Engineers from Elon Musk and some equipment will arrive in Thailand to help makie a rescue plan for 13 boys and coach trapped deep underground in a cave. All or nothing approaches to cave rescue resemble NASA planetary and lunar mission planning paradigms that are all or nothing. It is possible to cut down the problem to smaller pieces. One could place particular site-specific oxygen relief umbrellas anchored with climber's bolts to the cave floor where there are water obstructions so the distance to cross and desparation is reduced.
Locating extra air bottles on the way is something like having Sherpas place supplies for a summit attempt on the mountain closest to the moon on Earth; Chimborazo in Ecuador. It is not necessary to make a complete summit attempt from sea level in one shot; it's o.k. to traverse pieces of the journey and even make way to the Whymper hut at 15,000 feet for an overnight rest before getting up early to hike to the summit (properly equipped of course).
The submerged areas of the cave should be 'bridged' with site specific crossing techniques (unless the Musk idea of an inflatable tube that would cross most of the cave length is readily applicable). Different means of providing air to portions of the cave that are submerged- a variegated approach to solving the equation, would be like Newton's approach to inventing the integral calculus.
No comments:
Post a Comment