On Thu, Mar 27, 2008 at 1:40 AM, D M <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> If somebody looks up some ship blueprints on
> http://www.the-bleuprints.com or some other blueprint site of a ship I'll
> model something this evening.
> Does it have to be a surveillance ship? There are not many blueprints I
> can find from them.
>
I am going to try to get some schematics of the ship and take a picture of
them to post. The ship I am currently on started out as a navy surveillance
vessel, but was taken out of service and transfered to NOAA and is now used
as a research ship. Our current cruise is dedicated to marine debris
location and removal.
A few NOAA researchers have come up with some theories of using satellite
imagery/data to detect "convergence" zones in the ocean currents. Along
with converging debris, wildlife and plant life also converges in these
zones. So we are starting out with a satellite based prediction of the
convergence zone. Now along the way we are taking water samples every 15nm
to measure conductivity, temperature, and chlorophyll content of the water
down to depths of 500m. We should see a significant change in these
measurements when we cross the boundary into the convergence zone. Almost
analogous to crossing a "weather" front.
During this whole cruise we have a team keeping watch from the roof of the
bridge (aka the fly deck) using hand held binoculars and also using 2 25x
power "big eye" binoculars that are swivel mounted and have calibration
marks so anything in the water can be geolocated relative to the ship.
Finally, when we do get to the convergence zone and the likely debris field,
we will commence UAS operations. That's where I plug in. We want to use an
airborne camera system launched from the ship to extend the visual range of
the ship and test the effectiveness of this approach relative to the other
approaches in locating debris.
We have a big cargo container on the fan tail of the ship that we hope to
fill with debris. Some people think we'll come back empty handed (big
ocean), and some people seem to think we can walk across the debris. The
truth is likely somewhere in between. Hopefully we'll come back with a full
load of garbage and demonstrate the effectiveness of an airborne camera
relative to observers on the ship and come up with a truth reference for the
satellite prediction models.
Interestingly, even way away from the convergence zone and from land, our
observers are picking out bits of debris periodically, so there is plenty of
stuff floating around out here if you are dedicated to looking for it.
So, the reason I asked about building a 3d model of our ship, is that I
could plug it into our FlightGear based synthetic view (and replay) system,
and increase the ooh/ahh factor.
That is all,
Curt.
--
Curtis Olson: http://baron.flightgear.org/~curt/
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