[akhatri_aus]

It depends on what he wanted out of it. It was quite obvious nothing of the size of that submarine could fit in that narrow portion of the cave.

That begs the question on whether it was more for publicity or it was actually intended to be used.

Would it be realistic to see that submarine in Thailand or on some video camera in an LA pool?

[mehrdadn]

> It was quite obvious nothing of the size of that submarine could fit in that narrow portion of the cave.

What? How did you come to this conclusion? They deliberately designed it to be 31cm so that it would fit through the narrowest parts they knew of (38cm? 35cm?), and it was obvious to you that it wouldn't fit?

[akhatri_aus]

There's a diagram if you look around. Sure the narrowest portion is narrow, but you need to bend your body because this narrow portion is at a curve.

A solid metal cylinder that can't bend had no chance at all to begin with. If a human cant go through without bending their body how can a cylinder containing a flat standing human get through? An engineer designing for this situation knows to optimise for the camera instead of the cave.

[mehrdadn]

You know, I actually had been wondering about the length myself for a while, but I hadn't seen any comments or quantifiable information on that one way or the other. I was wondering how much they had considered that even in a narrow hole they might need extra room of more than twice the length of the tube afterward to make sure it goes through, if the passage doesn't go straight. The bendability per se I admittedly didn't explicitly think about, though (though it kinda factors into the size). Every diagram I've seen so far has been grossly not-to-scale for something this small, and every objection I've seen thus far has been about the diameter, not the length or the shape. If you have any information on the shape (besides the diameter) it'd be awesome if you could link it here. (Unfortunately I have to go offline so I don't have the chance to Google further right now.) Thanks for the reply!

[antris]

Are you an expert on cave diving and rescue or where does this analysis on what is obvious and what isn't comes from?

[ofrzeta]

It's obvious from the pictures of the submarine. When the press reports state that the cave is so narrow in places that you need to take off the scuba to get through, obviously the submarine that has a bigger diameter than a diver with a scuba won't pass.

[antris]

Again. This armchair analysis cannot decide whether a solution is fit for the job or not. You don't know everything that's happening at the site.

[ofrzeta]

This is bollocks. "In narrow sections, rescuers will have to take off their air tanks and squeeze the boys and the tanks through". https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/660/cpsprodpb/25F2/production/...

[mehrdadn]

> This is bollocks. "In narrow sections, rescuers will have to take off their air tanks and squeeze the boys and the tanks through". https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/660/cpsprodpb/25F2/production/....

Do you see that diagram says "gap approx 40 cm"? Do you see that I already told you they deliberately designed their submarine to be 31 cm in diameter? Do you see that there's a chance that the oxygen tanks and their human chest combined are indeed more than 31 cm, and hence having to take them off might not say anything about whether a 31 cm tube will fit?

[ofrzeta]

I can see that but I can also see that there's an air tank mounted on the outside of the submarine. This could probably be taken off while passing the narrow passage.

On the other hand you would need to squeeze a person in that submarine over the whole diving range. That would probably not help feeling them more comfortable.

Last not least in article you will find the quote "'The equipment he gave us is not practical for our mission,' Narongsak said Tuesday morning", that might prove my point.

Finally I don't get why you are arguing that the submarine is such a great idea when it's clearly not.