Water Table at MSFC

I went on a tour of the shop facilites at NASA/MSFC today. This small building houses a really cool water cutting machine. It cuts with a high pressure jet of water, with crushed garnet mixed in. They let us feel the garnet. The courser powder felt like fine sand. The finer powder felt like, well, powder.

It can make a 9" cut in a single pass.



Below, the table, with two of the guys checking it out.



The table is filled with water. The "bed" is a bunch of cheap metal slats, on-edge, which routinely get cut up by the machine, and then get replaced. They sometimes have to weight down the material that is being cut, because the water from the jet will push down into the bath and push back up on the bottom of the material, making it float off of the slats.



This NASA "meatball" was cut by the water table. The keyboard is part of the control console.



I assume the pink horse was cut on it too, since it was sitting nearby.



Here are the scraps, where many pieces were cut out of single sheets of material. That's not much waste.

Real-time models

My real-time version of the Ticonderoga-class AEGIS cruiser, "USS Normandy", which resides in the Facets model library. Shown here in Creator, with textures and fog turned on.


This is my Normandy, with textures turned off. Many features are painted on the texture, and are not modeled with geometry.


The Normandy, shown here in Creator with a model statistics panel, and wireframe display turned on.

Some Facets Models that I Made

Hibernia oil platform.


M1083 FMTV Standard Cargo Truck, designed to transport cargo and soldiers.


P-3C Orion anti-submarine and maritime surveillance aircraft.

LHD-2 Essex Wasp class carrier, the largest amphibious ships in the world.


Kinetic Energy Anti-Satellite KE ASAT; model was made for hardware-in-the-loop simulation.

"Battle Command Post" trailer.

Scripted T72 Visual Model

I set up this real-time visual model with extensive articulations and a script for realistic track and wheel animation. The Python script queries the Mantis IG to determine velocity, and animates the wheels at the appropriate speed. Terrain roughness is also simulated with a scalable wheel bounce and rocking of the hull. A separate script handles barrel recoil for weapons fire.


T72 Tank Creator screenshot, showing hierarchy/scene graph.

T72 Model for Dynamic NVG and IR Sensor Mode

Starting with the visual T72 texture set, I proceeded to identify surface properties, base materials, and thermal systems. The resulting "material classified" model is used in Infra Red (IR) and Night Vision Goggles (NVG) simulations. The physics is calculated in real time by viXsen, and the model changes according to time of day (thermal load) and selected sensor mode. This model is featured in the viXsen demo scenario.

This is the T72 rendered in Night Vision Goggles (NVG) mode in real-time by the viXsen sensor plugin for Mantis IG.

Here is the T72 in Infra Red (IR) sensor mode, early in the morning (no solar load). Notice the camo pattern has vanished. The textures used here are the same ones used to produce the NVG image; only the sensor mode in viXsen was changed.

This screen capture is with solar load, plus hot engine, tracks and barrel. Notice the solar load on the paint caused the camo pattern to be visible. Again, the same textures are used. The only change is viXsen time of day.

TOS EVA Tools

Mission Specialist James Newman, who was trained for the contingency EVA, gave us each an STS-51 mission patch. The design depicts the ACTS satellite getting boosted into orbit by Transfer Orbit Stage (TOS). The EVA tools were designed to allow the ACTS-TOS payload to be manually secured for landing, in the case that TOS failed to function properly. I found a link to the paper that we wrote about it.

The TOS contingency EVA tools are seen here, mounted in the shuttle bay, on STS-51. The tools rode back home unused, after successful operation of the ACTS-TOS payload.