They had at least 5 days in which divers were traversing the hours-long route, to ferry supplies and such, back and forth. No doubt the divers also took time to evaluate and partly simulate what it would be like to drag a mostly-inert human through the difficult spaces.

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.

> No doubt the divers also took time to evaluate and partly simulate what it would be like to drag a mostly-inert human through the difficult spaces.

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.

So, using known, trustworthy, lightweight, manueverable equipment is the same as using an unknown, untested, heavy, potentially and likely more dangerous submarine is the same thing? Just because nothing had been tested on kids?