From: itsd1@teleport.com   
      
   In article ,   
    wbogen@visteon.com (Bill Bogen) wrote:   
      
   > It was once proposed to do an automated search of images from the   
   > Clementine probe for evidence of lunar lava tubes.  The argument (by   
   > Taylor and Gibbs) was that the usually-cited candidates for lava tubes   
   > are the huge, apparently partly collapsed rilles visible from Earth or   
   > in Apollo photos and that any tubes at these sites may be too deep to   
   > use easily.  The thought was that smaller tubes could be just as   
   > useful (for radiation and meteoroid protection), more numerous,   
   > possibly located near more interesting sites, and easier to access.   
   > These smaller tubes might be discernable in some of the 1.9 million   
   > Clementine images.   
   >   
   > Did anything ever come of this?   
      
   Our research team at Oregon L-5 attempted to start preparing for such a   
   search, back in 1993-4 using some software from a Caltech/JPL project in   
   pattern recognition. The originating software team had used it to search   
   out small volcanic features in the Magellan Radar data, and we thought   
   of using it on Clementine data. We knew it might be marginal, because of   
   the resolution of the Clementine sensors on the lunar surface, but   
   figured it was worth a try.   
      
   Unfortunately, the software (unnamed, to protect the guilty) turned out   
   to be such an unusable lash-up of previous academic projects that we   
   never found anyone outside of that particular Caltech/JPL team who had   
   gotten it to work, either. We once met someone at a conference who also   
   tried it, and he was awed that we'd once gotten as far as getting a user   
   interface screen! We banged away for about 5 years, on and off, as   
   volunteer teams must.   
      
   The head of that software project quit Caltech and joined Microsoft in   
   the middle of our efforts. 'Nuff said!   
      
   >If not, did anyone ever begin a   
   > _manual_ search of the 620,000 high-resolution visible-light   
   > Clementine images?   
      
   We looked at this, and looked at our local support group, and quailed!   
      
   We haven't found that purely iternet organized projects, where people   
   never meet physically, have enough credence with team members for any   
   single person to take "ownership" of this sort of project.   
      
   >This sounds about right for a small NASA grant or   
   > for a volunteer, distributed project among interested space cadets.   
      
   It still tweaks my interest quite strongly, but more through the   
   possibility of using better pattern recognition software ( JPL has   
   touted their "Diamondeye" since then, but only on their machines, IIRC)   
   and the higher resolution data from Transorbital, if and when it becomes   
   available.   
      
   Regards,   
      
   Tom Billings   
      
   --   
   Oregon L-5 Society   
      
   http://www.oregonl5.org/   
      
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