When the logistics and maintainability team for the U.S. Navy's newest nuclear attack submarine wanted to be sure a pump could be transported through the vessel's cramped interior spaces to a repair facility, the team went down to the ship to try it firsthand. In a compartment crammed with pipes, tanks, machinery, and operations panels, they unbolted the pump, hauled it through the ship's tight passageways, and lugged it onto the deck. Even though the pump is bulky, nobody sweated over this normally laborious procedure. That's because the entire operation took place inside a realistic three-dimensional computer simulation of the critical internal spaces of a ship that won't sail until the turn of the century.
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