Turns out the HL-20 mockup built many years ago not only survived, it’s on display at the Wings Over The Rockies aviation museum near Denver. It seems to be in generally good shape, though it appears to be missing its landing gear doors. Sadly, while you can seen up into it, you’re not allowed to go crawling around in it. Would’ve liked to have seen the cockpit. Well, one day someone will send a camera equipped quadcopter in there, I suppose…
This is pretty much the final version of the 1/48 MOL model. If you get this kit – and I recommend that you do, cuz it’ll be awesome – I suggest bonding the “feet” to a walnut or oak board. That should make it good and sturdy. It should be lightweight yet fairly strong due to some simple internal bracing. A new type of locating pin/feature/thingies will be used this time… if successful and popular, I expect to use ’em more.
Coming soon: a 1/48 Dyna Soar/Adapter/Transtage to go alongside this.
If you’re gonna do it, overdo it. For example, here’s what an operational anti-missile Space Based Laser might’ve looked like, compared to the Zenith Star experimental laser and the Manned Orbiting Laboratory. Kinda bignormous, with a 50-foot diameter primary mirror. Details on this are shockingly lean, with the model put together using two tiny diagrams and one poorly reproduced bit of artwork… and they don’t agree with each other on everything. So a lot of this is guesswork. It’s not even close to done, but I thought some of y’all might be interested. The “tail end” of the operational SBL has what I’m assuming is an SP-100 nuclear reactor for running non-laser systems. The laser itself would be chemical, not nuclear, with around 80 shots worth of fuel.
The CAD model for the 1/48 MOL kit for Fantastic Plastic nears completion. It is being modeled to represent the final generic design, without a whole lot of extra parts to keep costs down. However, the design is such so if you want to model one of the more complex versions, this will be easy to do.
Here is the MOL CAD model shown to scale with a Zenith Star CAD model I’ve built. Because… why not?
The Zenith Star is not planned to be produced as a kit, but rather was produced for the purposes of creating diagrams for a potential book (discussed HERE). Still, it’d make a snazzy – if rather desperately expensive – display model.
The view below shows the planned basic construction of the MOL model. A few external shells supported by internal rigidizing supports.
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.
[youtube 2luHrpYDNc8]
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…
