After “2001” wrapped up filming, Stanley Kubrick had all the models destroyed. Except… it seems not.
There are a *lot* of photos…
A good writeup of the rediscovery of the Aries Ib is HERE.
Finally done modelling this thing. Took long enough!
The multiview layout drawing generated from the model would take a good deal of effort to clean up proper, but it’s needed for the “Nuclear Pulse Propulsion” book. Now that the model is very nearly complete (I need to convert each part, individually, into a separate STL file… bleah), I can devote more time to other stuff, including potentially getting back to work on NPP. But before I let the Messiah go entirely… anyone interested in large format blueprints based on the layout drawings?
I am nearing completion of the “Deep Impact” Messiah model. Basically I’ve gone through most of the parts and hollowed them out and chopped them up into “kit parts” for printing. Some yet to do… the photoetched brass bits – shown here in yellow – need some work. The nose landing gear leg is a simple placeholder just yet. And a few other details I’d like to add.
Not shown here are the “booster rockets” the vehicle was shown with.
While a lot of the design replaced practical aerospace functionality with “huh? wut?” it’ll still be an impressive display model when available in 1/200 scale from Fantastic Plastic.
Behold the undeniable awesomeness of preparing the visual effects of a big-budget sci-fi movie in the era before CGI:
A number of vehicles there that I don’t recall from the movie… not just flying cars, but just about the funkiest cargo truck concept I’ve seen in a while.
An apparently vintage 1/96 scale Saturn V display model on ebay, apparently built at the NASA-MSFC model shop back in the day. Just a smidge above my pay grade at a Buy It Now price of 20 large. I’ve seen thespiffy, to say the least.se in museums…
Another ebay auction presents a display model of a transport version of the McD Model 260 VTOL from the 1970’s:
A great many Model 260 variants were designed, all based on the same basic concept: an aircraft shaped much like a corporate jet, featuring a pair of turbofan engines of very high bypass ratio located in shrouds which could unfold to direct the thrust downward for vertical lift and hover. Unlike the Rockwell XFV-12, the Model 260 could probably have worked, but it was never built.
A recent ebay auction was for a display model of the early 1970’s McDonnell-Douglas Incremental Growth Vehicle. This was a proposed manned hypersonic “X-Plane,” designed from the ground up to be capable of having major components replaced. This would allow a simple rocket vehicle to be tested first, and then the fuselage could stretch, or new rocket engines tested, or new wings, or new wings, a fuselage stretch and airbreathing engines, whatever the experiment called for.
This very, very impressive-looking display model was auctioned off way back in 2008:
I much prefer this sort of display to even the most detailed computer rendering printed out onto foam core. Perhaps as 3D printing gets better & cheaper we’ll see a return to this sort of thing. Imagine if you could print off aluminum & plexi large-size models like this for a few bucks worth of raw materials and electricity…
Long time since progress shots were shown. So, enjoy.
A wind tunnel model of the Saturn I, checking specifically for base heating (i.e. heating of the base of the vehicle, between the engines, due to radiant heat from the plumes and convection/conduction from hot exhaust gases recirculating between the engines). This model is odd in that it depicts the clustered booster stage as a straight cylinder; further, there appears to be at least one long fairing up the side (although that could be an artifact of reflections & shadows). I suspect this *may* be a repurposed Atlas model.
