Fwd: 3-D imaging to help preserve crumbling rocket facilities

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From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: February 8, 2014 12:01:40 PM CST
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: 3-D imaging to help preserve crumbling rocket facilities

 

orlandosentinel.com/news/os-kennedy-space-center-3d-imaging-20140207,0,3498730.story

 

Orlando Sentinel

 

3-D imaging to help preserve crumbling rocket facilities

Scott Powers Staff Writer

6:16 PM EST, February 7, 2014

 

Launch Complex 14, where NASA rocketed John Glenn and America into space in the Friendship 7 Mercury capsule 52 years ago, is now a shambles of rust and crumbling concrete.

 

"These launch complexes were not built to last," said Thomas Penders on Friday.

 

After decades of minimal maintenance on these sites, the Air Force has assigned Penders to preserve what can be saved of the old, abandoned rocket facilities that stand or lay among the dunes and scrub brush of Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. High-tech imaging is his next step.

 

An $86,000 grant has brought in one of the nation's premier laser 3-D imaging programs, the Alliance for Integrated Spatial Technologies at the USF, to survey, map and create virtual-model videos of six of the highest-priority historic rocket sites, including four launch complexes.

 

Using laser scanners developed by FARO Technologies of Lake Mary, USF scientists Travis Doering and Lori Collins and their team this week began recording digital computer models of all that is left.

 

Their FARO machine uses a laser to make a high-speed, 360-degree scan, measuring and recording about a million data points a second of everything that can be seen within 360 yards. Several of these scans create virtual three-dimensional images so detailed that preservationists and researchers will be able to examine details a millimeter across.

 

"If you were going out here with traditional technology you would take months, taking hand measurements, and photographs, and gathering these point-by-point elevation data," Collins said. "We can shoot it in half a day. And this is far more accurate."

 

The 3D surveys will allow Penders to assess what needs and can be done to stabilize and perhaps restore the space structures. Then he can seek money for restoration.

 

"It's all dependent on budget. As you know budgets are kind of tight these days," he said. "The Air Force has been very supportive."

 

smpowers@tribune.com or 407-420-5441.

 

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