Elon Musk's Team Is Talking With Thai Officials for Cave Rescue (bloomberg.com) 369
Representatives for Elon Musk are in talks with Thai authorities about aiding in the rescue of a boys' soccer team stuck in a cave, said a spokesman for the billionaire. From a report: Musk's companies could help by trying to locate the boys' precise location using Space Exploration Technologies or Boring Co. technology, pumping water or providing heavy-duty battery packs known as Tesla Powerwalls, the spokesman said. It's unclear whether Thai officials will accept the offer. Twelve boys and their coach, who had been missing since last month, were found by a pair of British cave divers late Monday. Efforts to rescue them are hampered by narrow passageways and rising waters in the cave system. Most of the boys cannot swim.
How about SCUBA and a winch? (Score:2)
If divers got in there, surely they can get some more divers in there with some more equipment, and then tow the kids out of there in spite of their lack of swimming ability?
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They said it would take about five hours for them to get out. And some of that is in very confined passageways filled with murky water.
Most of these kids don't even know how to swim. Imagine the panic attacks and resultant thrashing that could happen. They could kill themselves and the rescuers.
Re:How about SCUBA and a winch? (Score:4, Insightful)
P.S. Am I the only one wondering where they're shitting?
In a cave.
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Yes, but only for the first couple of days, since 9 days without food diminishes the fecal volume considerably.
Further, I assume they didn't shit in the water since they had to drink something to stay alive long enough to be discovered.
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Hmm... could you possibly put them in tight, streamlined, snag-resistant "cocoons" that prevent put them moving, drug them into a state of artificial calm, and simply tow them out as inert cargo?
Re:How about SCUBA and a winch? (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought that. Then I realized I've been in a cave precisely twice, neither of them underwater, and decided to shut the fuck up.
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I've been in a lot more caves than that - though never underwater for longer than I could hold my breath. But this is Slashdot - since when has actual knowledge of the subject at hand interfered with wild speculation?
I speculate precisely so that someone more knowledgeable can shoot me down. Or failing that, to argue with someone whose ignorance exceeds my own ;-).
Re: How about SCUBA and a winch? (Score:2)
Re:How about SCUBA and a winch? (Score:4, Informative)
Cave diving is highly technical. In one part of this particular dive the diver has to be remove their gear and push it ahead of them, in the dark, without getting tangled. This isn't a simple open water dive. An untrained non-swimmer will panic and die, trapping everyone else in the cave behind them.
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If divers got in there, surely they can get some more divers in there with some more equipment, and then tow the kids out of there in spite of their lack of swimming ability?
If you've seen the diagrams, its a cluster maze. Experts say it is highly dangerous and only to be a last resort.
Re:How about SCUBA and a winch? (Score:5, Informative)
If divers got in there, surely they can get some more divers in there with some more equipment, and then tow the kids out of there in spite of their lack of swimming ability?
You mean getting kids that can't swim to use SCUBA gear for their first time and not panic while navigating through an underwater maze of twisty little passages, all alike [wikipedia.org] for over a mile, underwater, in the dark, for 5+ hours? I'm a 55-year-old super experienced swimmer and that might freak me out a little. While I'm confident that I could keep it together, I wouldn't be so sure about my 11-year-old niece.
Re:How about SCUBA and a winch? (Score:5, Informative)
As a diver I can highlight a few dangers with this kind of diving:
1) Panic. If someone panics they lose all rationality, these means they will do things like reject their equipment, take their mask off, taking their breathing apparatus out, flap about and risk knocking any rescuers dive gear off. When you do rescue diver training one of the first things you're taught is that if someone is in panic to only approach if you believe you can restrain them, it's better to let them run out of energy, fall under, and pass out, then try and recover them once they're unconcious/drowning than it is to risk a rescue and get yourself knocked out by a flailing arm. There are tactics you can use to approach a panicing diver, such as approaching them underwater and removing their weights (so they can't descend), or approaching them from behind and controlling them by holding their tank where they can't reach you. The problem is, none of these approaches are any use in a tight cave. There have been plenty of recorded incidents over the years of even the skinniest, most petite young girls accidentally knocking even the strongest most experienced dive instructors for six as a result of panic.
