Is Elon Musk Serious? | Hacker News Reader

Is Elon Musk Serious?

gizmodo.com

7 pointshuangc108 comments

Musk's tweet deriding the "rescue chief" made Musk look like a fool: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1016684366083190785

> The former Thai provincial governor (described inaccurately as “rescue chief”) is not the subject matter expert. That would be Dick Stanton, who co-led the dive rescue team. This is our direct correspondence

As a CEO himself, I would think Musk would know the difference between an executive and someone who is a technical lead. The "rescue chief", aka Gov. Narongsak Osottanakorn, was the official who made the call to perform the rescue operation, which he did after consultation with diving experts and the families. He is absolutely the person who matters when it comes to opinions of whether something is "not practical". Just as Musk, as Tesla CEO, is the person whose has the deciding opinion about whether a car/factory feature is practical, even if he isn't the chief engineer who does the actual implementation.

He posted the exact conversation with the technical person in charge. They were considering using the submarine for the youngest as a backup plan. Just because they weren't forced to use it means nothing. During the Chilean mine rescue, there were 2 extra drills going at the same time using different technology.

I agree it doesn't hurt but at the same time, I'm a strong believer in "too many cooks in the kitchen". Especially when you add to the fact that Elon Musk and his team of engineers are not experts in search and rescue.

Also, where was he during the first few days of the rescue? All of a sudden this story has international attention and he steps in.

He's that kid that tried to build a crazy contraption to save the cat from the tree when all you really needed was a sturdy ladder.

They lucked out with the rain. It isn't clear that the method they used would have worked as well with more water in the cave.

Not weighing in on the sub with that, just the ladder.

I suspect he's extremely serious about publicity. Was he going to build a submarine for kids before they ran out of oxygen? Not likely. But now the world knows about the Boring Company.

Do they? The Boring angle was pitched as a possibility for drilling holes (which apparently was practical). The mini-submarine seems more strongly associated with SpaceX, being built from rocket ship parts and all.

Well I never heard of them before, but they were mentioned in numerous news stories.

One of his offers to help included drop shipping fully-charged power packs.

I had to wonder: could you deliver more energy if you instead delivered the fuel you would save by leaving the power packs behind?

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