High tension prevails as officials are running out of valuable time trying to rescue the 12 kids and a coach who got trapped in the Tham Luang cave in Thailand. While the problem was addressed through various angles, looks like billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk has come up with a brilliant(but feasible?) plan.

The scientist billionaire suggested using nylon tubes to be fitted throughout the cave and filling it with air making it like an ‘air castle’ which would help the stranded people walk through. It’s a new angle of approach to the problem. Already an ex Navy SEAL has lost his life in the mission and this seems to be a good debt.

Musk has already sent his team of engineers to the spot so they could analyse the situation and come up with a feasible solution. Let’s hope and pray that the rescue mission is successful.

Maybe worth trying: insert a 1m diameter nylon tube (or shorter set of tubes for most difficult sections) through cave network & inflate with air like a bouncy castle. Should create an air tunnel underwater against cave roof & auto-conform to odd shapes like the 70cm hole.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 6, 2018

Walking speed is around 5km/h, but if you’re in an air tube, time doesn’t matter much. If tube diameter was 1.5m, a fast walk of 5km would take 40 mins or so. Just need to duck for the narrow sections.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 6, 2018

Have a small velcro slit entrance & exit in circumferential direction (half stress of longitudinal direction)

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 6, 2018

So long as air feed rate exceeds leak rate, tube remains inflated. This is how bouncy castles or inflatable mazes work. Needs very little power as the work (physics def of work) done is low. Pumping out water faster than it enters the cave system is prob 10X to 1000X more power.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 6, 2018

Looks like 1st bit of water is close enough to entrance to be pumped out. 2nd & 3rd would need battery packs, air pumps & tubes. If depth of 2nd is accurate, would need ~0.5 bar tube pressure. Prob need to enter tube, zip up & then transit.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 6, 2018

SpaceX & Boring Co engineers headed to Thailand tomorrow to see if we can be helpful to govt. There are probably many complexities that are hard to appreciate without being there in person.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 6, 2018