2) Low visibility, due to the rainfall and porous nature of the rocks, there is quite a lot of silt in the water, that means visibility may be next to nothing at points, that's a perfect recipe for panic. When you start to do tech diving, one of the things you learn is to use shorter fins, and kick differently than you do open water cruising reefs watching turtles and stuff. You learn to kick in a way that limits stirring up silt, and in fact don't even kick at all if you can pull yourself along a guide line or something - getting the kids to avoid a natural tendancy to kick, or to kick using the right finning style if they do will in itself not be easy without significant practice. If they kick or flap they're just going to make visibility even worse.
3) Parts of the dive are 30 metres, whilst that's not massively deep for even fairly casual recreational diving, it's still ample depth to suffer effects like narcosis, which can cause anything from making someone deliriously happy, to deliriously stupid like with panic in rejecting equipment.
4) Some parts of the cave system are so narrow, the only way through is to take your equipment off, push it through, swim through, then put your equipment back on. Cave and tech divers in general usually have long hoses for this type of scenario so they can keep the regulator in whilst they do this, but keep your regulator in, or removing it and replacing it whilst de-kitting, and re-kitting when you reach the other side isn't something a beginner should ever attempt.
5) Air consumption. It's an hour dive, and an experienced diver can easily do an hour on a typical 12 litre tank, but these aren't experienced divers, the stress of the cold, dark, and tight passages, coupled with poor buoyancy and trim, and zero experience means these kids will be burning air like no tomorrow, and with parts at 30 metres this means they could trivially run out in as little as 30 minutes. That means at some point you need to switch their air supply.
6) Keeping track of them, the normal way to safely cave and wreck dive is to follow a guide line that you've tied and run through the system, this means the kids have to pull themselves along it for an hour. That's fine in itself but what if they lose it? If there's zero visibility due to silt then how do you find them again? You can tie them to an experienced diver with a buddy tether, but that's something else that can get tangled and create a crisis- if it gets tangled round the kids breathing apparatus it could accidentally pull it out and you might find all you have at the other side is a drowned kid. There won't be room at times to have someone swimming side by side with them.
7) Buoyancy control. It takes a while to get that right, get that wrong and serious accidents can occur. If you inflate your buoyancy vest too much you'll get an u
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Shocking isn't it - the thought that people who are like actual experts on a thing might know a lot more about that thing than people who are experts on other things - or nothing.
They should maybe try a blockchain or something.
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6) Keeping track of them, the normal way to safely cave and wreck dive is to follow a guide line that you've tied and run through the system, this means the kids have to pull themselves along it for an hour. That's fine in itself but what if they lose it?
I don't know if it's asking for more trouble but couldn't you use something like a carabiner [wikipedia.org] to actually attach them to the line? They'd probably have to unhook/rehook at each turn but it'd be a lot shorter than a buddy line. Mentally that could be a big help as well, doesn't matter if they lose the grip or can't see they're not lost. It'd be slower but I'm assuming there's enough dry pockets they can set up rest/refill stations.
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The lines will be tied on to rock formations at various points and will run against the rock at others. If it was a straight line in open water that'd be fine, but in a cave you'll just spend more time trying to unhook it and hook it back on, which in zero visibility water, potentially wearing gloves is not the easiest thing to do without practice.
As a result of that, it's probably easier to just tie them to the diver in front and/or behind and tell them to use their hands to navigate the guide line.
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Sounds like the vast majority of those problems could be eliminated by, for each kid, giving them enough valium-or-equivalent to dope a horse, and having the professional divers haul them out while they trip their brains out. Is there anything that they personally must take responsibility for, that a professional diver with them couldn't do for them (buoyancy, air supply monitoring, etc) with the right kit?
Re:How about SCUBA and a winch? (Score:5, Interesting)
I made a post about drugging them here which covers that kind of thing:
https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
Long story short, yeah, you really need them to be lucid, and the effects of drugs that normally work fine above water may work completely differently underwater. Some side effects are obvious, some not so.
