It’s “spelunking” not “splunking” Re/Cappers, we’re off to a Texas cave today for a tech-soaked survey with more ambition than a brisket eating contest after a 72-hour fast.
The cave is the Inner Space Cavern. You could say the survey is 62 years in the making, given its 1963 discovery. But the real coincidence is that it was unveiled by the very same party, whose elegant surveying comprises our lead Re/Cap!
(Cowboy) hats off, Texas Department of Transportation.
In that spring of ‘63, mere months before the JFK assasination upended the planet from the same state, the (then) Texas Highway Department drilling crew unknowingly stumbled upon the hidden treasure beneath Georgetown. While collecting core samples to assess ground stability for an overpass on Interstate 35, their drill bit suddenly dropped 26 feet after penetrating solid limestone. A vast subterranean void was revealed, which would come to be known as, yup, Inner Space Cavern. Then, what began as a routine infrastructure survey quickly evolved into an extraordinary chapter of exploration.
Later that year, spelunkers from the Texas Speleological Society entered the cavern through the original drill hole, mapping over 7,000 feet of passages ranging from narrow crawls to grand, cathedral-like chambers.
This early exploration bridged engineering necessity with natural wonder, unveiling a hidden world that marries geological mystery with public intrigue. By 1966, Inner Space Cavern opened its doors to the public, inviting visitors to journey through its ancient limestone corridors and marvel at its natural beauty. AND WE GOT VIDEOS LIKE THIS.
Over the ensuing decades, exploration expanded considerably, as did the findings. By the late 1980s, nearly 4.8 miles of passages had been meticulously mapped, revealing astonishing paleontological treasures like mammoth and saber-toothed cat fossils, placing the cavern among Texas’ scientific crown jewels. Public access was improved with a tunnel excavation, easing the way for tourists and researchers alike.
From a surprise discovery during highway construction to one of the most thoroughly documented caves in the region, the saga of Inner Space Cavern stands as a testament to how human curiosity, technological innovation, and nature’s hidden wonders can converge, illuminating the past while pioneering the future of exploration.
And as we’ll soon cover, such exploration shows no sign of stopping!
When Inner Space looks like outer. Surveyor for scale. Image credit Texas Department of Transportation
What’s Cappenin’ This Week
Quick ‘Caps
The Re/Cap Podcast: Catherine Cooper, PhD: Historic Preservation, the National Park Service, Creative Photogrammetry, Virtual Tours, Lost Culture
In a rare twist for Texas’ Dept. of Transportation’s often-tethered-to-Earth’s-surface surveyors, they got to plunge underground for a generational survey adventure, along with environmentalists, engineers, and technologists.
The site of infamy is Inner Space Cavern, near Georgetown. Trading traffic cones for stalactites, they engineered a 3D digital twin of the cave’s labyrinthine passages using high-tech tools including a LiDAR-equipped dog-shaped robot named, ever-fittingly, Dot.
Tech Marks the Dot! Image credit Texas Department of Transportation
Over 18 days, the team & pup braved the humidity-heavy underground, with some equipment having to sweat it out to recalibrate. They stitched together exact coordinates despite GPS signals playing hard to get, relying on expert surveying, precision scanning, and good old-fashioned tech wizardry to map more than 5.5 miles of passageways.
The outcome? A pristine 3D model that fuses cavern geometry with surface coordinates, ensuring any future I-35 corridor projects can carefully avoid poking holes in this natural wonder. Plus, it was an excellent training ground for rookies to learn the ropes in one of the trickiest terrains imaginable: no signal, no roads, just endless cave walls in a makeshift steamroom.
TxDOT crystallized the whole ordeal, linked below, detailing workflows, maintaining good coordinates, working around public tours, IT specialists, and what the newly mapped coordinates & model mean for future exploration.
There’s a new robot in L.A., and this one makes The Terminator look like The printing press.
ABB Robotics has teamed with Cosmic Buildings to bring a sci-fi twist to wildfire recovery in Southern California with their AI-powered mobile “microfactories.” These baby-fabs roll onto fire-ravaged lots, fabricating custom, fire-resistant wall panels and other modules with millimeter precision.
Powered by ABB’s IRB 6710 robots, and RobotStudio digital twin software integrated with Cosmic’s AI-driven BIM, the setup simulates and plans entire homes digitally before the robots make haste onsite. The result? Homes built up to 10 times faster, with 60% less labor, costing roughly 30% less than traditional methods. And because these homes are made of non-combustible materials, with solar power, battery backups, and water independence, they’re born to stultify disasters.
Engineering.com also profiled the duo below, exploring permitting fabrications, visions, integrations, and a bevy of stakeholder quotes.
The Shroud of Turin is responsible for more controversy than the needs-to-be-retired “pineapple on pizza” discourse; even the Catholic Church has neither endorsed nor denied the fabric’s authenticity.
The cloth, bearing a faint image of a crucified man, has long been believed to have wrapped Jesus after his death. Its origins, however, have been debated since it emerged in the 14th century.
Time will tell, but debate may soon be less divisive, thanks to a new study imbued with advanced 3D modeling.
A/B test of the 3D model and low relief view. Image credit Cicero Moraes via Archaeology News
Using Blender and an array of other software, Brazilian digital graphics expert and 3D designer Cicero Moraes modeled how garments behaved on both a fully three-dimensional human figure and a shallow relief surface (essentially a flat backdrop with subtle raised elements).
