What in the actual fuck is going on with Musk? This kind of behaviour is inappropriate even for a random nobody on Twitter, let alone a celebrity billionaire CEO. What possible thought process leads an adult to not just think this, but then to also type it out and decide it's a good idea?!
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jul/16/british-dive...
> I certainly wouldn't be on the cave side of it (as opposed to the entrance side - when I was acting as a guide I wouldn't even be on the non-entrence side of fat divers if the system had restrictions)
(restrictions means tight, bendy bits)
If the long, rigid, metal sub got stuck in any way in the cave, the kids and divers behind it were also stuck, and probably doomed (good luck getting cutting equipment in there to dismantle it).
We're just lucky the plan they went with actually worked - strap the kids in tightly to a semi-enclosed stretcher with lots of anti-anxiety drugs and a positive pressure facemask. AFAIK rescuing people from a cave underwater who aren't already divers has never been done before at all, and I've heard of a few cases where similar rescues have failed with the deaths of the victims (e.g. someone getting stuck in tidal mud flats where a diver tried using a full face mask to keep them alive until the morning - they panicked, lost the mask, and died). Lots of things like the kids being in worse health than they were, or the combo of drugs and bravery/meditation not being enough could have made that plan fail.
Just keeping those kids alive already killed one diver due to an accident - if the plan had failed even just resupplying them until conditions improved could have easily killed more given the bad conditions.
Also remember that the rescue was willing and able to modify the cave with drilling (and even blasting) to make passages wider and easier to navigate (there's public footage of the rescuers doing this). This is an aspect of cave rescue that can be controversial and isn't often talked about, but I think it's totally justified here, and could have easily reduced the risk of the thing getting stuck (which happens to patients^H^H^H bodies too...).
Unfortunately this was a really bad situation without a guaranteed good outcome.
I was exposed to vertical and (dry) cave rescue practices via my father for most of my upbringing. Every exercise I ever saw performed involved strapping a person into a stretcher and using multiple people to maneuver them to safety. This is the method they train, and this is the method they know. I have no doubt this is the method of choice for more good reasons than I can possibly think of.
Now let's add cave diving to the mix, one of the most dangerous pastimes you can take part in. This is a situation where the most boring solution is the best solution. The fewer unknowns the better. These people have a background in rescue already, so they know their way around a stretcher. They have a background in diving, so they know their way around a mask. Dr Richard Harris, one of the divers involved is an anaesthetist, so he knows his way around sedating people. They've got this covered. Every person there already has experience doing what they're doing. To introduce a (relatively) large, heavy, untested piece of apparatus with which nobody has any experience working with to an already risky operation with a high chance of fatality is just ridiculous.
Good on Musk for thinking about the problem and looking for a solution, but anybody claiming to know better than the people who actually pulled this off without any fancy contraptions is in need of a reality check.
edit: To be clear, I'm talking about what's the alternative if the stretcher doesn't work? That was a major risk.
If I were in there position, I'd strongly consider a stretcher too. But I'd feel much better knowing there was a backup plan.
> I have no doubt this is the method of choice for more good reasons than I can possibly think of.
Indeed it is. But all those rescues were performed above the water, in breathable air. Adding water to that mix is a huge change. Heck, I know someone who was involved in a rescue from a very wet cave with a significant river flowing through it that was flooding. They said one of the hardest parts of the rescue was keeping the victim in a stretcher out of the water so they wouldn't drown.
Yes, the sub was untested and nobody had any experience with it. But rescuing untrained victims with a mask was also untested and nobody had any experience doing it. I'm sure that uncertainty is why Musk was asked by Richard Stanton - one of the two divers who found the kids in the first place - to keep working on it.
Incidentally, by caving standards all dive gear is a "fancy contraption" - dive gear is notoriously fragile by caving standards.
Returning to the points made above, it shows incredible hubris that Musk demanded any attention to his project from the already overtaxed rescue operators. What else was Richard going to tell him? Imagine if one of these kids had died and the divers had pulled the plug on the miracle sub. He's already this upset they didn't use it after a successful rescue, imagine his reaction if he was asked to desist upon arriving.
And it really doesn't matter if they didn't use it. More options is better than too few options.
But his response to being called a "PR stunt" has been absolutely disgusting. Test it, validate it, prove it, and donate it to whoever it is that keeps big boxes of weird contraptions for when things go wrong. Then move on. Just .. not this. Quite the opposite of this.
No it really isn't. When people are fatigued, under pressure and facing some hard time constraints you want less options, options that the rescue team are familiar with and trained for. You don't want them thinking about whether this new contraption would work in the back of their minds.
It's like having that boss that wants status reports every 5 minutes during a production issue, not only is it unhelpful but it does hamper efforts to resolve things.
> Test it, validate it, prove it, and donate it to whoever it is that keeps big boxes of weird contraptions for when things go wrong.