I learnt the hard way early on why you shouldn't even take decongestants when diving. I dived with a minor cold, but took some decongestants and assumed it would be okay. Of course, I still had mucus stuck in the holes in your palate as we tend to when we get colds. I descended to about 5 metres and couldn't clear the pain, so ascend, descended, same problem - a typical squeeze issue from trapped air and an inability to equalise the pressure in the air pocket. I descended a bit more to see if it cleared, by about 10 metres it had, so I continued the dive (a 40 metre dive, in 2c water in a quarry in the UK, in November, with about 1 metre visibility - don't ask). This was the first and only time I suffered nitrogen narcosis, I can't obviously say the decongestants were wholly to blame, I suspect they were a contributing factor but not the only factor. Nitrogen narcosis affects people in different ways, but for me, subconcious was telling me I couldn't breathe and I felt this overwhelming urge to take the regulator out my mouth so I could breathe, whilst I was conciously trying to fight that instinct and tell myself don't be fucking stupid, if you take it out you drown, calm down, keep breathing through it, your fine. Horrible feeling having to fight your own instincts to not drown, but nonetheless I made it through it okay by reminding myself I'm alive, breathing fine, a little bit cold but otherwise okay, keep going, all is good.
When I came back up I hit 10 metres and it started hurting near my palate again at the top of my mouth, so again descended to try and clear, went away, ascended, same problem at 10 metres. Running low on air I decided to try and ascend slowly, hurt for a few metres and again at 5 metres it eventually went away. Finished the dive, thought nothing of it.
Now I'm not really sure to this day why it only affected me in that 5 metre window, normally if you have a pressure equalisation issue it only gets worse if you keep going in the direction it started hurting in (i.e. up or down), but for whatever reason it did.
I didn't put two and two together as to the cause and effect until about 6 months later, but long story short after that dive I lost my sense of taste for about 3 months, and was scared shitless it was permanent. The doctors had no idea because I hadn't even remotely connected it to the idea it was to do with the diving, but essentially I'd damaged my palate and the worst part is, even chocolate was like eating tasteless mud, it's really the only way I can describe it - no sweatness, no real flavour at all, just flavourless melted chocolate.
So the lesson here is that even common medicines can increase your susceptibility to problems when diving, and things like valium I suspect have never really been trialled on divers (see my above linked post for the other physicological changes that could impact it), and that if you can't equalise, you can risk some really serious damage, so you have to be able to a) equalise and abort the dive if you can't, b) be lucid enough to make it clear you can't equalise.
Any dive training you do will absolutely and always iterate that you should never do it on medication precisely because almost all meds are untested under the physiological changes divers face, and because you need to be aware and conscious to immediately call out and react to problems because otherwise they'll often only get worse. The cave diving community take this sufficiently seriously that they have a rule- anyone can end a dive for any reason at any time, without question. This is precisely because everything from anxiety about a dive, through to illness,
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A lot of people also do wreck dive because they feel wrecks are smaller than caves, and the layout is likely to be better known. I've entered ships hulls and that kind of thing, but have never been a fan of doing as some wreck divers do and diving into the ship - as most people know the hallways in a ship are typically much narrower and shorter than a typical hallway in a building. Navigating that when it may be at ab obscure angle (even upside down) which is disorientating, when you're wearing scuba gear,
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What if you just drug them first? The application of chemical calm is pretty well developed, and it doesn't seem like it should be a whole lot more difficult dragging a trussed up kid through the water than the rest of the rescue gear.
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If they're so drugged they can't panic they're also so drugged they can't remember to breathe through their mouth instead of the nose.
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Nose plugs would seem to solve that, wouldn't they?
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Aren't full-face masks a thing these days? Failing that there's always clingfilm & gaffer tape.
Somebody higher up posted an excellent list of potential problems. https://tech.slashdot.org/comm... [slashdot.org]
1 down, 8 to go! Yay, interwebs!
Re:How about SCUBA and a winch? (Score:5, Informative)
My biggest concern with this would be how much research has been done into the effects of those drugs on people underwater.
People often don't realise quite how much of a profound effect the mammalian dive reflex can have on the human body, I can't honestly be arsed to find the study but I'm sure someone can if they can be bothered, but essentially they measured the heart rate of a bunch of free divers and a good proportion of them had their heart rate drop to 20 bpm, and incredibly, a tiny minority as low as 5 bpm whilst free diving.
