Elon Musk floats plan to get trapped boys out of flooded Thailand cave

Natasha Bernal

 

Elon Musk has sent a team of engineers to help rescue the group of 12 children and their coach trapped in a cave in Thailand.

The billionaire entrepreneur said that a group of engineers from his companies, SpaceX and The Boring Company, would leave for Thailand on Saturday "to see if we can be helpful to the government."

Musk has commented on the rescue through Twitter since the news broke earlier this week, initially offering help to the Thai government in their rescue operations in response to a request online. He also outlined an idea for a rescue operation, using pumps, battery packs and tubes.

He suggested inserting a one metre diameter nylon tube through the cave network and inflating it with air "like a bouncy castle". He said that this should create an air tunnel underwater against the cave roof, allowing people to walk through it and duck through the narrow sections.

As long as the air feed rate exceeds the leak rate, the tube will remain inflated, he said. Musk claimed that this would very little power compared to pumping out water faster than it enters the cave system.

The 12 boys and their football coach found alive by British divers in a Thai cave could remain underground for months as rescuers try to work out how to extricate the group from the complex underground system.

Rake thin but alive, the boys aged between 11 and 16 were discovered with their 25-year-old coach late on Monday, nine days after they became trapped in a pitch black cave hemmed by rising floodwaters.

British divers Rick Stanton, 56, and 47-year-old John Volanthen had been called in by the Thai authorities last week along with fellow British caving experts Robert Harper, from Somerset, and Vern Unsworth.

The UK divers who reached the stranded group that had been missing for nine days were described as the "A Team" by Bill Whitehouse, vice chairman of the British Cave Rescue Council.

Musk's help follows news of the death of one of the rescue divers trying to save 12 young boys and their football coach who remain stranded inside after two weeks.

Petty Officer Kunan died on his way out of the cave complex where he had been delivering air tanks to different locations along the treacherous submerged route that leads to the chamber some 2.5 miles from the main exit.

Video: 

For more news videos visit Yahoo View.