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Laser-Scanning U.S. Landmarks
MeanMF writes "The New York Daily News reports in this article that the National Park Service is creating detailed 3-D maps of national monuments such as the Statue of Liberty and Mount Rushmore using high-resolution laser scanners. Their goal is to create highly-accurate blueprints that can be used to reconstruct the monuments if they are damaged by a terrorist attack or other means." The same story is also available at Yahoo!.
Lady Liberty is sexy sexy sexy! They forgot to mention her heaving bosom though.
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
It's one thing to rebuild the Statue of Liberty, I can see how that might be accomplished (albeit at quite a cost).
What I dont' get is...why Mt. Rushmore? They're going to have one hell of a time re-carving that thing back into the mountain, expecially after being demolished by something...well, big enough to blow something like that up.
Cool idea, all in all though.
Chaos, panic, disorder...my work here is done.
Sure gives a new meaning to the phrase "disaster recovery", don't it? Altough, if restoring from tape is a bitch, now imagine this one...
Step One of our diabolical terrorist plan: Destroy the National Parks Service Headquarters!
This is very important. If our monuments are destroyed, we have to build them again exactly as they were before. That's because the key thing about monuments is not what they represent, but their particular physical specifications. By rebuilding exactly as before, we send a message to the terrorists that we keep very good records, and aren't afraid to use them.
Contrast this to the way our enemies behave. When we bomb their command centers, rather than rebuilding them exactly as they were before, they rebuild them to be more bomb proof. This shows how little respect for their own history they have.
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and replace him with a robot replica.
If anything happens to the Statue of Liberty, why not just send her back to France and get them to do warranty repair. I'm sure the French wouldn't mind, especially if you've purchased the extended warranty :)
Macka
[devil's advocate]
Shouldn't the US Gov concentrate harder on getting the DNA sequences of every American citizen, so that they can clone anyone killed in the terrorist attacks, wrather than focus on the materialistic parts of the country?
What's more important?
[/devil's advocate]
0110100100100000011000010110110100100000011000100
Well, one things for certain, the French sure aren't gonna build us another Statue of Liberty, with the way we've been acting lately.
I'd imagine that if we were to give these plans to Lego, we'd have some really kickass home versions of all of the monuments. Or how about the 3D puzzle people? Or a craft store? There's consumeristic profit to be reaped from these laser scans...I wonder if the park system will see it.
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
Who leaves a job like this up to college kids. I can just see a post-apocolyptic era in which the statue of liberty is a girl in a bikini waving a sign that says "Texas A&M blows" on it.
Just like our culture. Is this what the artists intended when they created these works?
It is a statue of Liberty, not a statue of Respect for History.
(imagines a giant copper statue of an elderly librarian with coke-bottle glasses, sitting behind a desk with a 'sssh!' gesture)
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Benjamin Coates
So they're reverse-engineering architectural features for the purpose of making replacement copies. I wonder if this falls under the jurisdiction of the DMCA?
Hopefully it would fall under 'fair use' as it is (reportedly) for backup purposes.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Then terrorists may be able to use it to their advantage to find weakspots in (for eg) Mount Rushmore. I imagine they will be able to find flaws in rushmore that could be exploited by high explosives.
Well, There's this exhaust port, but it's at the end of this narrow canyon and only like two meters wide...
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Benjamin Coates
so far every post I've read is complaining about "taxpayers money at work" or "why bother?"...you're looking at it the wrong way-
think of the uses of these maps!
ut2003, doom3, quake 10, counterstrike:anti-terrorist unit, etc... what ever.
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Well, one things for certain, the French sure aren't gonna build us another Statue of Liberty, with the way we've been acting lately.
Give a copy of the plans to Charlton Heston when the apes take over.
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
Mount McRushmore.
4 Dead presidents and a set of golden arches.
Hang on - maybe we could just rebuild the monuments with Lego. Wouldn't that be a whole lot easier for all concerned..?