Elon Musk built a "submarine" to rescue Thailand kids—here's what it looks like
Scuba divers in Thailand have already rescued four of the 12 boys who have been stranded, along with their coach, in a flooded cave. And they are hoping to rescue the rest in the next couple of days. But in the meantime, Elon Musk has continued working on alternative strategies divers could use if conventional diving proves too difficult for the remaining boys.
On Saturday, Musk settled on the idea of building "a tiny, kid-size submarine using the liquid oxygen transfer tube of Falcon rocket as hull." He ordered SpaceX engineers to begin building the device, saying that it could be ready by the end of the day on Saturday.
By the time it was finished, Thai officials had already begun their rescue operation without Musk's help, so the technology likely won't be needed. But Musk decided to press forward anyway, tweeting that "even if not useful here, perhaps it will be in a future situation."
[Out of the 12 boys and the coach who were trapped in the cave, reports are that 8 boys have been rescued so far. Live reporting is available from: BBC, CBS News, NYT, and The Guardian; weather report via Weather Underground.
Wikipedia has a page on the rescue (be aware there is discussion to rename the article). The summary:
Twelve boys aged 11 to 17 and a 25-year-old man became stranded in Tham Luang Nang Non (Thai: ถ้ำหลวงนางนอน), a cave in Thailand's Chiang Rai Province on 23 June 2018. Heavy rains partially flooded the cave during their visit. The boys – all members of a local association football team – and their assistant coach were reported missing a few hours later, and search operations began immediately.
Efforts to locate them were hampered by rising water levels, and no contact was made for over a week. The rescue effort expanded into a massive operation amid intense worldwide media coverage and public interest. After struggles through narrow passages and muddy waters, British divers discovered the missing people, all alive, on an elevated rock about 3.2 kilometres (2.0 mi)[12] from the cave mouth, on 2 July, over nine days after they went missing. Rescuer organizers discussed whether to teach the boys and their coach basic dive techniques to enable their early rescue or wait months for the floodwaters to subside at the end of the monsoon season. After days of pumping water from the cave system and a respite from rain, four of the boys were rescued on 8 July, four more on 9 July,[13] with further rescue operations expected to take an additional few days.
Over 1,000 people have been involved in the rescue operation, including Thai Navy SEALs as well as volunteers, teams and technical assistance from multiple countries. They are providing food and water. A 38-year-old former SEAL died while attempting to return after delivering supplies of air to the cave on 5 July; he was unable to breathe and could not be revived.
There are reports that the level of oxygen in the air has dropped to 15% (from the normal 21%) which may cause breathing problems for the team and rescuers in the cave.
Please reply in the comments with any on-line resources that you have found helpful in following this story. --martyb]
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With the news that the Thai boys who were stuck in a flooded cave were, remarkably, rescued without any of them dying, I thought it would be interesting to submit an article about the technical challenges of cave diving, in particular rescue diving. FTFA:
Why the Thai Cave-Diving Rescue Was So Dangerous
"Rescues are actually pretty rare."
What Robert Laird, the co-founder of International Underwater Cave Rescue and Recovery, means is this: When cave divers get in serious trouble, they usually die. There is no one to rescue, just a body to recover.
In Thailand, an extraordinary rescue effort played out this week for 12 boys and their soccer coach, who managed to find high ground when floodwater trapped them in a cave. To get out, these boys had to dive through those same floodwaters. It's a perilous journey even for experienced divers, as underscored by the death of a Thai Navy SEAL in the cave last week. Cave diving is a different beast from diving in the open waters. The water can be so muddy that divers have to feel their way out. The passage can be so narrow that you have to take off your oxygen tank. And you cannot simply swim up to safety. By Tuesday morning, divers had miraculously guided all 12 of the boys and their coach out of the cave under these conditions.
Previously: Elon Musk Orders SpaceX Engineers to Build Kid-Sized Rescue Submarine
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 09 2018, @02:53PM (3 children)
What's long and hard and full of seamen?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday July 09 2018, @09:39PM (2 children)
Submarines have more qualifiers. They are big, and hard, and long, and round.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2, Informative) by DECbot on Tuesday July 10 2018, @12:10AM (1 child)
And typically black.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday July 11 2018, @12:52AM
Yes. So I thought about how to rewrite this joke better.
