People Can’t Stop Making Jokes About Elon Musk’s Rescue Submarine

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By now you’ve surely heard the twelve boys and one adult trapped in Thailand’s Tham Luang Nang Non cave system have all been rescued. What you may not have heard is that the rescue operation was offered assistance from the flamethrower-selling boyfriend of Grimes with a penchant for launching a car into outer damn space. That’s right, Elon Musk — whose full name may or may not be Elongated Muskrat — went to Thailand with a team of engineers and built this small submarine to possibly help with the rescue effort:

The boys and their coach were ultimately saved by scuba divers who taught them how to scuba dive and guided them out of the cave, and Narongsak Osatanakorn, a leader of the rescue operation, told The Guardian, “Although [Musk’s] technology is good and sophisticated, it’s not practical for this mission.”

That doesn’t mean the submarine can’t find other uses (Musk floated ideas about an escape pod and exploring Europa), but people on Twitter nonetheless made fun of the little submarine having gone unused. There was also a backlash against Musk for getting involved, though, to be fair, Musk was asked to keep working on the submarine and didn’t take credit for the rescue. That’s not going to stop us from laughing at submarine jokes, however.

Some people on Twitter couldn’t help but be a wee bit sarcastic about the submarine plans:

https://twitter.com/jrhennessy/status/1016081187733815296
https://twitter.com/bea_ker/status/1016621396049313798
https://twitter.com/daveanthony/status/1016738760996806656
https://twitter.com/camh/status/1016764304987709440

Some people waited until all of the kids were safe before making jokes:

Others spun conspiracy theories:

https://twitter.com/SamGrittner/status/1016736709579505665

Some people made requests or general observations:

https://twitter.com/HumansOfLate/status/1016994639990149120

And many folks helpfully proposed other uses for the little submarine:

https://twitter.com/scntfc/status/1016755455891161088

Hey, at least he tried.