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I just thought that y'all would enjoy this little bit of propaganda-EZ


----- Original Message -----
From: William C. Stone <william.stone@ni*.go*>
To: <ezscuba@gt*.ne*>
Sent: Tuesday, May 23, 2000 10:34 AM
Subject: attitude


>
> >http://www.ezscuba.com/rebreathers_3.htm
> >These pics were taken at Ginnie Springs while Mike was getting more
> >time on the unit in preparation for the ill-fated Wakulla 2 project which
> did not complete their
> >mission to map and explore Wakulla Springs Cave.
>
> Hi folks --
>
> I happened across your site and found the above caption under a picture
> of Mike Bruic diving a MK5 rebreather.   I don't believe I've met any of
> your staff, but I would suggest that whoever wrote the above does not
> (or doesn't desire to) know much about what the Wakulla 2 expedition
> was about or what it accomplished.   Florida cave diving is,
unfortunately,
> not the gentlemanly endeavor it once was and people somehow seem to
> believe that by deriding something they don't like makes it not
worthwhile.
> Some, like this statement above, would suggest that things never happened.
> The fact is, the project scanned 23 kilometers of cave in 3D [some of
> that was duplication since we surveyed both into and out of the cave and
> in some cases had multiple mapping runs down the primary corridors,
> so the unique passage surveyed was around 7 kilometers].  No one has
> ever done that (create a full 3D map) in either a wet or dry cavern either
> before or since that
> project.  More than 10,000,000 registered survey points defining the walls
> of the cave were acquired (and will soon be publicly available on CDROM
> along with executable viewing code).   Some people seem to be fixated
> with paper games regarding penetration distance as the only measure
> of success, yet they do so without a mirror on themselves.  Were you aware
that
> the Wakulla 2 expedition established the first radio location control grid
> for an underwater cave map?   Were you aware that it discovered overshoot
> errors in the existing (WKPP) maps of Wakulla Spring of 1300 feet in the
> first 9700 feet of passage extending to Cherokee Sink (i.e. that instead
> of being 11,000 feet, the penetration is really just 9,700 feet)? Were you
> aware
> that those existing surveys were off horizontally by more than 1000 feet
> at that same location?   Nobody else was either.   That's new information.
> It tells us that line and compass surveys (everyone's, not just the WKPP)
> drift significantly and need correction mechanisms if we are to make use
of
> them
> for anything other than artwork.   The Wakulla-2 dataset is presently
being
> studied by two universities, two federal labs, and two scientific
vizualization
> companies as an algorithm-driver -- a demanding test case for
> unstructured surface meshing techniques now under development.
> This will break new ground in scientific vizualization and animation tools
for
> studying natural resources. If people are serious about protecting
> underground resources in Florida then new techniques,  such as those
> proven at Wakulla 2, are indeed needed.   To propagate false mythes
> that the expedition was a failure is the folly of the disenfranchised.
>
> Bill Stone
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ===========================================
> Dr. William C. Stone
> Leader
> Construction Metrology and Automation Group
> Bldg 226/ B146
> NIST
> Gaithersburg, MD 20899
> Ph: 301-975-6075
> fax: 301-869-6275
> email: william.stone@ni*.go*
> ===========================================
>

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