This is kinda neat:
A large building at Naval Air Warfare Center China Lake was built in the early ’90’s as a means of testing missile guidance systems. In the Missile Engagement Simulation Arena, full-size aircraft mockups are suspended and maneuvered as marionettes for the benefit of missile sensors.
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Seems the Iranians are building themselves a large-scale model of an American aircraft carrier. Analysts assume it is meant to be towed out into the Persian Gulf, then blown up for propaganda purposes.
Seems an odd thing to do, but hey, this is a theocracy, so “odd” is pretty much to be expected.
UPDATE: More photos of it over here:
It looks real enough. But it looks… real crappy.
The meter-bore “Babylon” supergun that ballistics genius Gerald Bull was building for Saddam Hussein prior to Gulf War I has, so far as I know, never been terribly well documented publicly. You’d think that there would be all manner of diagrams and the like available, but if they exist, I haven’t seen ’em. A few fairly uninformative photos taken after the war and a poorly reproduced photo of a display model are all I’ve seen.
The made-for-HBO-movie “Doomsday Gun” (which I recommend, it’s good) has a scene set at an arms show, with a scale model of the gun. I *assume* that the model was a prop made for the movie, not the real item, but you never know. And if it’s a movie prop, I don’t know how accurate it might be. Still, it’s the closest thing to a clear shot of the gun I’ve ever seen. Fortunately, the camera gets in close and pans along the whole length of the thing. I took screenshots all along the pan, and stitched ’em together, and it came out surprisingly well. The full rez image (which you can get by clicking the small one here) is fairly sizable.
Fantastic Plastic is taking reservations on the 1/1400 Helicarrier that I mastered for them. It’s a sizable model and should look *really* spiffy when completed. Selling price is $125. If interested, send an email to FantasticPlast@aol.com.
Generating 2D line drawings of the Prometheus in “flight mode” went a lot quicker since I’d learned some lessons on the “landed mode.” Two computers took about 6 hours to generate the six new views.
There are two ways to envision the scale of the Prometheus. One way is to compare a full-scale Prometheus with several other full-scale vehicles, like so:
It dwarfs real-world vehicles like the Saturn V and the 747. I wouldn’t bet against it on a collision with the Enterprise, and it’s a safe bet that the Helicarrier would fall out of the sky if the Prometheus landed on it.
UPDATE: due to a few comments expressing surprise at the size of Prometheus, I guess it’s fair to show how I didn’t just handwave the scale. Two pieces of production art have been made public that show the Magellan – as the ship was originally called – was intended to have a length of 560 feet, stated explicitly.Second, another piece of production art shows one of the landing feet with a suited astronaut for scale. After I scaled my model out to 560 feet long, I added a 5′ 10″ human scale figure next to a foot. Put side by side, the two landing-foot-scale reference illustrations look really pretty close. So… 560 feet long.This makes the ship a bit of a monster. Each engine pod is bigger than the S-IC stage of the Saturn V.
Now, consider… the Prometheus is not only a big ship, it would be *massive.* Many times more massive than the Saturn V. Unlike, say, the Galactic Republic capital ships shown in “Attack of the Clones” and “Revenge of the Sith,” Prometheus does not seem to float around on antigravity, but flies under the force of thrust and weight. So on liftoff it would have to generate many times the thrust of the Saturn V. And the Saturn V could damage structures and eardrums *miles* away. The Prometheus would need an exclusion zone with a radius of dozens of miles (20? 30? 50?) around terrestrial landing pads. The bridge seems to be incredibly exposed… whatever that window glass is made from, it’s some tough, sound-absorbent stuff.
Here’s one of the clearest images of the Prometheus, shown with the “hangar” lowered. It’s Really Small compared to the rest of the ship… and some pretty sizable trucks were able to drive in and out with no problem. It’s a bigass ship.
Another way: compare the size of the forthcoming kit to several other kits, most of them also Fantastic Plastic kits. It’s in line with the other sizable kits FP has put out, though still something of a beast.
It took two computers cranking two full days to produce these layout drawings of the Prometheus. And that’s only half the battle… a complete set of drawings would include Flight Mode.
Now… what to do with them? THESE BLUEPRINTS give me ideas…
The CAD model is done. It has been saved as 98 separate STL files (one for each unique part… there will be, of course, many identical parts that will be cast multiple times) and shipped off to 3D print shops for quoting. So, at least for now… wooo! I’m done with it!
You have *no* idea how much time and trouble it took to crank out this one side-view line drawing…
The Prometheus is being hollowed out and locating bumps & divots are being added. The larger main body parts also have stiffening frames added. Lower left shows the parts for the escape module.
The model will be able to be “posed” in flight configuration. The color version gives an idea about parts breakdown.
Oh, and if you see anything missing here, any vital detail that should be but ain’t… now’s the time to speak up.
And while you wait impatiently for the model to be released… why not buy a couple copies of US Bomber Projects and/or Aerospace Projects Review?
I think this will about do it.