I'd wager there's a risk therefore that a combination of the two could simply cause the heart to go into cardiac arrest.
That's before you factor in the other effects of diving too of course of which there are many - you end up with different gas mixes in the blood, on normal air mixes in a scuba tank you build up nitrogen, eventually this can reach toxic levels if you do a couple of deep dives in a row it's sufficient. To counteract this and allow people to do repetitive dives you can get gas blends in tanks with higher oxygen percentages, for recreational diving this usually means up to 40% oxygen. Tech diving has other blends, but I won't go into that. The problem with even higher oxygen blends is that they restrict your depth limit, because past a certain point with a great oxygen percentage you can suffer oxygen toxicity which will cause a seizure, something that's almost always deadly underwater. I probably should memorise the nitrox tables but I think if you have something like a 32% oxygen blend then you're at risk of oxygen poisoning and subsequent seizure at only about 30 metres or so.
But I digress, the point is that other changes happen too - capillaries get constricted at the outer regions of your body such as around your legs, as above, you have different amounts of nitrogen and oxygen in your blood stream. You potentially have a much higher level of stress, and so on and so forth. Is it still safe to take those drugs with all those things going on? It's certainly not safe to assume that drugs that work fine at sea level in normal conditions, are safe with the physiological changes that happen when diving.
But there's one other big problem, when diving you have to be able to equalise the pressure in your ears, if you don't do that you'll burst your ear drum and be in absolute agony. I'm not sure how you're going to do that if you're not lucid.
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Sorry Ivan, I think you've entirely missed the point of the discussion in your unnecessarily rabid defence of the Russian state. The point wasn't whether or not Russia did a good or bad job, the point was that you can't just knock people out and assume they'll wake up a-ok. It requires trained medical support to make sure people wake up, and even then it's not guaranteed, it simply increases the odds.
But for what it's worth, yes, I think it's pretty clear the operation was a colossal fuck up, and yes I do h
Not sure - Big Flex Pipe? (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder if there is a flexible pipe with a wide enough ID to pull these boys through. If they could snake such a pipe through the underwater sections, then pump out the water, it might be an option. I suppose that effort itself would be quite dangerous and take a lot of time to act on, if its even feasible to start with.
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I wish someone could explain how they actually got in there in the first place. Even before it flooded it seems like a tough place to get too. Who led them there and why? Is he facing any punishment?
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Have you ever done any caving? Squeezing through tight passages, wondering if you're going to get stuck is just part of the fun. If those passages are underwater however, it becomes a *much* bigger challenge.
And if you also don't know how to swim, much less use SCUBA gear, then you've got a real problem on your hands. Best case scenario is probably running a rope the entire length of the underwater tunnel, and escort them out one at a time by a pair of professional cavers carrying their SCUBA gear in fro
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Squeezing through tight passages, wondering if you're going to get stuck is just part of the fun.
How can anyone think that is fun?
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It is fun.
Try it :)
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I wish someone could explain how they actually got in there in the first place. Even before it flooded it seems like a tough place to get too. Who led them there and why? Is he facing any punishment?
If you're in the part that's easy to get to and water starts pouring in the way you came, the narrow parts that lead away up-slope become surprisingly easy to squeeze through.
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I was wondering how long it would be before some twat suggested a hyperloop.
Re: Not sure - Big Flex Pipe? (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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They should incorporate in the Cook Islands for the Country code TLD
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He should make it a Tesla subsidiary...
Tesla Sucks LTD or whatever.
Reading the comments on Slashdot, there would be a lot of people ready to invest in Tesla Sucks.
Sedation versus rescue capsule? (Score:2)
Why am I not surprised that neither of these options has yet been mentioned? Too intuitively obvious to the most casual observer?
There are two basic options now if time is of the essence (and I'm assuming they don't want to sustain this project until October if they don't have to). One is to sedate the kids enough to move them out safely, and the other is to use some kind of rescue capsule that they guide along the ropes.
