Elon Musk team due in Thailand to help rescue 12 trapped boys in cave

Musk has floated ideas on Twitter such as using a double-layer Kevlar pressure pod

Thailand said two members of the engineering team dispatched by billionaire Elon Musk are due to arrive late Saturday to help with efforts to rescue 12 boys and their soccer coach trapped in a flooded cave.

Another engineer was already in the country on holiday and six more are expected to land Sunday, Weerachon Sukhontapatipak, a spokesman for Thailand’s military government, said in a Saturday briefing in Bangkok. They may provide help such as trying to drill a tunnel to save the group, he said.

The boys and their coach have been trapped in the cave system in the country’s north for about two weeks, and heavy rainfall looms in the days ahead. Rescuers are scrambling to lower water levels with pumps and prepare the group for a perilous, hours-long extraction that would include diving through pitch-black water with scuba gear.
 

Musk, who studied physics, has floated ideas on Twitter such as using a double-layer Kevlar pressure pod or a long inflatable air sock to penetrate the narrow passageways and provide a rescue conduit. The tubes and pods are being built in the US, a spokesman said. Some equipment is traveling with the team and some will be express shipped.

"No need for SCUBA mouthpiece or regulator," Musk wrote about his suggested pods. "Training unnecessary & less susceptible to panic attack." Musk said they were being tested Friday afternoon in a pool with a subject who had never been scuba diving.
 

Any air sock or tube would have to be tough enough to withstand high water pressure — potentially two tons of force at a depth of 15 feet — and sharp rocks, said Douglas Hart, a professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
 

On Saturday, Musk said on Twitter there’s "some good feedback from cave experts in Thailand" and that he’s "iterating with them on an escape pod design that might be safe enough to try." "Also building an inflatable tube with airlocks," he wrote. "Less likely to work, given tricky contours, but great if it does."

A Thai Navy SEAL helping with the rescue operation died Friday after running out of oxygen, underlining the dangers of navigating the flooded cave system even for those with experience. Cave diving is widely regarded as treacherous and the stranded group is thought to have little swimming ability, let alone diving know-how.
 

Officials have also contemplated supplying the boys and their coach with food, water and oxygen to stay in the cave potentially for months until the monsoon ends and waters recede. But the expected heavy rains raise the risk of increased flooding and restricted access.
 

A spokesman for Musk has previously said that the billionaire’s companies may assist by trying to pinpoint the boys’ precise location using Space Exploration Technologie or Boring Co technology, pumping water or providing heavy-duty battery packs known as Tesla Powerwalls.

Thai boys ask for not too much homework in first letters from flooded cave

A soccer team of 12 Thai schoolboys and their coach trapped in a flooded cave for the past fortnight established contact with their parents for the first time through heartfelt letters as rescuers strove on Saturday to find a way to save them.

Short notes scribbled by each schoolboy on smudged, yellowish paper showed both humour and homesickness as they sought to reassure their relatives they were in good spirits.

“Please don’t worry,” the boys said in a message before each wrote personal messages to their loved ones. “We’re all healthy and strong. There’s so much food we want to eat when we get out. We want to go straight home,” they wrote. 

However, the fate of the boys trapped in the Tham Luang cave complex in northern Chiang Rai province remained unclear.

Narongsak Osottanakorn, Chiang Rai’s former governor, told reporters their best chance yet to free the party could be in coming days before heavy rains set in, although he did not give a precise timeframe for a rescue attempt.

Getting to the spot where the boys sought refuge takes a nearly 11-hour round trip through 4 km (2.5 km) of winding, and occasionally narrow, submerged pathways. Risks include further monsoon rains inundating the cave network and oxygen running out.

A former Thai navy SEAL diver, Samarn Kunan, died from a lack of oxygen on Friday as he navigated the cave complex close to the Myanmar border. 

@2018Bloomberg