Comment Re: Clarifications: (Score 4, Informative) 445
1. Musk sends engineers to site and they speak to 'subject matter expert' about possibilities
2. Inflatable Wing assign 30% staff to task, drop production in half. Ship inflatable 'pod'
3. Continued interaction with on-site experts sees 'mini-sub' idea evolve, similar crunch for development and delivery
4. Someone not involved in this interaction who is _not_ a diver (as commonly reported, he's familiar with the caves and relatively local and did some early co-ordination) made some insulting comments.
5. Got insulting comments back.
Musk was in communication with divers and on-site engineers. This was not some 'out of the blue', uninformed decision to turn up with a mini-sub.
The uninformed opinion was the ex-pat cave explorer who wasn't involved in the loop and made some assumptions about Musk's involvement. He made some public comments disparaging Musk, Musk fired back. Neither behaved well, but you're holding Musk to a double standard if you condemn him and not the instigator, and you've got your 'facts' from the 'spin' that sold this story.
See https://mashable.com/2018/07/0... and https://www.teslarati.com/elon... for eg. Try to look for links before his Twitter storm and you'll avoid all the 'journalists' quoting/sourcing each other.