For those confused by this: What they are making is less of a "submarine" in the mechanized sense, and more of an enclosed, air-tight & weighted chamber which two divers can tow between them (one diver in front, one behind) with a kid inside. So about the size of an adult body, hence being able to fit through the narrow caves.
Not SpaceX, a partner company. While helping is admirable, if he actually wanted to help in a more reasonable timeframe/more humble way then there are better channels he could have used, this all seems like a publicity stunt to me.
Yes. Thai TV is currently reporting that the extraction operation has begun. The stateless kid (forgot his name), the only English speaker, will be the first one to make the attempt. They expect/hope he will emerge around 9pm Thai time this evening, about four hours from now.
Wing Inflatables is a partner for SpaceX. This is pretty smart as they had expertise in flotation devices. The general assumption that SpaceX was designing and manufacturing these out of SpaceX spacecraft material was wrong. In fact, they were probably en route via Elon's private jet around the time he started tweeting about them.
> 14/ "What is interesting is, if you know #California at all, we are 350 miles north of #SanFrancisco in a little town, #Arcata. That is a little #riverrafting town. We manufacture inflatable recovery parts for #SpaceX".
> 15/ "So we have a relationship. When Elon had an idea he asked our engineering team to get a hold of us. It was wonderful to see it all come through", says Branagh, Wing Inflatables' president and CEO.
I'm hearing news that that the rescue is about to begin, they aren't going to wait for any new equipment.
"Rescue crews: the 12 boys + coach each have a dive mask connecting with an air line to their escort/diver. The diver has the oxygen tank/regulator. So, the boys are not SCUBAing, per se. Also, each boy will have physical contact with their rescuer throughout."
What is Musk thinking? First the bouncy castle tube and now a solid-walled submarine? He really has no appreciation for the cave environment.
Tight spots in caves aren't tubes. They are irregular twisty-turning CAVES. Some squeezes (the term of art for the narrow bits where you have to remove gear) are so tight that you cannot take a full breath. Any solid object more than a couple feet long will be stuck very quickly. Now imagine that in the dark, not seeing more than a few inches in front of your face. Then add a swift current constantly trying to separate you from your air supply. When a hardened cave diver calls something "gnarly" take it to mean a claustrophobic nightmare that would send 99% of us into a lethal panic attack.
Worse yet, imagine this sub becoming wedged in a squeeze. Setting aside the terrified kid dying inside, the only way to or from the twelve others is now blocked.
I'm a diver but no expert on caves. I've been in dry caves and have dove a couple lava tubes, but I would never tell proper cave divers how to do their thing. If I were the King I would airlift every possible drilling rig in Asia. I'd turn that mountain into a wiffle ball in the hopes that one breaks through, or at least add more places for pumps.
At least the pumps did work. Before I only saw two small 10cm waterhoses going out. Yesterday I saw a double size 30cm hose pumping water out in full speed. These 30cm made the difference I believe.
Because 1. It's great idea? and 2. May be a lifesaver in many other use cases? and 3. Is a good example of tech used to help, not just take? and 4. Beats watching TV?
It's somewhat interesting how much attention these kids have received, meanwhile how many kids have died worldwide from hunger, disease, and warfare since June 23rd? Probably a bit more than 12. I guess that's not as exciting to read about though.
I don't think it's about excitement. It's just that what happened was so unusual that it captured everyone's imagination. It reminds me of an incident that happened in India probably a decade ago when a child fell into a open borewell. It was broadcast live for 2 full days until the child was rescued. But that wasn't the end of it. From then on, many children have fallen into open borewells but have never received the same amount of coverage. I guess it has more to do with viewers getting accustomed to such stories that it becomes "just another news headline".
But that doesn't mean mankind is insensitive to suffering. It just so happens that none of us can do anything about it even if we wished to.
> meanwhile how many kids have died worldwide from hunger, disease, and warfare since June 23rd? Probably a bit more than 12. I guess that's not as exciting to read about though.
Food for thought: there are probably a few million stars dying everyday wiping out possible civilizations and life we may never know about. I guess at some point we need to stop looking at statistics and instead focus on fixing what is possible.
