The end of my part of the Space Park story. The actual 3-D printed parts were shipped to me, I cleaned ’em up (the tech isn’t *quite* there yet to make baby-ass smoth parts straight out of the printer cost effectively), and have shipped them off to Fantastic Plastic. FP will have them cast and will market them.
Below is a photo of the parts ready for shipment to FP. There is one more part not shown…a tiny little antenna cluster for the nose. The kit should be pretty easy to assemble.
As a followup to yestedays post, here’re the helicopter models on display at the Hiller aerospace museum, back in ’04. These two were STORC(Self-ferrying Trans Ocean Rotary-wing Crane) concepts, which were choppers with turbojets at the rotortips. On the ground, one of the rotors could be flipped so that both rotors faced the same way… turning them into wings. This would allow efficient long-distance ferry flight. At the other end, the rotor could be turned back around, restoring the vehicle into a helicopter. This procedure could not be accomplished in flight, only on the ground with the rotors stopped. On the whole this was a pretty spiffy idea, but rotor-tip turbojets tended to have problems (being squished by centrifugal force really doesn’t help a mechanism with lots of moving parts).
Fantastic Plastic has just released a model kit that I made the master parts for: the Lenticular ReEntry Vehicle. This is a 1/72 scale resin replica of a 1962 North American Aviation concept for a disk-shaped “space bomber.”
The model comes with a detailed weapons bay, four bombs and the little “shuttlepod” that was to be used to transport the bombs out of the weapons bay and either onto the outer surface of the bomber or to a separate orbiting weapons depot.
<>An early 1960’s Convair display model for an SST based on the generic NASA SCAT-16 configuration. From the Jay Miller archive.
What purpose was to be served by having the flight crew split up under separate cockpit canopies, I’ve no idea.
Don’t know too much about these except that they are Vought concept models and date from the late 60s. They appear to represent designs for the Navy’s VFX competition, which Grumman won and which produced the F-14.
Ah, the early 1960’s. When the future looked bright, the atom was our friend, when planes were only getting faster, and when Marxist gun-grabbers were opposed, not elected President. In that climate, Convair studied several derivatives of their B-58 “Hustler” bomber to serve as supersonic transports, both for military and civilian roles. I’m currently working on an article for the next issue of APR dealing with these concepts. Also hoping to have some all-new color artwork prepared for this article.
I’ve largely ignored this over the past three months, but I recently finished it up. There are some areas where I’m definitely *not* happy with the contouring… however, a few minutes with some sandpaper, and it’ll be just about perfect. The landing gear, cockpit and weapons bays are currently blank; they will be patched together with Real World modeling. Surface details will also have to wait until the parts are printed out.
Some parts of this went together like a breeze, others (especially forward fuselage contouring, and the inlet in particular) were, and remain, a pain in the ass. But for a first effort with this NURBS modeling program, it ain’t too bad, I think. The physical model will be in 1/72, giving it a span of about 11.8 inches.
In the “basement” of the National Air and Space Museum is what you might call the annex of the NASM’s gift shop. On display in the gift shop is the original filming model of the Starship Enterprise from the original Star Trek TV series. I did a brief walk-around with the camera.
And if you like “hard” science fiction, you’ll love this…
At the Garber facility, in an area not on displey, I found two original filming miniatures for the “Tholian” ships. Sadly, photography was discouraged in this area, as it was a non-public storage and restoration facility, not stuff on display. The models were extremely simple.
Early last year I cooked up the master parts for a 1/144 scale “X-Men 2” “X-Jet” for Fantastic Plastic. Finally, at long last, it has been released…
http://www.fantastic-plastic.com/X-JetCatalogPage.htm