The drilling option might be viable, but only if they can get the kids to a better loca
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I'm not certain of this, but I'm pretty sure that they must have air seeping into the place where they are trapped. If they are talking about staying until October, they would use up all the oxygen even in a rather large cave.
Or is it possible they are already planning to pipe in more air before they run out?
Actually, I didn't mention that possibility, but at one I was wondering if they could run pipes past the flooded areas and maybe increase the air pressure inside to help push the water back. I couldn't
Holed on (Score:3)
Use his big test noring device to drill down? Is the cave underwater with a pocket? Drilling in from the top would release the air and flood the cave before they could get out.
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This kinds of crap is why Slashdot is seen as a cesspool these days. Resentful rage-nerds are no substitute for the intelligent people who once populated this site.
Re:Good grief (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Good grief (Score:5, Informative)
I have had PR firms offer me the service, while I've been a corporate officer.
Read the story here [cleantechnica.com]. The people who have bought shorts have billions at stake. They are very motivated to pay for this.
Very few are as good at it as Elon Musk (Score:2, Informative)
> That he's a CEO who boasts about his own organizations? Every CEO does. It's their Job.
Most kinda try, but very few are as good at it as Musk. Most companies don't trade at infinity times earnings, like Tesla does. Typical price to earnings ratio of a well-established, consistently successful company is 20-25 times earnings. Tesla's earnings are *negative*, but it's priced as the most successful car company ever, with billions in profits every year.
It's valued as the world's largest and most su
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That is speculation, and traders are free to speculate on it. Virtually every company in existence has been in "infinity * earnings" territory, BTW. Most companies that aren't generating revenue, and some that never have (think of how many bio companies invent vaccines at huge costs with the hopes of being acquired).
Most people who complain about never making a profit have no idea how stocks operate and should never invest in them. Stick with mutual funds, they know how to handle your money. These are moon-
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Whatever.
Say, did you hear about some kids stranded in a goddam cave?
Re: Good grief (Score:2)
How much is "an awful lot"? Can you quantify that, and detail what exactly it was spent on?
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Nor were they supposed to be making profits right now.
They're supposed to be profitable in Q3. Come back here then if they're not.
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"...underpinning long-shot start-ups."
That is precisely what subsidies are for.
Subsidies reduce the investment cost (and thereby reduce the risk) of low-return investments that the legislature (or other subsidy-issuing authority) has determined are important for society to pursue.
Re: Good grief (Score:5, Informative)
$4.9 billion in subsidies as of three years ago, and still counting.
If you had bothered reading the article you linked to you would have seen that the subsidies break down as follows:
1. $750 million to build a solar plant, and $260 million in property tax breaks, on a project which New York state expects to generate 3,000 jobs and replace a Steel factory.
2. $497 million in tax credits for solar installation; a tax break available to ALL solar providers.
3. $1.5 billion in subsidies paid to solar consumers (ie. not paid to Elon or any of his companies).
4. $1.3 billion in undefined "incentives" to build a battery factory - probably also composed of tax-breaks intended to support an extremely profitable venture which will greatly benefit Nevada (later in the story they point out that Nevada expects to get back $100 billion in "economic impact").
5. $517 million from collecting "environmental credits" from competitors. This is not "taxpayer money".
6. $20 million in yet more undefined subsidies for a launch facility; again, a great deal for Texas given the profitability of SpaceX.
Now, the original claim was that "an awful lot of tax dollars are spent inflating his ego", and, to support this claim, you linked to a jumbled mass of programs totalling $4.9 billion. Out of that $4.9 billion, we can discount $1.5 immediately since it was given to consumers as part of a larger solar subsidy which has nothing to do with Elon. That leaves $3.4 billion. We can further subtract the $497 million given to Tesla because, again, these are programs available to (and used by) all solar providers. We are down to $2.9 billion.
We can also take out the $517 million taken from competitors because ... well, don't be stupid. Now we have $2.4 billion.
Of that $2.4 billion, $750 million is being used to construct a facility which the government will own. So that's about $1.6 billion left.
So the actual amount of money, according to your own source, which is being spent specifically to "inflate his ego" is about $1.6 billion ... and, again according to your own source, almost all of this money is composed of tax breaks rather than direct spending. Tax breaks which, according to the government, should stimulate the economy to the tune of $100 billion over 2 decades.