I made a lot of family members really mad yesterday by saying exactly this. Then I looked up some stats. The numbers are a few years out of date, but UNICEF estimates that 29,000 children under the age of five die of preventable causes every day [1]. And those kids didn't do anything wrong to get themselves a death sentence. Now ask yourself how many of those kids could have been saved with the amount of money, manpower, and attention being devoted to the Thai soccer team.
Stuff like this gets pretty sad if you think about it in utilitarian terms.
News is by definition something new, not common, unusual. It's weighted for novelty, not significance. That means that the usual misery either doesn't make the news at all, or only gets a mention in passing, and even if some news agency were to put the usual misery front and center, people would tune out because "I already know that".
It seems crazy, I can imagine the horror if the pod gets stuck between rocks while going through a narrow tunnel.
The simplest solution is to give the children swimming and scuba diving lessons from inside the cave and then once a safe route has been established, the children can get to the exit one by one (accompanied by a professional diver) by swimming along a rope which leads to the exit.
IIRC they've been talking about the potential of "packaging" up the individuals since they first found them. Packaging being giving them an air tank, face mask, and making them neutrally buoyant them so the experienced divers can push and pull them along the tunnels.
Whether this has a chance of working depends on the exact diameter of the narrow portions of the submerged route. My impression is that they were very narrow, perhaps too small for a rigid container containing a human?
I recall seeing one of a vertical cross section so you can see where the kids would need to go into the "submarine", but I can't find it again nor do I know how accurate that map is.
In any case, the above map has a few cutaways showing you the cross section size of the tunnel to human scale.
Indeed. The "submarine" is more like a duffel bag with air tanks and weights. It isn't rigid.
I think it might work. It helps that they are very young and small and athletic build (and now, unfortunately, really skinny due to not eating much food for the last couple weeks).
12 young soccer players and their coach who’ve been trapped in a cave in Thailand since entering it June 23rd, after which they became trapped by rising floodwaters.
That was a tweet and a pretty ridiculous one. These sorts of caves are famously full of razor sharp rock that would puncture such flimsy inflated underwater structures.
SpaceX isn't some magical company with a warehouse full of equipment that's better than anywhere else in the world.
It's hardly like the Thai's are using buckets to drain the cave, they'll already have the highest capacity pumps they can find.
A pump for pumping rocket fuel into a rocket is very different to the kind of pump you'd use to pump out a cave. For a start, rocket fuel isn't filled with grit and other bits.
Having them go directly relies on them keeping themselves calm while doing something that makes many adults panic. I'm not expert but I believe one key to successful diving is maintaining your heart rate at a certain pace.
Musk offered to send pumps too IIRC, but I'm not sure they took him up on it.
[+] [-] slimsag|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] everdev|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] mjal|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Walkman|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ablatner|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rottyguy|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Robotbeat|7 years ago|reply
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2018/jul/08/thailand-...
[+] [-] geomark|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] guard0g|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wallflower|7 years ago|reply
> 14/ "What is interesting is, if you know #California at all, we are 350 miles north of #SanFrancisco in a little town, #Arcata. That is a little #riverrafting town. We manufacture inflatable recovery parts for #SpaceX".
> 15/ "So we have a relationship. When Elon had an idea he asked our engineering team to get a hold of us. It was wonderful to see it all come through", says Branagh, Wing Inflatables' president and CEO.
https://twitter.com/WendyDent/status/1015795955621191680
http://www.wing.com/
[+] [-] jpindar|7 years ago|reply
"Rescue crews: the 12 boys + coach each have a dive mask connecting with an air line to their escort/diver. The diver has the oxygen tank/regulator. So, the boys are not SCUBAing, per se. Also, each boy will have physical contact with their rescuer throughout."
https://twitter.com/DavidShuster/status/1015789259649937409
[+] [-] XorNot|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sandworm101|7 years ago|reply
Tight spots in caves aren't tubes. They are irregular twisty-turning CAVES. Some squeezes (the term of art for the narrow bits where you have to remove gear) are so tight that you cannot take a full breath. Any solid object more than a couple feet long will be stuck very quickly. Now imagine that in the dark, not seeing more than a few inches in front of your face. Then add a swift current constantly trying to separate you from your air supply. When a hardened cave diver calls something "gnarly" take it to mean a claustrophobic nightmare that would send 99% of us into a lethal panic attack.
