Elon Musk is sending a team of engineers to Thailand to see if they can help authorities racing to save a dozen boys and their coach who are stranded in a cave there.
"SpaceX & Boring Co engineers headed to Thailand tomorrow to see if we can be helpful to govt,"
Musk tweeted just after midnight, California time, on Thursday night. "There are probably many complexities that are hard to appreciate without being there in person."
"Boring Co has advanced ground penetrating radar & is pretty good at digging holes," Musk wrote in an
earlier tweet on Thursday.
Musk spent Thursday evening brainstorming about ways to help the boys and suggested another approach:
@JamesWorldSpace
replying to @elonmusk
SpaceX team reached out to us today to help connect to Thai govt. Our team connected and provided some prep feedback to your team. For pumps, cave has narrowest 70cm cross section and about 5km to 13 guys. For vertical drill, it’s about 1/2 mile down and tricky
@elonmusk
Maybe worth trying: insert a 1m diameter nylon tube (or shorter set of tubes for most difficult sections) through cave network & inflate with air like a bouncy castle. Should create an air tunnel underwater against cave roof & auto-conform to odd shapes like the 70cm hole.
10:29 PM - Jul 5, 2018
Musk was responding to a tweet by James Yenbamroong, an American-educated aerospace engineer who moved back to his native Thailand to start a satellite startup called mu Space Corp. He provided this image to illustrate the boys' predicament:
"The critical 70cm cross section area has 15m in length,"
Yenbamroong tweeted, noting that this section is "2km away from entrance where pumps should be."
Musk elaborated on his plan in subsequent tweets:
Replying to @elonmusk @JamesWorldSpace
It's a 5 hour swim to get there.
Elon Musk
✔@elonmusk
Walking speed is around 5km/h, but if you’re in an air tube, time doesn’t matter much. If tube diameter was 1.5m, a fast walk of 5km would take 40 mins or so. Just need to duck for the narrow sections.
10:41 PM - Jul 5, 2018
Replying to @elonmusk @JamesWorldSpace
You would need an airlock at both ends
Elon Musk
✔@elonmusk
Replying to @chiefpad @JamesWorldSpace
Have a small velcro slit entrance & exit in circumferential direction (half stress of longitudinal direction)
11:09 PM - Jul 5, 2018
Elon Musk
✔@elonmusk
So long as air feed rate exceeds leak rate, tube remains inflated. This is how bouncy castles or inflatable mazes work. Needs very little power as the work (physics def of work) done is low. Pumping out water faster than it enters the cave system is prob 10X to 1000X more power.
11:13 PM - Jul 5, 2018
Elon Musk has an idea for saving boys stranded in a Thailand cave