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this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2026
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In 2018 a bunch of boys got trapped in a flooded cave in Thailand. It was a big story on Twitter, as people tried to figure out how to save those boys. Elon Musk weighed in that he had ordered SpaceX to repurpose a rocket into a boy-saving device that would traverse through the narrow tunnels, pick up a boy, and return to safety.
A British cave explorer said that nah, that's not gonna work Elon - I'm gonna dive into the cave with extra oxygen and get the boys out. Elon got livid and called the cave explorer "Pedo guy" on account of him being British, into cave exploration, and living in Thailand. Cave explorer then proceeded to save the boys, and Elon was mad that he didn't get to send space rockets into a narrow cave passage.
Oh my God. I'd heard the first part of this story, but not the second. Elon Musk really finds a new low every time I turn around.
It's funny because a lot of people cite this exchange as the time when it finally clicked for them that Elon is a grifter.
Makes me wonder if Trump's cult possess a similar invisible red line, or not?
It was the first time he was in the spotlight after he fired his PR team in 2017
Yeah, exactly this. Musk managed to coast for a while on a "Tony Stark" image with the PR team's assistance. Once that was gone, some of his hardcore fans surely stuck around, but people who had no emotional investment in his image were just like "oh, this guy sucks actually."
After being called on it, he even hired a PI to try to find proof that the guy he randomly called a pedophile happened to be coincidentally a pedophile. He just had a dude investigated based on nothing to blindly hope his insult was somehow prescient.
Wow. What, and I cannot stress this enough, the fuck.
Well, it wasn't a rocket, it was at least not as crazy as that, it was some more vaguely credible looking mini-sub enclosure.
It was still stupid, as the diver explained manipulating a still-big, inflexible mini sub through the cave system was not going to work nearly as well as just having scuba gear.
Elon wanted to save the day and got all pissy that his idea was rightly called out as stupid, even if folks were willing to risk waiting for SpaceX to come save the day.
The mini sub idea had no credibility. It wasn't that it would be difficult to get it through, it was impossible. The cave had several restrictions that a body sized sub could not fit through
There was no one in the world better suited to get those kids out than Dr. Richard Harris, and he did exactly that with the help of dozens of other rescuers
Harris is an anesthesiologist who happens to be a world class cave diver with a deep knowledge on dive physiology. He later went on to do some groundbreaking work using hydrogen and oxygen mixtures for deep diving
If I remember correctly the sub was supposed to be built from repurposed rocket parts?
Yes, but it didn't matter what hebmade itnout of. Any rigid shell would have been unable to fit through the restrictions in that cave
You have the basic story correct, but you're mixing together a few people. Vern Unsworth is who you're talking about, but he isn't a diver. Just a dry caver
He was the one who mapped the cave, and recommended the Thai government call John Volanthen, who led the team that got the kids out
And for the record, Musk's submarine idea was beyond stupid. Zero chance of success. Just shows how little Musk understands of engineering
Thanks for the correction. This happened during my very short time on Twitter, and it was pretty disconcerting to see actual real-life decision makers make dumb decisions in real time.
As you said, up until that point Musk had been quite successful at bullshitting many real engineers into believing that he was some kind of genius. This incident helped a lot of people realize that they had been conned.