What is this?
It is big and hard, long and round.
The largest ones are typically black.
After entering a docking hole a gush of seamen bursts out of it.
What is it?
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday July 09 2018, @02:56PM
Anton Ego [wikia.com], I believe Ego Muskrat would make an equally entertaining caricature.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 09 2018, @04:15PM
We got a software architect around here who finds excuses to build in toys, fads, and gimmicks into our stack at the drop of a hat. We should send him the bill.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by DECbot on Monday July 09 2018, @04:34PM (15 children)
Did he forget the part of the cave system where the divers have to remove their scuba tanks from their backs to fit through the cave? Also, there are parts of the cave system where you have to rock climb to reach more pools to dive through. Additionally, there is zero visibility in some sections, requiring divers to follow their guide ropes. Kind of hard to do that through the hull of a submersible. I feel like Musk here has not read the mission scope. It would be as if he were trying to deliver astronauts to the ISS and overlooked that atmosphere becomes very rare as you approach the ISS and absentmindedly did not include air tight seals and life support systems on the crew module.
On the positive note, it seems that the full face scuba masks are working. There's 8 boys rescued from the cave. That leaves 4 and the coach for those who are counting.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Non Sequor on Monday July 09 2018, @05:35PM
Elon Musk seems to make decisions based on very rough back of napkin calculations about the viability of a particular approach to a problem. I don’t think he cares about the details because he figures that if he can use the publicity generated by these “big bets” to attract capital from other investors, he can burn that capital to buy time for the people working under him to sort out the details of an actual solution. He’s the type of guy who will sometimes accomplish some very interesting things but he’s not a long term strategist and it’s probably not reliable to leave your money invested with him.
He’s already made a number of decisions that will either play out well or very badly. He’s invested heavily in one particular battery technology which is good if no other technologies outperform it over the longer term but bad if he’s backed the wrong horse. The viability of hyperloop depends on whether the final product will actually be better than existing rail tech or not as well as the local issues for particular projects such as property rights and working with the terrain. The profitability of self-driving cars is going to depend on accident rates for mature products and how legal liability for accidents involving self-driving cars is handled.
I don’t think anyone’s smart enough to make big bets like these and always be right (or right enough to succeed). However, it’s entirely possible that enough people will be suckered by his schtick to subsidize his recklessness indefinitely. We’ll have to see.
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 09 2018, @05:38PM
That's what lasers and anti-gravity devices are for.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by zocalo on Monday July 09 2018, @05:45PM (1 child)
Given Musk wants to send people to Mars, and will probably face all sorts of urgent engineering challenges if that actually happens, being able to demonstrably design and engineer quick solutions to problems using adapted parts at hand seems like a very good thing to me.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Tuesday July 10 2018, @08:47AM
Some day SpaceX are going to need escape pods on their spaceships and someone will dust off this old design.
(Score: 5, Informative) by mhajicek on Monday July 09 2018, @05:55PM (7 children)
The pod is small enough in diameter to pass the smallest sections, and light enough to be carried easily by the divers. It can also be towed by ropes.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday July 09 2018, @07:32PM (6 children)
After 2 weeks in a cave, the first one in total darkness, imagine a kid that need to enter a sarcofagus and stay there for 5-6 hours.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 09 2018, @07:59PM (5 children)
That's why you sedate them before putting them in.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday July 09 2018, @08:08PM (4 children)
Right, because a dead weight unable to react and adjust in case of trouble is oh so much preferable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 09 2018, @09:06PM (2 children)
To an animal in the grip of panic? Yes, a dead weight's preferable. So far, that hasn't been a problem, thank the FSM, but there's still 1 or 2 more missions to go, and they've been rescuing the strongest/healthiest kids first.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday July 09 2018, @09:30PM (1 child)
8 kids are already out of the cave.
Seems like those kids manage quite well to reign in their fears as long as they can do something about their status, especially when accompanied with two divers, one in front one after.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by Muad'Dave on Tuesday July 10 2018, @12:12PM
They were given anxiolytic drugs [wikipedia.org] before being rescued.
