Monday, October 11, 2010

Order of retrieval of Chile miners...


I am sure most of you (if not everyone) is aware of Chile miners situation... they have been stranded more than 2000 feet below earth's surface for about 2 months now and will be rescued this week by using a special capsule. Now the catch is that the capsule can hold one person at a time... so given that there are 33 miners what should be the order of evacuation... note that these folks have been down there for 2 months now so they must be in an emotionally fragile condition and moreover there is always a possibility of things going wrong between the first and the last retrieval. 

Given all of the above, if you were in charge of figuring out the order of retrieval, how would you do it?

After you have thought of your approach, check theirs at:

(I think their approach is very practical... this could very likely be due to consulting from NASA folks).

In case you are wondering how important is order of evacuation, watch the movie "The Great Escape"...

Comments welcome...