Fantastic Plastic has released the 1/200 scale model of the Deep Impact “Messiah” spacecraft that I mastered for them in CAD a few years ago. Took a long time to get here, but it looks like a really spiffy model. At 27 inches long and 200+ pieces including photoetch, it’s kind of a beast.
The Disney movie “The Black Hole” was a little “off.” Still, for a lot of us 70’s/80’s kids, it’s something a little special. Heck, it is – to the best of my knowledge – one of the few movies (never mind the “Disney kids movie” subset) that has the villain die at the end… and then get sent to Hell. Even if that was only a delusion by one of the other characters, it was a hell of a thing to see on the screen back then.
Like most sci-fi movies, the “sci” was pretty awful. The ship designs were basically nonsensical from a basic engineering standpoint. Still, the starship Cygnus was an undeniable thing of beauty. Made from a whole lot of photoetched brass, it was a massive “cathedral” of a spaceship model. It’s a crying shame that Disney has not yet seen fit to release “The Black Hole” on Blu-Ray, if for no other reason than to see the Cygnus in hi-def.
As a modelgeek, I’ve always wanted a good model of the Cygnus. MPC released a 1/4225 kit in 1979; it was certainly a product of it’s time. Like the MPC Star Destroyer, it’s a good *approximation* of the Cygnus, but given the filigree nature of the Cygnus’ construction, a conventional injection molded plastic kit for kids could hardly be expected to be very accurate. Even so, copies of this kit are going for prohibitively high prices (here’s one on eBay for a mere $350).
Technology has advanced to the point where a really impressive model of the Cygnus can be 3D printed… and is available for purchase. Available through Shapeways, you can buy all the bits and pieces needed for a ginourmous 1/700 Cygnus… for about $1200.
Here’s a Flickr account of someone who bought the parts and built up the kit. He went the extra mile and added a laser-cut plexiglass inner structure for strength and lighting purposes.
It is… really impressive.
Droooool:
The results do show the current limitations of 3D printing when seen close up. The surface finish is unfortunate. But 3D printing has produced parts that would be essentially impossible with injection molding… and the technology will only get better and cheaper in time. Give it a few years, and Shapeways will probably have parts with far better surface finishes and for (slightly) less cost.
There have been a lot of Star Trek model kits over the years, enough so that it seems like a producer would have to have something pretty unique to make their mark on the market. It seems that some years ago a project was started in Japan to market a truly unique model of the Enterprise-D. What the “Build The Enterprise” entailed was a “subscription” system where once a week or so the subscribers would receive a magazine with Technical Manual-type stuff and parts to continue the build. In this case, the build was a 1/900 scale cutaway model of the Enterprise, with each deck represented by a sheet of laser-etched plexiglass. “Build TheEnterprise” was aimed at and released solely in the Japanese market.
As anyone who has been reading this blog long enough knows, I’m intimately familiar with the concept of “boy howdy, this project I’ve embarked on is certainly cool and I have high hopes for it” transmogrifying into “well, that didn’t sell worth a damn.” Heck, that’s pretty much *every* project I’ve initiated (anybody want to prove me wrong and turn American Nuclear Explosive Devices into something so popular that I’ll get off my ass and finally finish issue#2?) Of course, I’m just one goober with no marketing department, no marketing *budget*, no interpersonal skills and more stubbornness than sense. So you’d expect that professionals, with access to the experts (in this case, the likes of Mike Okuda and Rick Sternbach and others who, if you know anything at all about Star Trek ship design and model making, are well-known names) and who have had considerable success in the past, would have another success with a project like this.
Ooops.
They had the bad luck of starting up right after the tsunami and Fukushima reactor meltdown. As a result the Japanese model building market wasn’t in the mood and the project failed. One hundred issues were projected… only four were actually released. One would hope that a project like this would be recoverable in some form… a Kickstarter or some such. Because from all appearances it was a heck of a thing. But it seems that it has been simply abandoned by those in power.
So, let that be a lesson to you: do your market research first, and think twice before doing your initial release just before a major earthquake right next to a nuclear reactor that has been hobbled by red tape and anti-nuclear activists. And you can add the failure of this innovative cutaway model to the list of things the anti-nuke Luddites have inflicted on mankind by making sure that old reactors can’t be replaced with new ones.
