject criticisms of Musk into conversations that aren't really about him clearly have Musk living rent-free in their heads to a greater degree than the defenders do.
No the entire system efficiency is whats hard and is why Tesla is way in front of the competition with regards to performance and range. Batteries have so far been a commodity - 18500 & 21700s, its only now that Tesla is starting to focus on that part of the system in reference to Battery Day.
Tesla did innovate, but frankly not as much as many people want to give them credit for. And a lot of the innovation happened before Musk even joined, at least when it comes to basic EV tech, not talking about AutoPilot or whatever.
Their real achievement was creating a market and interest. This new consumer and investor interest was also in large part to Musk throwing his ego around in public. A lot of other car makers had models in late stage development phases too, but didn't really see enough interest and a market need to bring those models forward to reach production. They were fat and happy, selling their fossil fuel models.
There were a number of years when a Tesla was the only good EV you could buy, and they forced the entire industry to take note and actually develop their own programs. (Fast forward to today, and it's sometimes pure comedy to see latecomers such as Mazda's first attempt being a complete "what?" with their first EV having under half the range of and being more expensive than a Model 3.)
Sure, someone else could eventually have gotten there, but Musk and Tesla were the ones who did it - and I believe with a rather significant margin of time.
There's a long list of things I don't like about personalities and design choices, but I feel it's ok to keep that separate from the above.
(I don't own an EV. Still saving and waiting for the right time to upgrade from a 10 year old Subaru Outback ICEV bought new then.)
https://www.vox.com/2018/7/18/17576302/elon-musk-thai-cave-r...
I did, and it's shocking how something only a few years away, and so publicly recorded, has been so muddled. There was this thai journalist I had been following on twitter to get all details on the whole situation, pity I forgot the account.
anyhoo, here is the cliffnotes version from my memory, apologies if I got something wrong, I'm not a journalist, can't be arsed to dig through the old tweets (but a more tech savvy person could probably do so easily, they are still there iirc):
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1- people on twitter start asking musk for help, and a thai telecommunication/satellite/something CEO contacts him for help, Musk's own employees personally asks him and volunteer to help, Musk decided to dive in.
2- First option they decided (and something everyone was tweeting at him) was to use his Boring tunnel Drills, he flew his boring tunnel team on the SpaceX jet to check, they realized ground was too unstable to drill, so that that option was closed, but the team was still there, with their geology sensing equipment and what not.
3- Iirc tesla gave some powerwalls to run the base camp somewhere in the timeline, but don't recall any other help for that musk company.
4- They are in discussion with the rescue team, the main issue is that the kids might be malnourish and not able to make the journey, you can't send wheelchairs and stretchers, so Musk's team is asked to make some alternatives
5- key point is that it was a two way collaborative process, Musk's team didn't unilaterally offer his "submarine", iirc, Musk shared emails from the rescue team leader to that affect.
6- the first product made was NOT the submarine. There is a video, where tesla or spacex suppliers (i.e a seperate company, but affiliated with one of musk's business) made this really cool rubber/plastic/something stretcher/wrap like item for free, that would help carry a weak child through the tunnel and float in the watery bits, but iirc it was not used because time was running out.
In the analogy, this was the wheel chair equivalent, since the child was supposed to hold himself together somewhat, and was an aid, the child would have to be submerged and breath from an oxygen tank, but the aid would help him bind to a rescuer and not sink or float away, not be too big a burden on the rescuer.
7-The Submarine was the a quicker and more urgent solution, and was for a child that was totally unconscious. This is the ambulance stretcher equivalent, where the child simply has no control. The idea was proposed by the spacex/boring tunnel team (they were the same company basically then) to quickly re-furbish and use an existing falcon tube.
Here is a quick reminder, the Tunnel was essentially like the Letter M, and there was tight points and lower water points, The "submarine" was NOT meant for the tighter points, and only for the lower and longer water-logged bits, where the child could not be presumed to even breath from an oxygen tank.