Quelle horreur.
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If all you ever do is "pump," and you never "dump," what is the problem? Your complaint is that he tries to make his company look good, or make the stock look like a good buy? You thought that was bad? What?
You don't seem to understand the situations where the word "pump" is used in relation to securities.
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Then why not just help instead of Tweeting and then having his PR people contact the press about it?
Really? (Score:2)
Being a company with stockholders you need to try and benefit from anything that could gain positive PR
So even if you really JUST want to help, you also need to be visible doing it. Because of the way the stockmarked works.
And for all you know, what if they did some initiatives without any PR. Would you know about it to complain?
Lighten up, this is not a bad thing.. for anyone.
Re: Good grief (Score:3)
Yes, tweeting something is now considered "leaking it to Blomberg".
What a wonderful mind you have ...
Re: Good grief (Score:2)
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It seems to me like an oilfield services company like Halliburton or Schlumberger -- folks with decades of experience drilling holes -- might have more to offer. But what the hell, once you get past the narcissism and apparently somewhat casual attitude toward the truth, Musk isn't stupid and his projects generally seem reasonably well planned and not prima facia crazed. And unlike some other narcissistic sociopaths one might mention, Musk actually does have some knowledge of technologies that might be us
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I got led into a cave during a river trip down the Stanislaus. This trip was in a low-water year, the Stanislaus is behind the New Melones dam, and it's flooded most of the time - just like this cave. It's just something people do for fun. Sometimes, they don't understand the risk and get in over their heads.
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I saw the only comments so far and as usual they are fuck Musk. Sorry, but I love the guy. This might be a press thing but who gives a fuck. If you are in a position to help with the top tech out there and offer help, then that is ABSOLUTELY GREAT. I hate these fucking socialist fucktards on here lately hating everything someone with money or tech does for others. It's not a bad thing if everyone is helped out in the end. Go screw yourselves instead assholes.
I wonder how many other people or organizations with resources are also offering help but not tweeting about it. The divers risking their lives to get in there don't appear to be tweeting about it.
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The US Navy is actually assisting. They aren't tweeting about it either.
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Blaming Musk skeptics on short-sellers is not a good look. Cult-like, in fact. Short sellers aren't the ones making Musk a liar, he's done that all by himself.
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No one is claiming that cars haven't been produced or that rockets haven't flown. The problem is with Musk's lies about volume and the amount of public funding he's squandered in the process, not to mention his self-dealing that's being uncovered now (SolarCity).
By the way there aren't loading Tesla's on rail at their Freemont factory (even though there is a rail hub onsite). For some incredulous reason they are loading them on trucks to be delivered to trains elsewhere. The least efficient way possible.
Re: Love him (Score:2)
... to be delivered to trains elsewhere.
Apparently it didn't occur to you that your elsewhere... might be where he lives.
Keep up the comedy. ;)
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It's a time-honored tradition for companies that ended up with a "Q" at the end of their symbol to have blamed the media and shorts for their declining stock price along the way. But in the end all that mattered is what the 10-Q/Ks said.
Having said that, the borrow rate is not flashing any serious warning signs yet, it's pretty low at sub-2% (and plenty of shares available). And the massive option premiums are inline with the extreme vol of the underlying.
However the really concerning thing is that the CD
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I want to be supportive of this, but if it's anything like his grandiose schemes to fix Puerto Rico's power problems, it's going to be a lot of talk and no action, or at best "a day late and a dollar short".
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Re:What can Musk offer? (Score:5, Insightful)
Thai Navy divers and a specialist rescue team from the UK are the ones who found them. Now Musk wants to ride in on his white horse with the media in tow.
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Well, since the specialist rescue team from the UK can't get them out, it may be that Musk can really help. Precise location and then drilling - and making sure that opening a new hole isn't going to make the water rise or using an airlock to prevent that from happening - are now called for.
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The best experts in the world haven't figured it out yet... Sounds like a job for Elon Musk and his Twitter machine!
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3) Expertise.
