Elon Musk Shares First Videos Of ‘Kid-Sized’ Submarine Built For Thai Soccer Team Cave Rescue
Elon Musk, the billionaire inventor and SpaceX founder, has shared the first videos of a kid-sized submarine designed to rescue the Thai soccer tea currently trapped in a cave. Musk shared the videos on Twitter and they show his team testing the apparatus.
As the Inquisitr previously reported, Musk offered the services of his engineers at Space X and The Boring Company to the Thai government so that they could use their years of expertise to help get the boys and their coach to safety. It took mere hours for them to devise a plan.
The miniature sub was made from material used in a SpaceX rocket. As Business Insider reports, in one video we can see three people in scuba gear testing the equipment in a pool and another shows the sub underwater for about half a minute. The most promising video shows the sub getting hoisted out of the pool. A person emerges from inside of it and they aren’t wet, indicating that there’s a possibility that it could help with the dangerous rescue effort.
Musk, who is active on Twitter, first tweeted about the crisis in Thailand after one of his followers asked if he would be able to help, Business Insider notes. At first, he responded that they would help if needed but that he thought the “Thai government had everything under control.”
That was on July 4.
On July 6, after crowdsourcing some ideas among his Twitter followers, Musk announced that he had sent SpaceX and Boring Company engineers to help the Thai government and rescue workers.
“There are probably many complexities that are hard to appreciate without being there in person,” he tweeted.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 8, 2018
Simulating maneuvering through a narrow passage pic.twitter.com/2z01Ut3vxJ
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 9, 2018
Musk tweeted videos of his rescue submarine after news broke that four of the boys had been rescued. BBC News reports that they are in good health, but that the rescue efforts had to be stopped for 10 hours because rescue workers needed to replace oxygen tanks. According to the BBC, the next stage of the operation will start on Monday.
The rescue team consists of 90 divers, 40 from Thailand and 50 from overseas. It’s a treacherous mission. The soccer team is trapped in a complex cave system filled with tight underwater passageways. It’s a race against time, as the impending rainy season could soon intensify the flooding in the caves and make the situation much worse than it already is.
One Navy SEAL has already died since the rescue mission began. Saman Kunan, a former officer in Thailand’s elite Navy SEALs lost his life on Thursday after he was sent to lay oxygen tanks inside of an escape route, ABC reports. He was 38-years-old.
RACE AGAINST TIME Thai cave rescue – schoolboys could face terrifying race against time to navigate deadly 1.2 mile dive before rain floods cave ‘in DAYS’ pic.twitter.com/X9MYxiMivT
— The Sun Graphics (@TheSunGraphics) July 4, 2018
