I’ve gotten as far as roughing out the walkway and railing. Does the human figure look properly scaled here? There is some play in this, as there were several models of the Ajax that differ in important respects, and a full scale set which differed even more.
Any dissenting opinions?
Progress on the next model for Fantastic Plastic…
No points for correctly guessing what this is. I *suspect* that recognition of this*might* be age-related. But I’d be happy to be proven wrong.
Obviously this is early in the modelling process. But it *should* be recognizable…
A Pratt & Whitney magazine ad from 1964 illustrating a spacecraft using a nuclear powerplant. This seems to depict only the actual powerplant, rather than an integrated vehicle. Some details of note are the large thermal radiators and the nuclear shielding. The reactor itself is the structure on the near end of the boom. Flanking it are two someone oddly shaped boxes; these are radiation “shadow shields” seeming placed and shaped to keep radiation from the reactor from impinging upon the radiators. The conical structure just beyond the reactor is another radiation shield , designed to shadow the main structure.
This appears to not be a painting, but a physical model… one seemingly made from metal. Accuracy is perhaps not 100%.
Given how it finally turned out, I think I should feel safe in saying that to a great degree I’d like to forget that I ever had anything to do with “Man Conquers Space.” Still and all I *did* do a lot of work on it in the early aughts, and it grates on me that it all went for naught. Well, maybe it’ll provide some minor amusement for some of y’all: my contribution was in the area of launch vehicle, space vehicle and space station design. The plot as of circa 2003 was that the German built the Sanger antipodal bomber, the US caught wind of it and got Robert Goddard to slap together an interceptor (this part of the plot was cribbed *directly* from Allen Steele’s “Goddard’s People,” which makes me wonder if proper permissions to do that were obtained… shrug). As a result of this, history goes different and the “Collier’s” series of space articles from the early 1950’s come to pass. The US lands on the moon in the early 60’s with those giant landers, and on Mars in the late 60’s with those giant gliders. I did some work to try to rationalize how the Collier’s Mars gliders could work given that the Martian atmosphere turned out to be nowhere near as dense as they thought in the 50’s, but IIRC the final decision was to just sorta gloss over that little aeronautical detail.
This much is well known, but the later versions of the MCS movie would have continued the timeline forward to circa 2004. There would be solar power satellites, planetary colonies, lots of space stations and the first space habitats under construction; some discussion was had about maybe showing the start of the first starship, but I don’t think that was ever incorporated.
The design ethic for the post-Colliers vehicles was to be a blending of the purely practical with “it could have evolved from Colliers,” with, at the end, a heaping helping of “2001.” Space stations *resembling* Space Station V, Clavius Base analogs, *bits* of Discovery. The space agency, for example, would not have been NASA, but the NCA.
Still to be found on one of my hard drives are some of the diagrams I was working on for the Ferry Rocket and its descendants. Realistically I think that in a world where the US had gone full-bore into spaceflight in the 1950’s the launch vehicles of 2004 would have been very realistic-futuristic, but the idea was to carry the original Ferry Rocket design ethic forward. So a combination of practical and “that looks cool.”
The evolution of the Ferry Rocket system is shown below. The Mk 2 clearly takes after the Disney designs that followed after the Colliers series. The Mk 3 was, as requested, designed to resemble the Avro Vulcan; the booster is derived from a Martin Nova/Post-Saturn. The Mk 4 was never quite finalized; the booster took after the Boeing AMLLV, and the glider was to be fitted with variable geometry wings. By 2004 the NCA is using the Mk 5 ferry rocket, fully reusable with a first stage booster that would land itself back at the pad much like the Falcon 9. The second stage would go into orbit with the “shuttle” stage and would either be turned into payload (serving as either wet lab, or just chewed up for the raw materials) or would re-enter and again land itself back at the pad. The shuttle stage was to be the most “cool” of the designs, intended to serve in a number of capacities… including as a US Marine Corps “Drop Ship” for troop deployment; this necessitated such slightly unlikely features as VTOL jet lift.