If I had five minutes, a modest camera and a tape measure, I could get the images and measurements I need off the MOAB on display outside the USAF Armaments Museum near Eglin AFB in Florida. Sadly, I’d also need to be *at* the museum, and that’s not likely to occur anytime soon. So… is anyone in the area, or going to be in the near future, and willing to take some photo-measurements?
Recently sold on eBay (for $500) was a display model of the Boeing proposal for the C-5 program, which of course lost out to Lockheed. The Boeing design (circa 1965) was vaguely like a Lockheed C-5 merged with a Boeing 747… roughly the configuration and fuselage size of the C-5, but with the raised upper deck and the standard “jetliner” lower tail surface of the 747. I have surprisingly little on the Boeing C-5, but I do have some fairly detailed diagrams of a civilian passenger version, and a few derivatives. Interestingly, while this was clearly part of the genesis of the 747 – which by every metric was a far greater success for Boeing than the C-5 was for Lockheed – it was actually a model 757. As the design effort continued the 747 designation would become the jumbo jet, while the 757 designation would be applied to a much smaller jet.
Fark.com ran a photoshop contest… take a photo and photoshop it to be funny. The photo this time came from NASA… and it’s just kinda begging to be photoshopped.
Photoshop this exciting NASA wind tunnel project
Here’s the original unretouched image. I assume the pink color is due to special paint, presumably pressure-sensitive paint that changes color.
Insert lame low-brow innuendo-laden joke HERE.
Just sold on EBay (not to me, sadly) is a kinda rough Topping display model of a little known proposed variant of the Atlas space launcher, the SLV-3X. This design had a widened body, from ten feet to 12 feet, 7 inches. This allowed for more propellant to be carried without lengthening the vehicle, meaning that the existing launch infrastructure could be used. Additionally, the MA-5 sustainer rocket engine would be replaced with a higher thrust H-1D engine. See HERE for stats.
The SDASM Flickr account has a nice illustration of the SLV-3X/Centaur. See their site for the higher rez image.
Currently for sale on EBay is a presumably-vintage model of a Lockheed C-141 in civilian livery. While the C-141 wound up solely a military transport, it would not be surprising that Lockheed would try to sell it on the civilian market. The model doesn’t depict passenger windows, so this was, presumably, still a cargo carrier.
This display model was sold on EBay some months back:
Without a display stand it’s difficult to determine exactly who made this, but all indications are that it was an “official” model, made by Boeing, Lockheed or NASA. The design was given some small amount of study around 1973, though the available documentation on it is lean.
Lockheed studied the same idea with the C-5 Galaxy. Of course the C-5 would have been easier to modify since it already had shoulder-mounted wings.
Recently sold on EBay was a sizable (something like 4′ long) wind tunnel model of the Curtiss Wright Model 90 AAFSS submission. This was a derivative of their X-19… more or less a quad-tilt-rotor. The Model 90 would have been fairly highly armed, designed to fulfill the same role that the winning AAFSS design – the Lockheed AH-56 Cheyenne – was designed for: transporting troops and tearing up ground targets. The US has not had an operational vehicle like this; the Soviet “Hind” helicopter is the closest, though substantially slower, analog. EDIT: Senior moment. Not a troop transport, just a blowin’-up-stuff-on-the-ground-real-good vehicle.
The Model 90 wind tunnel model was formerly on display at an aviation museum in Teterboro, New Jersey. No idea where it ended up, but hopefully it found a good home. I made a half-assed effort to crowdfund this one, but I think the lack of a good way to split the spoils among the funders doomed the concept. How *do* you reward funders for a purchase like this? Best idea was to have the thing 3D scanned, and distribute the scan among the funders, but unlike a scan of a drawing or a document, that’s not going to be readily useful for most people.
What I’d hoped to do was to disassemble the model, male fiberglass molds of the components, reassemble and restore it to like-new-ish condition then send it on to an appropriate and willing museum, possibly Ft. Rucker (since they’re all about Army aviation and have themselves an AH-56). Then make a few fiberglass copies from the molds, converting the “wind tunnel models” into detailed display models. Alas.
