A day or two back the mail dropped off the 3-D “printed” version of the 1/288 Orion Battleship. Since then I’ve been busily sanding, filling and polishing. The engineering of it turns out to have *largely* been spot-on, although I did model a few small areas that when printed were just too thin. Not to worry, revising these blips won’t take too long.
The turret turned out surprisingly well. I’m have photos in a day or two.
If you want the details on jsut what the Orion Battleship was, see HERE.
A 1960 Boeing concept (most likely part of SR-183, kinda shown HERE) for manned lunar landing spacecraft based on Dyna Soar aerodynamics.
Compared the the Saturn V/Apollo spacecraft, the booster seems massively undersized. The Dyna Soar-derived spaceplane would land on the lunar surface and take off again for the trip to Earth… and the Dyna Soar was not a lightly constructed vehicle. As shown, the top half of the entire launch vehicle is lunar landing payload.
My guess is that this model was not built to reflect a fully-fleshed-out detailed engineering design, but might have instead been a “sketch” of a general concept. Evidence of that viewpoint will be posted soon.
A stand will be included with the Nexus model. This is a first stab at it… I think it’s too big, and I’ll simply scale it down.
UPDATE:
The CG of the CAD model is shown below. The CG of the actual physical model *should* be pretty close to the same location.
To display the model with maximum stability, the support rod should go through the CG. An example of that for an arbitrary angle is shown here:
The model can be made to look less “lopsided” by either putting the rod through some point offset from the CG, or loading weight in the nose, shifting the CG forward
I’m sorry, but this rendering, bland as it may be in terms of lighting, background, texturing mapping (of which there is none) and whatnot, shows the Nexus launch vehicle as being just damned spiffy.
Work proceeds on the payload section for the 1/288 Nexus. It will have a simple geometry, based on an interplanetary mission payload drawn for Nexus; the second stage was likely a nuclear stage. But even though it’s a simple shape is no reason to leave it bland…
The current schedule of models to be CADded up currently stands as this:
1) 1/288 Nexus
2) 1/72 “X-15D”
3) 1/72 S:AAB Hammerhead
4) 1/288 ROMBUS/Ithacus
5) 1/72 or 1/48 Tremulis “Zero Fighter”
6) 1/72 Super Hustler
7) 1/144 Copper Canyon/NASP
8 ) 1/144 NASA “Trailblazer”
And down the road:
1/288 Saturn V
1/288 N-1
1/288 Ares I
1/288 Ares V
Shown is the complete parts layout to be 3-D printed. Additional parts – especially cockpit and missiles – will likely be added in post.
Progress on the multitude of individual nozzles for the Avro Ace. It’s time consuming, but I shudder to imagine what it’d be if I did this by *hand.*
Update: HA!
An update to this: The Ace will be in 1/48 scale; the Nexus will include the Mars mission payload, but not the Orion.
elow are rough cuts at the CAD models for two of Fantastic Plastic’s upcoming kits. The Avro Ace (AKA “Spade”) will be released in either 1/72 or 1/48 scale; the CAD model is shown in both scales. Quotes from a separate printing and casting company will determine which scale is produced. The landing gear as shown is quite crude, but adequate for preliminary quoting purposes. The Nexus model is shown with two payloads… a simplified Orion Battleship payload and a generic Mars mission payload. One or both may be included, again based on costs involved with printing and production.
