The mini-submarine created by SpaceX engineers may not play a role in the crisis it was designed for — the Thai cave rescue drama that’s now speeding to a resolution — but it could be a lifesaver for future space missions.
“With some mods, this could also work as an escape pod in space,” SpaceX’s billionaire CEO, Elon Musk, said today in a series of tweets sharing the team’s progress.
Last week, Musk’s Twitter followers asked him what he could do to help the team in Thailand that’s working to extract 12 young soccer players and their coach from a flooded cave.
After considering a “bouncy castle” air tube that the kids might be able to wriggle through to safety, Musk and his team settled on the idea of building a kid-sized submarine, equipped with external air tanks. A foot-wide liquid oxygen transfer tube, originally built for SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, would serve as the hull.
The contraption went through dive-pool tests at Palisades Charter High School in Los Angeles and was sent on a 17-hour flight to Thailand.
Meanwhile, the rescue team at the Tham Luang cave complex decided that the situation was too dire to wait any longer. Over the weekend, a team of expert divers began escorting the kids out of the cave. At times, the boys had to be hooked up with full-face oxygen masks as they swam through water filling the narrow, pitch-black cave channels.
The crisis could be resolved without having to resort to SpaceX’s mini-sub, and without further fatalities, which everyone agrees would be good news.
But in today’s tweets, Musk made clear that he wouldn’t consider the effort wasted even if it doesn’t come into play in the flooded Thai cave. The concept could come in handy for future underwater rescues on Earth, or rescues in the vacuum of space.
In any case, it’s instructive to see how the crowdsourced engineering exercise unfolded over the course of just a couple of days. That’s why we’re passing along this long string of tweets documenting the creation and testing of the mini-sub:
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1015507453818044416
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1015657378140704768
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1015665633504063488
https://twitter.com/aiyanaskye/status/1015666082747748352
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1015666557458964480
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1015676772338159618
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1015685823906234368
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1015689632355250176
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1015835053807394816
https://twitter.com/DowdEdward/status/1015836847493169152
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1015850486543495168
https://twitter.com/raveenaujmaya/status/1015955160768622592?s=21
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1016000593616236545
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1016000972730978304
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1016022074307907584
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1016023545703383040
https://twitter.com/DocJohnG/status/1016002860633542656
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1016005381686943744
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1016024280566394880
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1016026055272906752
https://twitter.com/PPathole/status/1016024258982494208
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1016029337450004480
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1016029967270928384
https://twitter.com/KyleBrubaker/status/1016030415918911489
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1016031254465015808
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1016060413476143104
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1016063173139427329
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1016064322357719040
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1016074447122337792
https://twitter.com/imscoops/status/1016070482724941824
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1016070898590232577
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1016076907421417472
https://twitter.com/binarybits/status/1016093481339641861
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1016094166797996032
https://twitter.com/bweikle/status/1016097236357435392
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1016097753963941890
https://twitter.com/2morrowknight/status/1016075312176685056
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1016098616300187648
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1016110809662066688
https://twitter.com/Anna_online/status/1016113225836793856
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1016119687191638016
https://twitter.com/EnochKo/status/1016127884430213125
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1016128459054157825
Update for 3:45 p.m. PT July 9: Looks like Musk was in on the delivery:
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1016443130017505280