Sizing the Orion Spaceplane
The Orion 3 spaceplane was one of the easier vehicles to determien proper size. There were three main sources of data:
1: The Aurora Plastic model, touted as 1/144 scale.
2: top and side layout production drawings.
3: scenes from the movie showing the passenger cabin and two human figures for approximate scale.
Based on the Aurora model (Figure 1), dimensions for the craft come to span=85 feet, length (not counting "antennae")=165 feet. However, model kits of science fiction subjects are notorious for being wrong, and these numbers were not immediately assumed to be correct. However, they're a start.
Figure 1: Aurora's model kit
Two shots seem to provide good clues regarding the dimensions of the passenger cabin. The first (Figure 2) shows a stewardess coming through a door at the forward end. This angle shows to good effect both the cross-sectional shape of the interior of the cabin as well as the full height of a stewardess. It is, of course, impossible to determine the actual height of the actress with her "hat," but a height of 5 feet, 10 inches seemed like a reasonable first guess. Since the actress is shown in-plane with the forward wall of the cabin, and the wall is shown dead-on, the width of half of the cabin can be seen as being about 7.95 feet (full width, 15.9 feet), based on the height of the actress in pixels and the width of the cabin in pixels.
Figure 2: screen capture of passenger cabin (1/2 size)
The second shot (Figure 3) shows the apparent thickness of the walls. The aft-most window can be seen clearly; given the 15.9 foot width of the cabin and the ratio of pixel widths across the cabin and through the window, the window seems to be about 1 foot thick. This gives an outside wide of the passenger cabin of 17.9 feet.
Figure 3: Aft view of cabin (1/2 size screencap)
Given a fuselage width of 17.9 feet and the 5.01 wing span/fuselage width of the plan view production drawing (Figure 4), a wing span of 89.7 feet is found. This is very close to the semi-official 85 foot wingspan; if the 85 foot dimension is assumed correct, this reverse-engineers the stewardess to a height of just a little over 5 feet, 6 inches... certainly a reasonable proposition. Therefore the Aurora dimensions are considered correct.
Figure 4: Plan view of production drawing
Span: 85 feet (25.9 meters)
Length: 165 feet (50.3 meters)
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