And do all of this before it's needed, don't wing it.
Eh, don't overestimate how common this rescue was. The techniques they used in the end appear to be unprecedented underwater - cave diving is sufficiently dangerous that rescuing people who can't move under their own power is unheard of. So people don't train for that.
Notably, while the the two cave divers who actually found the kids had done successful cave rescues before in dry caves, this appears to be the first time they've ever successfully rescued someone underwater - all their prior experience underwater was body recoveries (one of which following a failed attempt(1) to rescue a cave diver).
Heck, there's a school of thought in cave diving that rejects the usual scuba diving practice of having a buddy in favour of diving solo. It's common for the rescue attempt to simply end up killing the dive buddy as well rather than saving a life: https://cavedivinggroup.org.uk/in-praise-of-solo-cave-diving...
1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stanton_(cave_diver)#C...
The operation was unique, just about every rescue operation is in some way, but the equipment they're using is all the same stuff that's familiar because they've trained with it. Getting a dead body through a cave is fairly similar to a live one and the differences between the two is something they were very cautious about taking into account. Introducing a new piece of equipment they're not familiar with is an additional unknown that compounds the ones they were already facing.
Those involved don't seem to think it was what they were familiar with, at all. Basically, the people that normally get trapped miles into flooded caves are other cave divers - not children who can barely swim at all. Especially in an environment where panic kills (they're still very guarded about admitting whether or not the kids were medicated to prevent panics, but this is exactly why they probably should have been).
This is the same diver that found the kids, and the same diver who was telling Musk to hurry up. If he thought it was an option worth having, I'm more than willing to defer to his expertise. I don't think that's the part that went wrong - it was creating and then mishandling the publicity that's stung.
I think this precisely capture the difference in majority of audience thinking form Silicon Valley / US vs EU / UK.
As per the article "The Silicon Valley model for doing things is a mix of can-do optimism"
Calling someone who risk his life, saving children a paedophile because he felt he was insulted or attacked may have been perfectly acceptable in the land of freedom, but definitely not in UK.
And generally speaking, it isn't very polite to decline help on offer or to flat out label something doesn't work, especially from the British. May be next time they should just replied "That is not quite what I have in mind.". [1]
[1] https://twitter.com/soverybritish/status/517736334841352192
Not acceptable here, either. It's legal, but it's socially unacceptable. Now, if Musk goes beyond name calling and makes an actual effort to paint the guy as a pedo then, I think, it's illegal. (I think)
I haven't been following any of this very closely.
Would you mind linking to primary sources, thanks.
Here's some Google cache links to the tweets:
1. Claiming he's sus for living in Thailand: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:2lG6zB...
2. Straight-up calling him "pedo guy": https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Zdx_Qw...
3. And doubling down: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:qsVGLi...
Here's a Guardian article about it. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/15/elon-musk...
Link 1
> Never saw this British expat guy who lives in Thailand (sus) at any point when we were in the caves. Only people in sight were the Thai navy/army guys, who were great. Thai navy seals escorted us in — total opposite of wanting us to leave.
Link 2
> Water level was actually very low & still (not flowing) — you could literally have swum to Cave 5 with no gear, which is obv how the kids got in. If not true, then I challenge this dude to show final rescue video. Huge credit to pump & generator team. Unsung heroes here.
> You know what, don’t bother showing the video. We will make one of the mini-sub/pod going all the way to Cave 5 no problemo. Sorry pedo guy, you really did ask for it.
Link 3
> Bet ya a signed dollar it’s true
Aside from calling the guy a pedo, the implication here seems to be that Thailand has nothing to offer a British expat than a ready supply of child sex workers. So he's insulted a whole country.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1016684366083190785
He’s deleted the tweets from this morning calling a rescuer a “pedo” (pretty easy to Google reports about it). I think we can all agree that libeling people as “pedo” is bad form. But his earlier tweet (posted above) about the “rescue chief” should also be called out. He’s trying to portray a “thanks Elon, keep working on it” message from the lead diver as some kind of proof that his mini-sub was on deck, ready to go, as opposed to being just a prototype. In any engineering effort, it’s not just about what’s being built, but whether it meets the requirements of the situation, including time. If it took a week for Musk’s mini-sub to be validated, that would also be “not practical”.
The Governor was not the subject matter expert. He was a vital coordinating and decision makin role, but he’s not a cave diver and was not directly involved in the rescue activity. The subject Elon is talking about here is “designing a rescue device for incapacitated survivors in a wet/flooded cave rescue”
Elon wasn’t trying to use the communication as proof that the sub was ready to go, only that he was designing it with direct involvement of the dive team (the people actually in the cave). His message was that it was fit for purpose.