3.1) Erect a big car-production-line sized tent over the area to shield it from monsoon rains flooding the caves. How big is Thailand, in the size-of-Wales units . . . ?
3.2) Use flamethrowers to boil the water and dry out the caves.
4) Musk can maybe provide patience. It doesn't seem that there are any quick and easy solutions. I remember a mine accident in South America, where it took three months to dig them out via an escape hole. Musk has gotten patience from his Tesla investors. Maybe he can co
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e.g., https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/04/the-latest-hyperloop-feasibility-study-aims-to-connect-cleveland-and-chicago/
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It's some boys in a cave in a country with a GDP of $400 billion that have hit top international headlines, I'm pretty sure Thailand won't let cost be an issue. The rest sounds like the plot for Armageddon, you're the one person who can save us through your drilling skills. Oh please... this is just Musk getting high on his own savior-complex, there's nothing they need him for.
Re:What can Musk offer? (Score:5, Informative)
Uh okay. Except he was approached to help and said that he suspected that the Thai government had it under control:
"Elon Musk has said he is “happy to help” with the rescue of the Thai soccer team currently stuck in a cave.
The Tesla CEO was asked by a Twitter user if he could provide a helping hand with the recovery of the 12 boys and their coach who have been stuck in a Thai cave for nearly two weeks, and Musk replied in the affirmative a few hours later.
I suspect that the Thai govt has this under control, but I’m happy to help if there is a way to do so
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 4, 2018"
He *may* be getting high on his savior complex, but he was asked for help, he responded that he would but that he didn't think the Thai government needed it, and then you took to Slashdot.
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Not true though, expert cave rescue and diver teams from Australia and SEALS are involved, I'm sure the US military has offered assistance as well. The main problem is not willpower or money, it's the physics of the thing.
You're talking about pumping out the water collected by a giant mountain chain during the local rain season, and diving in a cave where barely one person can fit through on foot. Experts can get stuff in-and-out and they may have to live there for the foreseeable future with divers ferryin
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Cave diving rescue is a very rarefied skill.
Cave diving is extremely dangerous activity. It is far more dangerous than sport or commercial scuba diving. It requires much more skill and experience. It requires planning, guide line laying, logistic placement of air supplies. It is highly specialised.
While the Thia SEALs are undoubtedly highly trained and brave; cave diving requires a rare combination of extremely demand skills and mental strength. If you run into trouble, surfacing is just not an option.
Charitable status is valued in the UK (Score:2)
In the UK we have a long tradition rescue organisations being charitable supported and these are generally well supported financially by the public. The bulk of our lifeboats are provided a charity the RNLI, many reserve crews are volunteers. We have many volunteer Mountain, Inland water & Cave Rescue teams.
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His money, his connections, and the technologies and expertise of his company. Did you expect him to put on a wetsuit himself and swim in to teach the kids how to go deep diving so they can get out?
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Musk knows about as much about underwater cave rescue as you or I. The difference is we aren't pretending to so we can get more press coverage.
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Well sure, he doesn't. But you know what the thing is about being a good boss? You don't have to know everything - you just need to know who does.
And that is exactly what he's doing here.
Re: What can Musk offer? (Score:5, Insightful)
The best in the world are already there. Musk is just chasing a spotlight he saw.
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Or any mining team from the past 100 years. The world, especially Thailand needs Elon Musk's expertise in this!
"Thailand is one of the leading producers of tin, gypsum, feldspar and cement in the world. Other mineral resources of the country include coal, natural gas and petroleum. The country also has abundant reserves of zinc, iron, gold and copper." https://www.azomining.com/Arti... [azomining.com]
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Knowing how to navigate tunnels to find something is a very different thing from knowing the coordinates of the location. Boring from the surface requires the latter.
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Miners and tunnel diggers have been doing that successfully for more than a century.
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Woah! calm it down there (Score:4, Insightful)
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Specifically, what was offered was ground-penetrating radar they've been developing with Boring Company and an airdropped crate of powerpacks and high-powered pumps.
But it wasn't Musk who started this conversation. Someone asked him on Twitter, and his initial response was that he would if he could but he didn't know exactly how he could be of help, and that he presumes that the Thai authorities are on top of the situation.
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