Worse yet, imagine this sub becoming wedged in a squeeze. Setting aside the terrified kid dying inside, the only way to or from the twelve others is now blocked.
I'm a diver but no expert on caves. I've been in dry caves and have dove a couple lava tubes, but I would never tell proper cave divers how to do their thing. If I were the King I would airlift every possible drilling rig in Asia. I'd turn that mountain into a wiffle ball in the hopes that one breaks through, or at least add more places for pumps.
[+] [-] rurban|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ncallaway|7 years ago|reply
It's not a solid-walled submarine. http://www.times-standard.com/general-news/20180706/wing-inf...
[+] [-] foobarbazetc|7 years ago|reply
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2018/jul/08/thailand-...
And the pre-planned operation is under way due to lower than expected rainfall making most of the journey walkable.
So what’s what? Why are we talking about Elon or SpaceX at all?
[+] [-] 8bitsrule|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jpindar|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] txsh|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] ericcumbee|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] orbital-decay|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] craftyguy|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shripadk|7 years ago|reply
But that doesn't mean mankind is insensitive to suffering. It just so happens that none of us can do anything about it even if we wished to.
> meanwhile how many kids have died worldwide from hunger, disease, and warfare since June 23rd? Probably a bit more than 12. I guess that's not as exciting to read about though.
Food for thought: there are probably a few million stars dying everyday wiping out possible civilizations and life we may never know about. I guess at some point we need to stop looking at statistics and instead focus on fixing what is possible.
[+] [-] mdorazio|7 years ago|reply
Stuff like this gets pretty sad if you think about it in utilitarian terms.
[1] https://www.unicef.org/mdg/childmortality.html
[+] [-] Joeri|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grosjona|7 years ago|reply
The simplest solution is to give the children swimming and scuba diving lessons from inside the cave and then once a safe route has been established, the children can get to the exit one by one (accompanied by a professional diver) by swimming along a rope which leads to the exit.
[+] [-] falcolas|7 years ago|reply
This seems like the implementation of that plan?
[+] [-] coatmatter|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] guard0g|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pbw|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Splines|7 years ago|reply
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/146FC/production...
I recall seeing one of a vertical cross section so you can see where the kids would need to go into the "submarine", but I can't find it again nor do I know how accurate that map is.
In any case, the above map has a few cutaways showing you the cross section size of the tunnel to human scale.
[+] [-] Robotbeat|7 years ago|reply
I think it might work. It helps that they are very young and small and athletic build (and now, unfortunately, really skinny due to not eating much food for the last couple weeks).
[+] [-] ourmandave|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rasz|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spondyl|7 years ago|reply
12 young soccer players and their coach who’ve been trapped in a cave in Thailand since entering it June 23rd, after which they became trapped by rising floodwaters.
[+] [-] jv22222|7 years ago|reply
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1015657378140704768
[+] [-] coding123|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hyperpallium|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] garmaine|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] westmeal|7 years ago|reply
I'm praying for them.
[+] [-] sschueller|7 years ago|reply
Maybe Musk should send a giant pump to get that water out. Don't they have large pumps at space X to fill those rockets?
[+] [-] toomanybeersies|7 years ago|reply
It's hardly like the Thai's are using buckets to drain the cave, they'll already have the highest capacity pumps they can find.
A pump for pumping rocket fuel into a rocket is very different to the kind of pump you'd use to pump out a cave. For a start, rocket fuel isn't filled with grit and other bits.
[+] [-] crooked-v|7 years ago|reply
It means they don't need to keep themselves oriented in an underwater 3D maze while operating unfamiliar breathing equipment.
[+] [-] themagician|7 years ago|reply
A trained Thai Navy Seal died on the route. If these kids have to swim for it the betting odds are they all drown.
No one has any idea on what to do. That’s why nothing’s been done.
[+] [-] bestnameever|7 years ago|reply
Musk offered to send pumps too IIRC, but I'm not sure they took him up on it.
[+] [-] nicolewhite|7 years ago|reply
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