You are correct that it would take time for the design to be validated, but the rescue team was facing the possibility of not being able to rescue some of the boys without it. Thankfully their mask-and-stretcher method worked with only one fatality (and that fatality would not have been avoided with or without the sub).
In the meantime the Thai navy has suggested they will be evaluating the device for potential utility in future dive rescues. It has clear advantages over a stretcher, especially considering the problems this rescue had with wet suits and masks not fitting the survivors.
There are undoubtedly engineers at SpaceX and Tesla who know much, much more about their respective fields than does Musk. Doesn’t mean that he isn’t the shot-caller for those companies.
The rescue divers discussed their plans and their options with the Governor so he was thoroughly briefed on what was about to happen and the perceived risks.
> The Governor was not the subject matter expert. He was a vital coordinating and decision makin role, but he’s not a cave diver and was not directly involved in the rescue activity.
Making executive decisions about what plan to use, and when to use it, is part of "rescue activity". Presumably part of that role involved considering Musk's mini-sub at its stage of development. Seems like the governor/rescue chief would be the expert on whether the mini-sub was "not practical" for rescuing the kids.
The governor’s area of expertise was more likely how to go about convincing third parties to accept the fallout (rice farmers whose fields were damaged, parents whose kids might not be coming home) rather than a deep technical understanding of the activities.
Also the governor’s statement about the device not being a good fit seems more likely aimed at the device being a Plan C fallback, rather than the device not being useful at all. The extraction mission was already in progress, involving a hundred people or so. Anyone who has managed a large team knows that a team this size working under stress should not be changing horses mid stream.
Given that the kids were being sedated, it also stands to reason that putting them in a sealed tube was not a good fit since that would preclude monitoring vitals with the available tools eg 1 stethoscope. A future revision could be switching from bolt-on lid to clip-on lid so that rapid egress or access is possible.
Otherwise we'd have the CEOs of telcos out in the field splicing fibre.
Everything they were doing was a "prototype"
AFAIK rescuing non-diver victims hasn't been done before, and from the sounds of it they decided to make the attempt sooner than expected due to bad weather and falling oxygen. The plan they used is something they had to rapidly develop in nearby pools with local kids to practice with - not unlike what Musk's team was doing. edit: For that matter, I have to wonder how the rescue would have went in a country that didn't allow them to practice with local kids... I personally think the rescuers made the right decision there, but I could see that being disallowed.
Remember that just after the rescue was finished they had to quickly evacuate the remaining ~100 personnel in the cave when the pumping unexpected failed and water levels started rising quickly. Had that happened a little earlier it's quite possible all the kids would be dead today.
Do you think the rescue chief would have given the go if the feedback from divers had been “It’s utterly impossible!”? It was a massive risk, to be sure, but at least the divers have experience on what it’s like to move human bodies through he specific area. AFAIK the mini-sub never made the trip. Considering the route took as much as 10 hours round trip, it might have been at least a full day before to test it in real conditions.
That's the thing: moving a body through those spaces wasn't the unknown - cave rescuers get a lot of practice doing that above the water with live people playing victims, and sadly below the water with actual body recoveries.
The unknown was likely whether or not the kids would survive that route. I know of no examples of that being done successfully before; in that respect I'd say the actual plan used and the sub were prototypes to roughly the same extent.
What bothers me is people treating this like this rescue wasn't a miracle of improvisation backed by experience and huge amounts of skill: it _was_ exactly that and the rescuers deserve every bit of credit for that.
> AFAIK the mini-sub never made the trip.
The sub didn't arrive until after the rescue had started, apparently forced to start earlier than expected by worsening conditions.
You’re asking if the rescue chief was unrelated to the rescue effort?
It's quite common for non-rescue-specialists to end up leading big rescues administratively, because someone needs to co-ordinate the complex logistics between the many different groups involved. You can do an excellent job at that without actually knowing the ins and outs of cave rescue if you're willing to delegate that part to your (on paper) subordinates. Likely also political aspects here - the person at the top should be a local for a lot of good reasons.
Of course, Musk could have handled that a lot better... e.g. by just ignoring that criticism and not responding to it. Deleting Twitter could have been a good start.
It boggles my mind the number of people who argue, "Well, at least he helped!", as if attempts to help are always a net good. It's fine if he sent help, or if he were privately working on a solution. Tweeting his prototype as it was being developed, as if it were on the cusp of success, was not helpful. It put undue pressure on the rescue chief -- imagine if the operation had failed and children had died? Can you imagine the vitriol the chief would face by armchair critics for not waiting, or for not trying out Musk's solution?
I can't be the only one who thought the rescue operation would end with some casualties (so soon after that former Thai SEAL died). But everyone was rescued, and it turned out the rescue chief/governor made the right call under pressure. Musk, who was accountable to no one, ripping into the rescue chief is the height of douchebaggery. Well, at least until this morning when he called one of the rescuers a "pedo".