American businessman and technological extraordinaire Elon Musk has called a diver who helped rescue schoolboys from a flooded Thai cave a ‘pedo guy’.
In a lengthy Twitter thread earlier today (July 15), Musk called British diver Vernon Unsworth a ‘pedo guy’ in a strange outburst.
His frenzied tweets were in reaction to the Brit calling the Tesla and SpaceX CEO’s offer to help with a submarine ‘a PR stunt’.
Earlier this week Musk travelled to the Tham Luang caverns in Chiang Rai to present the six-foot submarine he claimed would be able to help free the 12 schoolboys who had been trapped in the cave for two weeks.
He also offered to send some of his top engineers over so they could aid the rescue team on their mission.
Although the majority of people applauded Musk for offering to help with the rescue mission, Unsworth was less than impressed.
In an interview with CNN, the British diver who lives in Chiang Rai and is an experienced cavern explorer, criticised Musk’s idea of a ‘kid-size submarine’.
He said:
He can stick his submarine where it hurts. It just had absolutely no chance of working. He had no conception of what the cave passage was like.
The submarine, I believe, was about five foot six long, rigid, so it wouldn’t have gone round corners or round any obstacles.
It wouldn’t have made the first 50 metres into the cave from the dive start point. Just a PR stunt.
Unsworth then said Musk was told to leave ‘very quickly’ when he entered the cave adding ‘as he should have been’.
Ouch!
You can watch footage of the rescue team operating within the cave here:
Unsworth’s comments clearly got to Musk who took to Twitter to first claim he never saw the Brit before stating his offer of help was welcomed.
Musk tweeted:
Never saw this British expat guy who lives in Thailand (sus) at any point when we were in the caves. Only people in sight were the Thai navy/army guys, who were great. Thai navy seals escorted us in — total opposite of wanting us to leave.
I was *asked* to help repeatedly. Declined several times, as I thought they had it in hand and only agreed to help when Thai SEAL died (deep cave pumps not operating at time). We designed the mini-sub to Stanton’s specifications *and* brought a flexible rescue pod just in case.
The tweets have since been deleted.
He then invited Unsworth to show a video of the rescue to help prove his submarine idea may have worked.
However, Musk soon called that off resorting to calling the Brit a ‘pedo guy’ in an odd tweet.
The inventor wrote:
Water level was actually very low and still (not flowing) — you could literally have swum to cave five with no gear, which is obv how the kids got in. If not true, then I challenge this dude to show final rescue video. Huge credit to pump and generator team. Unsung heroes here.
You know what, don’t bother showing the video. We will make one of the mini-sub/pod going all the way to cave no problemo. Sorry pedo guy, you really did ask for it.
If you want people to take your point seriously, maybe don’t call the person you disagree with a ‘pedo guy’ Elon!
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