Elon Musk sends Boring Company engineers to help Thai cave rescue mission
135 replies, posted
Also him barging into the scene with his metal shit tube was pretty tasteless and reeks of PR.
Well, to be fair he was getting tons of requests to see if he could help out.
I guess it's impossible for him to do anything without it seeming like a PR stunt, but this did seem like a genuine effort.
But when the government tells him no thanks and he just pulls up to the scene anyway, its a lot more like PR.
It was designed by spare parts by rescue team specifications who said it would be useful and told him to send it. Had it been around a week earlier it would've been more useful as you wouldn't have to teach the kids how to dive
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1016684366083190785?s=19
It's one more option in a crisis situation where more options are welcome. He never tried to take control of the rescue or force his way in. He was asked to help by a random Twitter user and decided to help. Before the capsule he offered to fly over batteries and pumps but the rescue crew said it wasn't needed, instead they worked on this capsule together. At the same time a different company, Wing Inflatables unassociated with musk used his resources to fly inflatable rescue equipment out to the cave that ultimately also wasn't needed.
In like five days, a man with outrageous amounts of resources was asked to help a crisis by a random person, he decided he probably could help by offering up unique zero emission pumps the Boring Company has that makes it possible to remove water from inside the cave without exhaust vents.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1014509856777293825?s=19
While he was asking the rescuers if he could send them batteries, they say they have it covered and instead start working on an extraction method that would be useful even if the cave was completely flooded. It ultimately wasn't needed. There's no negative aspect to this.
"Billionaires never help with their huge resources because they're evil and greedy!"
"Billionaires only help because they want PR!!"
It also all started by a dude who asked him about it in a thread where he said he would look into helping a Flint Michigan fund. Elon's heart is in the right place.
Thanks for this, really on point. Lot of stupid cynicism about this going around
Unfortunately, people don't actually care. They're only interested so long as it fits their worldview (Elon Musk Is A Slavedriving Pie-in-the-sky Scammer With No Regard For Human Life) and then check out as soon as any evidence proves them wrong.
More like i just read what i see in the news, Elon still is a slave driver with all the horrid ex employees reporting the long hours with the expectation of basically living on the jobsite.
It's gotta be a weird and probably a slightly annoying feeling to be one of the rescue workers/volunteers there on the ground who was working there from the beginning with a legitimate personal stake in this and an actual connection to the kids to see some rich guy from half a world away come by and drop off something no one really needed or can use, snap a few pics and a vid of himself splashing around in a cave for instagram and twitter, pat himself on the back, and walk away while leaving you with his weird set of one-off submarines that you don't know much about "just incase you need them again."
Didn't really do any harm, and it'd be easy to see it as a nice but uneeded gesture if he didn't tweet about it every step of the way, but in the end he didn't really actually accomplish... anything.
They. Told. Him. To. Bring. It.
haha i ordered a pizza from pizza hut and they actually delivered it, fucking retards lmao nice pr move pizza hut but you aren't fooling me
I just don't understand the logic behind getting mad at rich people volunteering their money and resources to a good cause.
There are valid criticisms of Elon Musk, designing a saving capsule to government and rescue specifications so that in the future they're better prepared is not one of those criticisms.
Nor is it really of any praise considering any engineering company could've done it. I don't understand the praise nor derision, coming to the rescue of those in need should be a standard human reaction.
I'm not really mad that he did it, more confused as to why teslaboos are painting it as him actually contributing to the rescue and not, y'know, the divers and volunteers who've been there from the beginning.
And its very hard to believe he did it for any other reason than to generate upvotes and retweets considering he was constantly patting himself on the back about how cool it was on twitter.
A shame it turned out to be basically useless.
It's really awesome what Musk did, frankly.
I just really like the amount of memes coming out of this too.
However, I will take on the idea that he's using his resources for good as one could easily make the argument that if he truly was a force for good he wouldn't burn through engineers and factory workers as well as pay them decent salaries.
He did one good thing for a very short period of lost personal expenses if that because the parts used appeared to be spare parts, so essentially he lost nothing in this and only gained, especially in the cynical way that it is good PR.
It was a good try. Nothing wrong in trying
i mean, it isn't like the people giving elon shit are really celebrating the actual rescuers, most of them just use any opportunity they have to dunk on him.
The rescuers deserve all the praise given to them and then some as the situation itself was incredibly perilous and dangerous for everyone involved as shown early in the week with the loss of one diver.
I can't imagine a team of 90 rescue divers, with over half from overseas, would be this cynical
Yeah you're right.
By the way, I actually found a subreddit just for Elon bashing Yikes.
https://www.reddit.com/r/EnoughMuskSpam/
Don't doubt his heart is in the right place but he was asked by some random twitter user, not anyone connected to the rescue effort (although he later had contact with them). Accepting that invitation and then documenting the whole process on twitter screams opportunistic grandstanding on a international news story.
And even when their heart was in the right place, taking it upon themselves to design a solution that was not officially wanted and built halfway across the world from the situation is self-aggrandizement. Call me a cynic but I think this is a case of people who were over-estimating their ability to help and their role in the world attempting to live out those assumptions to the benefit of no-one but themselves. I think they deserve to be criticised for that.
Elon Musk has a track record of hyping up almost impossible things for publicity (vast underground networks solving traffic, hypertube with pathetic tests, space rockets for transportation that would launch in the middle of cities (let's melt people's ears!!) and so on). Otherwise I would be less cynical about this.
Why are underground tunnels impossible?
What's pathetic about the hyperloop tests?
Which rocket would launch in the middle of a city?
tbh its more of the irritating cult of personality that is annoying rather than him himself
is he being misrepresented or something? I don't see anything wrong with it.
There are so many good causes they could donate to, but a couple whole days to these 12 kids then just silently shrug off the rest because it's not as impressive to the media if he helps other issues.
I don't get why people are bootlicking a billionaire who started his fortune on his family's profiteering of apartheid, and got lucky during the tech bubble with paypal (which spawned other amazing people like peter thiel), and then struck gold again by securing government contracts to launch rockets .
He's just as open to criticism as other billionaires even if he does a better PR job than the others.
If something goes wrong then you have a lot worse problem than with a surface road. Especially with the scale he wants to have.
The state of his test hyperloop is pathetic. All rusting and not even level. Brings confidence considering that he would have to keep vacuum in the real thing for hundreds of kilometers. Then the tests just involve a mini electric car moving a small distance even though the tube is busted to begin with. Also, he's being praised as a genius for something that was written off 50 years ago.
Look at his presentation for those rockets. Launching in the bay of what seemed like New York. Wow big difference for sound problems.
What could go wrong? Any examples? Tunnels are pretty safe. I've driven through probably 10 today, one of which was sub-oceanic. Most tunnel accidents happen due to driver fatigue or reckless driving, an automated system is by default much safer.
Are you arguing that the test results and the data they gathered was bad? Are you familiar with the purpose and results of the testing? Does external surface rust pose a problem in the testing environment? If so, which problems arose during the tests? Who is claiming he invented the concept.
Did you notice how far away the rocket was from the city? We're talking many kilometers. It absolutely wasn't in the middle of the city. Besides, it's just s concept rendering, not a literal building plan.
An end to the story: the tube has been given to the Thai Navy who say it might be useful in the future.
https://twitter.com/thanr/status/1017243230163873792?s=19
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.