The idea was to ONLY use the submarine (hence the name) in some of the longer bits, where the child was to be locked in with the necessary oxygen, and then removed once again, especially during the tight bits, where the submarine wouldn't, as many internet sleuths pointed out, fit.
this was tool of absolute desperation, and this why the rescue team had been in contact with musk's team, time was running out and they feared the children wouldn't be able to move on their on. Luckily it wasn't needed, but there was a genuine fear.
8- But then the rescue happened, and the submarine was not used, since things were not that bad as feared, but still, it was anything goes till that point. Things start to unravel after that, since because the item was not used, people thought the item was useless.
9-vernon said some unkind things about musks's submarine (not sure if warranted), musk flips his cool and says some REALLY bad things about vernon (totally not warranted), some shyster gets involved and fools musk into thinking vernon was an actually pedo (dude can land rockets, but he was not so smart on the conman front) the lawsuit happens, musk wins because insulting people is not a crime in the US, and so here we are.
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E&OE
I think people forget that behind the rescue operation were actual people, not named musk or vernon.
first of all were the actual thai kids, whose sitaution was getting precarious day by dat. Secondly were the rescuers, who were worried about the rescue and were looking at any and all who could help. then there were the people working in musk's team.
One of the people was a thai spacex employee for example, and this was personal to him, and he was responsible for getting musk involved, iirc. the submarine idea was not musk's, but his spacex employees, and all he did was give them a blank cheque in using company resources.
yes musk was a an absolute cnut in insulting vernon that way, and in no way justifies his crass remarks, but behind him flipping his cap, was him being insulted on behalf of not just himself but his employees and his suppliers, who had volunteered for free, and were not deserving of vernon's unkind remarks(though again, simply not comparable to musks's remarks, he should just have shut the fcuk up)
Life moves on, those spacex/tesla/boring company employees and suppliers have moved on, heck even vernon and musk have moved on after the lawsuit, but we are all still stuck here in this strange world of half truths and misinformation.
I think the real victims of this whole musk-vernon fiasco has been the capacity for silicon valley nerds to volunteer their skills, I doubt those spacex/boring tunnel employees/suppliers would ever venture to volunteer on such a scale again, much easier to keep quiet and work the beaten path, at soup kitchens or some "approved" setup like UN etc, much safer options to give back.
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Here are all of elon's tweet's during the time period:
(23-Jun-2018 to 11-Jul-2018)
https://twitter.com/search?q=(from%3Aelonmusk)%20until%3A201...
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here is the email between elon and richard stanton, the rescue lead: where richard seems to urged elon to continue the work on the mini sub
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1016684366083190785
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unless I am mistaken, this is thai billionaire guy:
@JamesWorldSpace
https://twitter.com/search?q=(from%3Ajamesworldspace)%20unti...
you can check his account for details I guess
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this is the inflatable raft that I was thinking of, made by the suppliers
https://lostcoastoutpost.com/2018/jul/7/elon-musks-plane-was...
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I think this is the thai journalist i was following back then
https://twitter.com/search?q=(from%3Athanr)%20until%3A2018-0...
It doesn't have to be pro or anti musk, you just have to look at the facts
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I was just on Twitter DM (magic of technology, you can just talk to a rando person a thousand mile away now!) with the Thai journalist (@thanr) who had been reporting on site on behalf of the BBC or some other press, and he told me there are so many other facts not publicly know, like the scope of the cooperation between Musk, The State Dept, The American Embassy in Thailand and the Thai government. I've requested him to perhaps write some article or a book or something to detail those.
it's understandable if not knowing those not easily google-able facts were perhaps the cause of the confusion. But not doing a simple tweet search? The man is a prolific tweeter, why not just... go read what he said, and make your opinion on that? Good, Bad whatever, but atleast you should be fully informed.
neither Musk nor Vernon come clean out of this mess, but atleast there is some clarity to be gained.
I have never seen anything really deserving of a knighthood than what those divers did.