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Monday July 09 2018, @09:13PM
adjusting it to be neutrally buoyant might be a bit tricky too, otherwise it will drag along the bottom or try to float up all the time.
I hope some of the engineers working on this have some real background in SCUBA diving or submersible design, after all this type of thing isn't rocket science.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday July 09 2018, @07:16PM (2 children)
Speaking of air tight seals, a really outside the box engineering solution would be cascaded locks of giant sized birth control diaphragms sealing off sections of the cave, pump out water and pump in air, kids walk out.
Yeah we all know you can't drain an entire ecosystem or even an entire cave using fire fighter's trash pumps, but the water in a passage way would only be as challenging as a draining a swimming pool or drainage culvert.
Speaking of rocket engineering maybe he could come up with a fire fighters trash pump that doesn't clog and is really light and fast, maybe using Tesla fluid dynamics effect pump or whatever. Gotta be careful not to pump a kid thru the pump, if its big enough to drain the cave.
Another real "rocket surgeon" solution would be working on suspended animation type stuff. No need to knock the kids out for months till the end of monsoon season, but just knock them out long enough to drag 'em out.
Or a real interesting rocket scientist solution would be a submarine diving bell kinda thing made out of many small pieces thats big enough when assembled to hold everyone, turn the damn cave into a mars mission simulator. Haul in a 3-d printer and a hell of a lot of filament and electricity, and you got a simulated Mars mission. Isn't there an ocean on Europa, well, here's a mission simulator. Sure the kids are "Enders Game" level too young, but WTF it might work out.
I wonder if the navy's ever done unclassified work on breathing oxygenated bubble water, at some point hooking up a hose of pure O2 foam into someones mouth would work. Would it take insane amounts of weird sterile chemicals, yeah, but it would be possible and miscible with reasonably low levels of water. It should be possible to make a sterile foam that humans can safely breathe where the liquid part of the foam is harmless or at least not that harmful to lungs. Then you just need to deploy railroad tanker car loads of the stuff thru fire hoses in the pools and passageways at a high enough flood rate to keep it sterile enough, then simply walk while breathing thru it. My guess is this tech exists and is classified to hell and back. Think of it like a really watery lung nebulizer treatment, kinda.
Speaking of fluid dynamics it should be possible to pump "something" into the cave walls to temporarily stop water infiltration while people run/walk/climb thru. Dump multiple railroad tanker cars of of liq air, perhaps. Freeze thaw cycle might cause a collapse, or maybe not; a consulting geologist would be advisable.
I'm not impressed at the level of innovation displayed by "Oh you got water, I got a new invention, its called ye olde submarine".
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Monday July 09 2018, @07:37PM (1 child)
Speaking of advanced surgery and pieces, have you considered disassembling the kids in pieces and reusing those pieces at the next launch?
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday July 11 2018, @09:30PM
Thats... truly outside the box thinking... they can't fit thru the rock gaps with air tanks on, take the arms and legs off and put them back on at the exit of the cave.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 09 2018, @06:09PM (2 children)
if you lookup "can-do attitude" you will probably find a picture of him :)
if you have the stamina then trying and failing is better then getting stuck in our looming neo-middle-ages time.
only by measuring (trying on) reality do you see what's real; even if you have the best theory and calculations for any device, you will still have to measure.
the calculation and theory will not magically provide you with perfect senses for all relevant units, like volume, distance, pressure and temperature, etc.
also, back-of-napkin ideas have changed the world many times over.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday July 09 2018, @07:39PM
Right you are. Especially when it's not you to pay for the failures.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Monday July 09 2018, @08:03PM
At least he's got some ideas. Why *don't* [youtube.com] we put him in charge?
(Score: 2) by Rich on Tuesday July 10 2018, @07:58AM
Most things he does would be useful on Mars. But about everything he does could be from a Bond movie. He seems to be inspired as much as other parts of science are driven by the ideas of Star Trek. He even owns one of 007's original Lotus Esprits - which helps explaining his choice for who got to manufacture the first Tesla Roadster. And the movie with that car also has midget submarines, closing our circle here. All thanks to Messieurs Fleming and Broccoli, I guess. :)