Now or never: Tourist attractions under threat

The citadel of Aleppo. Picture: Zachery Baumgartner, Flickr Source: Supplied

A boy plays at the citadel. Picture: Karmel80, Flickr Source: Supplied

THE cultural heritage of the entire country of Syria and the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, US are among the diverse cultural heritage sites threatened by neglect, overdevelopment or social, political and economic change, a preservation group announced.

The World Monuments Fund's watch list for 2014 includes 67 sites in 41 countries and territories, from Japan to the US.

The New York-based group has issued its watch list every two years since the mid-1990s to call attention to important landmarks threatened around the world in an effort to promote awareness and action. The list was assembled by a panel of experts in archeology, architecture, art history and preservation.

"Some sites are famous, others struggle for recognition," said Bonnie Burnham, president of the organisation. "It is our goal to help as many as possible.

"For some sites, inclusion in the Watch is the best chance to survive."

The list cited escalating violence in Syria for the devastating effect on some of its monuments, including the citadel of Aleppo and the fortress of Qa'lat al-Mudique.

Eero Saarinen's Gateway Arch, a mid-century modern structure, was at risk due to "encroaching corrosion," the result of the challenges its extreme height and design presented for its preservation, the group said.

Eero Saarinen’s Gateway Arch. Picture: Teemu008, Flickr Source: Supplied

It also singled out the Hudson River Palisades, saying the planned construction of a commercial building nearby would spoil views from the cliffs on both the New Jersey and New York sides of the river.

Among the list are three former industrial sites in England - the Grimsby Ice Factory, Battersea Power Station and Deptford Dockyard - obsolete structures the fund said could be converted for cultural and community purposes.

The list also includes Yangon, Myanmar, whose religious structures and late 19th- and early 20th-century colonial buildings were threatened with destruction from the demand for commercial and residential properties, the fund said.

Yangon. Picture: Imke.stahlmann. Flickr Source: Supplied

US sites on the list also included sculptor Donald Judd's buildings at The Chinati Foundation, a contemporary art museum in Marfa, Texas; Frank Lloyd Wrights' Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin; and woodworker George Nakashima's house and workshop in New Hope, Pennsylvania. The modern heritage sites were included because they all require creative approaches to their conservation, the fund said.

Also on the watch list are places threatened by what the fund called "large-scale cruise-ship tourism".

It said Venice, Italy, was a dramatic example of that, and said it hoped that placing the ancient city on the list would lead to an analysis of the adverse impact large vessels were having on the environment.

See more at the World Monuments Fund's website.

Venice is also under threat from cruise tourism. Picture: Thinkstock Source: News Limited

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NASA's Orion Spacecraft Proves Sound Under Pressure

RELEASE : 13-174 NASA's Orion Spacecraft Proves Sound Under Pressure WASHINGTON -- After a month of being poked, prodded and pressurized in ways that mimicked the stresses of spaceflight, NASA's Orion crew module successfully passed its static loads tests on Wednesday.

When Orion launches on Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1), which is targeted for September 2014, it will travel farther from Earth than any spacecraft built for humans in more than 40 years. The spacecraft will fly about 3,600 miles above Earth's surface and return at speeds of approximately 25,000 mph. During the test, Orion will experience an array of stresses, or loads, including launch and reentry, the vacuum of space, and several dynamic events that will jettison hardware away from the spacecraft and deploy parachutes.

To ensure Orion will be ready for its flight test next year, engineers at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida built a 20-foot-tall static loads test fixture for the crew module with hydraulic cylinders that slowly push or pull on the vehicle, depending on the type of load being simulated. The fixture produced 110 percent of the load caused by eight different types of stress Orion will experience during EFT-1. More than 1,600 strain gauges recorded how the vehicle responded. The loads ranged from as little as 14,000 pounds to as much as 240,000 pounds.

"The static loads campaign is our best method of testing to verify what works on paper will work in space," said Charlie Lundquist, NASA's Orion crew and service module manager at the agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston. "This is how we validate our design."

In addition to the various loads it sustained, the Orion crew module also was pressurized to simulate the effect of the vacuum in space. This simulation allowed engineers to confirm it would hold its pressurization in a vacuum and verify repairs made to superficial cracks in the vehicle's rear bulkhead caused by previous pressure testing in November.

The November test revealed insufficient margin in an area of the bulkhead that was unable to withstand the stress of pressurization. Armed with data from that test, engineers were able to reinforce the design to ensure structural integrity and validate the fix during this week's test.

To repair the cracks, engineers designed brackets that spread the stress of being pressurized to other areas of the module that are structurally stronger. During these tests Orion was successfully pressurized to 110 percent of what it would experience in space, demonstrating it is capable of performing as necessary during EFT-1.

For information about Orion, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/orion

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