Elon Musk.
Elon Musk sends a team of engineers to Thailand to see if they can help authorities racing to rescue a dozen boys and their coach stranded in a cave there.
“Engineers from SpaceX & Boring Co are going to Thailand tomorrow to see if we can help the government”, Musk tweeted just after midnight, California time, on Thursday night. “There are probably a lot of complexities that are hard to appreciate without being there in person.”
“Boring Co has advanced ground-penetrating radar and is quite good at digging holes,” Musk wrote in a statement previous tweet on Thursday.
The boys, ages 11 to 16, are members of a local soccer team that was on a field trip with a coach. Due to heavy rain, they were stranded in the cave two weeks ago. Their disappearance sparked a massive search and rescue operation that managed to locate the group nine days after their disappearance.
But this discovery didn’t mean the boys were out of danger. Continued rain can flood the part of the cave where they are stranded. And even if it doesn’t, it could take months for the water to drop enough for the boys to walk out. In their current situation, it is dangerous to provide the boys with food and medical care: a Thai naval diver has been killed carrying oxygen tanks to the cave.
Another option would be to give the boys scuba gear and let them swim out. But some guys can’t swim, and the narrow, winding cave and the long distances – about 5 km – is a big challenge for even the most experienced divers.
Musk spent Thursday night brainstorming ways to help the boys and suggested a different approach:
Might be worth a try: insert a 1m diameter nylon tube (or a shorter set of tubes for the toughest sections) through the cave network and inflate with air like a bouncy castle. Must create an underwater air tunnel against the roof of the cave and automatically adapt to strange shapes such as the 70 cm hole.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 6, 2018
Musk responded to a tweet from James Yenbamroong, an American-trained aerospace engineer who returned to his native Thailand to start a satellite startup called mu Space Corp. delivered this image to illustrate the predicament of the boys:
James Yenbamroong
“The critical diameter of 70 cm has a length of 15 m,” Yenbamroong tweetednoting that this section is “2km from the entrance where the pumps should be.”
Musk elaborated on his plan in the following tweets:
The walking speed is around 5 km/h, but if you’re in an air hose, the time doesn’t matter that much. If the tube diameter was 1.5 m, a 5 km quick walk would take about 40 minutes. You just have to bend over for the narrow sections.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 6, 2018
Have a small Velcro gap entry and exit in circumferential direction (half tension of longitudinal direction)
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 6, 2018
As long as the air supply rate exceeds the leak rate, the tube will remain inflated. This is how bouncy castles or inflatable mazes work. Needs very little power because the work (physical def of work) is low. Pumping out water faster than it enters the cave system is likely 10X to 1000X more power.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 6, 2018
Correction: I misidentified the nationality of the diver who died helping the boys. He was Thai.