Analyzing Lava Tubes With 3D Laser Scanning
3D Laser Scanning Your New Home
Anyone want ready to leave earth and live in a lava tube? That idea may sound a little bit far fetched, but people are talking about it. Those aren’t people like you and me. It is mostly those people who spend their time looking at the night sky for comets and think of way to get people to live on the moon; someone like a NASA scientist to be more exact. Of all of the places that I would want to live, the moon would be the last. If I had to go there though, I would at least ask for an apartment on the surface instead of a lava tube. Unfortunately, though, according to some scientists, those tubes might be the nesting place for some humans to survive. For this reason, scientists are learning all that they can about these worm-like holes. That is why one team of them went to the largest lava tube in the world, La Cueva de Los Verdes, in Italy and used 3D laser scanning services to capture a digital model of it.
Mapping it out with 3D laser scanning services
The researchers went about 5 miles in and did an amazingly detailed 3D scan. They couldn’t do all of it, of course. Some parts of the tube were filled with water. Some parts of the cave were skinny and some were wide; wide enough that you could pave a road through. The researchers who went in to do the scans were from the University of Padova. The team went in with their 3D laser scanning services equipment and collected a bunch of point clouds. Using those point clouds made up of millions of measurements, they could stitch it all together to make one digital model of the lava tube.
A good neighborhood on the moon
The researchers who took part in this projects hope that the knowledge they gain can help prepare us for the day when we may be exploring caves and tunnels on other planets. There are some advantages of these lava tubes and that is that they have a rather constant temperature and they are a protection from radiation. It would also be a good place to be if a meteorite shower started pounding the planet. If the day ever came when we felt like moving, then this 3D laser scanning services project data will come in handy.
While it sounds interesting to imagine what it would be like to live in a lava tube, I honestly hope I never have to. If I do, please don’t make me live on the moon. It would be nice to come out and eat some Five Guys Burgers every once in a while. You can’t do that when you are on a lifeless planet. The 3D scanning services project was cool, but preparing to move to other planets is a bad idea. Let’s use our resources to deal with problems that we have on the planet we live on now. I think this would be a much wiser move than thinking about planets that no one really wants to go to.