Dec 212008
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.
4 Responses to “Space Park parts”
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I just watched the third season of Galatica on DVD, and it looks like in some scenes the Space Park’s ring is rotating, and in others it isn’t.
Anyone have a idea of why that’s the case?
I was trying to think of what the design reminded me of, and as well as that one early take on the Enterprise, it also resembles Larry Niven’s “Angel’s Pencil” that fried the Kzinti ship with its photon drive.
Speaking of which Scott, did you ever consider taking a crack at doing the “Lying Bastard” from “Ringworld”?
I scratchbuilt one of those a lot of years ago and the transparent hull made it really interesting to look at.
BTW, anyone notice that the only part of Galactica that doesn’t have artificial gravity is the landing decks for its fighters and Raptors? You’d kind of think they would want them to stick down to the deck rather than bouncing all over the place like they do in a lot of their landings.
> in some scenes the Space Park’s ring is rotating, and in others it isn’t.
Anyone have a idea of why that’s the case?
Sometimes the animators jsut forget. Watch some of the early episodes of Babylon 5… the station’s rotationspeeds up, slows down and, in at least one scene, goes in reverse.
> did you ever consider taking a crack at doing the “Lying Bastard” from “Ringworld”?
Considered and rejected. Allen Ury and I recently took a look at the sales records for the models that Fantastic Plastic has put out. When it comes to real-world “concept” aircraft, there’s no telling what will sell, what won’t. But when it comes to sci-fi subjects, there turns out to be an easy, simple and effective measure: PPPF. The “Pew-Pew-Pew Factor.”
If you can see a kid “flying” the model around the room going “vroom” and “pew-pew-pew,” like I’m sure many/most of us did with kKenner X-Wings back in the day, then the chances are good it’ll sell.
1) Maneuverability
2) Armament
If the subject lacks one of those, sales will be slow. If it lacks both, sales will suck. There were a few outliers in the list, but there really was very good correlation.
Additional assistance is provided by how well known and *accepted* the design is. If I crank out some spiffy sci-fi concept out of my own head, evidence fairly clearly shows that sales will suck. Cranking out a sci-fi design from a book will make things only marginally better. But the older the book, the worse sales will be.
If people haven’t already seen it, they’re not going to buy it. I suspect that subjects from books won’t be materially better… sure, people may know and be fond of the subject matter, but if you don’t make the model match the design they’ve already sketched out in their heads, it won’t sell.
Looking good!