According to Moraes, “The contact pattern generated by the low-relief model is more compatible with the Shroud’s image. It shows less anatomical distortion and greater fidelity to the observed contours.”
So was it merely an artistic creation? Archaeology News combs through every step of the history, tech, ramifications, and stunning video, below.
What if your infrastructure had…trust issues?
In a world where every wind turbine, power plant, and human heart can now have its own digital therapist constantly analyzing its performance anxiety, TechXplore had two professors illuminate how we've essentially given our machines souls - virtual ones that never sleep and always know when a breakdown is abrewin’.
But there is much to do, to ensure digital twins not in vain as demand explodes.
Pffft, it’s not even early yet! Image credit Grand View Research
The article explores how the technology has rapidly evolved beyond manufacturing, wherein 29% of companies have adopted it. But there’s a paradox; needing lots of data to build good models, while “a lot of data” often means a lot of failures! It’s one of many shrewd observations from the article’s esteemed New South Wales protagonists: Associate Professor Pietro Borghesani of UNSW's School of Mechanical and Manufacturing, and Professor Zhongxiao Peng, who leads UNSW’s Tribology and Machine Condition Monitoring Research Group.
The pair expound on “fine-tuning” data, twins as repositories of institutional knowledge, AI tension, controlling asset degradation, twins for medicine and what they share with infrastructural ones, and why human expertise is still central as twins evolve from luxury to necessity. Explore TechXplore’s perceptive piece below.
1980’s collapse of the Berlin Congress Hall Roof. Image credit Haus der Kulturen der Welt
What happens when architectural ambition outpaces the vigilance needed to sustain it?
Gifted by the U.S., the Congress Hall in Berlin - now the Haus der Kulturen der Welt and affectionately called “Die schwangere Auster” (“The Pregnant Oyster”) - stood as a bold symbol of postwar optimism and daring engineering. Designed by American architect Hugh Stubbins and completed in 1957, the building showcased a pioneering concrete roof made from a thin-shell hyperbolic paraboloid structure. This was supported by two massive 110-meter concrete arches, resting on just two main points at the east and west sides. The sweeping shell roof spanned an oval auditorium seating roughly 1,000 visitors, creating a freely flowing, column-free space that was as much a political beacon during the Cold War as an architectural statement of modernity and Western freedom, positioned prominently at the Berlin sector border on an artificial mound for visibility.
On May 21, 1980, tragedy struck when the southern perimeter of this daring concrete shell roof suddenly collapsed. The failure was catastrophic and instantaneous, with tons of concrete and structural elements crashing down onto the public spaces beneath. The collapse killed a journalist from a local broadcaster and injured several others, casting a somber shadow over a structure that had symbolized hope and cultural exchange for decades.
The failure was rife with design and construction flaws. The roof’s thin concrete shell, supported predominantly by prestressed tendons within the arches, required exceptionally precise stress balancing. Over time, several insidious factors eroded the structure’s integrity: concrete creep - a slow, time-dependent deformation - progressively shifted stresses, while corrosion affected the prestressed steel tendons critical for holding the roof in equilibrium. The problem was compounded by construction shortcomings, including deviations from original design ideals made under pressure from city authorities who doubted the roof’s stability, resulting in a heavier supporting edge beam added to secure it but which increased loads beyond what the shell was intended to bear. Oh, and how about some rust. These combined stresses weakened the roof’s load-bearing capacity until the southern edge catastrophically failed.
The collapse highlighted inherent challenges in executing innovative shell architecture without full appreciation for long-term material behavior and forced redistribution. The Congress Hall had required the precise interplay of form, materials, and reinforcements; elements vulnerable to time, environmental exposure, and even minor execution errors. After the collapse, the hall was closed for several years. A rigorous, costly reconstruction ensued, respecting Stubbins’s original intent but incorporating improved reinforcements, modern engineering standards, and separating the architectural expression of the roof from its structural necessities to ensure long-term safety. It reopened in 1987, coinciding with Berlin’s 750th anniversary. And it’s still thriving today…just on account of a hefty price tag.
Could today’s technology have saved the Congress Hall roof? With the tools now at our disposal, the answer leans toward yes. BIM can model the push and pull of complex structures with remarkable precision, letting designers stress-test every curve and connection before a single formwork is built. Laser scanning and photogrammetry, gathered from drones circling above or weaving through interior spaces, create living 3D records of a project as it takes shape. Each scan can be lined up against the original model, making even the smallest deviations impossible to hide.
Once a building stands, reality capture doesn’t step aside. Robotic crawlers and inspection drones could comb over the shell’s high, sweeping interior to spot hairline cracks, creeping deformation, or the first signs of water getting in. Embedded sensors would track strain, displacement, and moisture in real time, feeding a digital twin that mirrors the structure’s every movement and change. Thermal imaging would light up areas where water or temperature stress is quietly doing damage, while LIDAR mapping keeps a running log of surface shifts down to the millimeter.
The power lies in the combination: constant observation, precise measurement, and a clear picture of how a structure is holding up. Problems don’t have to wait for a dramatic failure to reveal themselves. With today’s reality capture ecosystem, the Congress Hall roof could have told its story long before it fell.
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