The earlier Mk 3 system went in for a more detailed design and analysis, much of which has been lost in the intervening decade and a half.
In addition to design, I also worked on a number of props. One was a 1/72 scale Mk 1 ferry rocket display model, to be seen (IIRC) in the 1960’s era NCA heads office. This was finished while I still lived in California and shipped – at no small expense – to Australia. Where is it today? Not a clue.
Note the industry standard feline scale reference, the late lamented Koshka. She didn’t know what to make of the Ferry Rocket.
In addition, a 1/72 Mk 2 Ferry Rocket display model was also under construction when the project seemed to stall circa 2005. The glider was more or less finished, but I seem to have lost it.
I still have some of the fiberglass molds used to make these, though I suspect they’re a little grotty.
A model I mastered for Fantastic Plastic is available for purchase: the Soviet Bartini A-57. This was a design for a supersonic seaplane strategic bomber, carrying a “parasite” recon plane on its back. The model itself is quite sizable, and it builds and paints up into a pretty impressive piece.
A video where some guys get into the archives of the US Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. On display is a sizable (looks like about 1/50 scale) Space Shuttle, ET and Boosters made from plexiglas. It is a thing of beauty, surely a chore and a half for the model shop back in the day. This is *not* the final Shuttle design; some differences are obvious such as the split cargo bay doors and, while unmentioned in the video, the existence of extended OMS pod fairings, reaching out onto the aft of the cargo bay doors.
Last time I visited the USS&RC in something like 2005 they had a much bigger plexiglas STS model on public display, something like 1/10 scale, along with a gigantic plexiglas Saturn V. Such things are fantastic artifacts, and if you are working on a complex engineering project like this a see-through plexiglass large scale model is terribly helpful. I suspect that such things are only rarely made these days, as computer graphics are a lot easier, cheaper and more readily updatable. But nothing beats a Real Thing. And at least so far, 3D printing is not up to the job of stamping out large-scale transparent models like this. But someday…
A scale comparison between the Saturn V and Sea Dragon CD models I’m working on for a 1/7o0 scale kit for Fantastic Plastic. The Sea Dragon would have had about four times the payload of the Saturn V, despite being *gigantic* compared to the Saturn V. This was due to the fact that the Sea Dragon was, by design, a *low* performance vehicle, using simple pressure feed. the result was that everything was necessarily gigantic… giant engines, tanks, wall thicknesses, plumbing lines, etc. While the main propellant feed lines for most rockets are measured in inches, up to a foot or two, in diameter, the LOX and RP-1 lines at the base of the Sea Dragon were about ten *feet* in diameter.
Work proceeds on the 1/700 scale Nova/Post-Saturn model collection. Here are some of them in various states of completion, not to scale.
Sometimes there’s a work slowdown. Like when Fingers decides that the best of all possible places to be is on my laptop.i
“Hero Collector” is going to release a new model kit of the Enterprise-D. That’s good! It’s around 70 cm long, so it’ll be around 1/915 scale. That’s… a little odd. The kit will come with internal lighting. That’s great! But the shape and detail of the model will be compromised in order to accommodate the lighting. That’s… unfortunate. They will be releasing the kit as a “subscription,” where every two weeks you get another box of bits. That’s… well, ok. The pricing has apparently not yet been announced, which is unsurprising. But… here’s the thing. A prior release of theirs is a “Back To the Future” Delorean which actually looks pretty sweet, and is probably instructive as to how much the Enterprise will cost. Their website shows off the Delorean model pretty well. And they make it pretty easy to sign up for the subscription service. . You get charged every two weeks until the model is complete, and waaaay down on the page it let’s you know that each issue costs $10.90… and there are 130 issues. Total: $1417.
Yikes.
The Enterprise is a bigger model, so I’d guess it’ll cost more. Up to you to decide if perhaps two grand and two years are a fair price for a model that would require a *lot* of work to make accurate. Personally I hope that Polar Lights gets around to making a 1/1000 1701-D kit.