Now being discussed with Fantastic Plastic is a scale model of the 2001 Space Station V. How big to make it is the main question. Several SSV models seem to be in works, but they seem to be LARGE (30 or more inches diameter) and thus expensive. The goal here is something affordable and in the 7 to 10 inch diameter range, to be determined in part by being of a recognizable scale. But the question is… just how big was SSV?
Many long years ago, I had the hare-brained notion that what the world needed was a 1/288 scale model of the SSV. So I worked out its dimensions, based in part on size comparisons with the Orion III spaceplane. I went with the assumption that Aurora got their model right when they said it was 1/144 scale. That makes the spaceplane 165 feet long, and based on some kinda handwavy comparisons with screencaptures, I figured the station was 1200 feet in diameter. Stargazer models, however, cranked out their own new, high-quality 1/144 Orion III about that time, and showed reasonably convincingly that the Orion was larger than 165… Stargazer settled on 213 feet long. This would jack up my estimate of the SSV diameter to 1550 feet. But Stargazer estimated a diameter at over 1800 feet.
Since there are no clear scale references in the movie or in any of the official dosumentation that has come to light, it can be argued that any diameter that’s not outright stupid is as good as any other. However, I’d prefer to get it as close to right as I can… both for reasons of professional pride, and to minimize the fanboy attacks if I get it wrong.
So… 1550 feet? 1800 feet? Something else?
47 Responses to “2001: Space Station V”
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From the Spaceship Handbook, by Jack Hagerty and Jon C. Rogers:
Rim Diameter: 575 ft (175 m)
Rim Cross Section: 38 x 47 ft (11 x 14 m)
Hub Length: 255 ft (78 m)
Hub Diameter (ends): 90 ft (27 m)
Hub Diameter (center): 53 ft (16 m)
Here are the specs on the Orion, from the same book:
Length: 115 ft (35 m)
Width: 11 ft (3.4 m)
Wingspan: 55 ft (17 m)
Much as I like that book, and my copis cover is scuffed and the pages dog-eared, a diameter of 575 feet is just *far* too small. It would make the Orion III the size of an F-15.
And a link to info about the book:
http://www.arapress.com/ssh.php
Apologies for the multiple comments, rather than just one.
As I recall, there’s an exterior shot in 2001 that shows the space station’s rate of rotation relative to either the stars in the background or the Earth horizon. Using that, you can calculate the radius by assuming a 1 G acceleration on the outer rim.
No good reason for it to have been a 1-G station. Lunar or Mars G would do just as well.
That would of course reduce the size of the station for any particular rate of rotation…
It’s only a model.
According to this:
http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/S/Space_Station_V.html
It’s 1,836 feet in diameter and rotates to generate 1/6 g; which is the same as what Discovery’s centrifuge generates.
When you think about this, it makes a lot of sense; in this way people going to and from the Moon are already used to walking in the same gravity environment.
One major slip in the film is the Earth in the background – from 200 miles up it should appear far larger than shown, filling almost half the sky.
As far as the Orion goes, there should be two ways to determine its size.
1.) There is an entry door on the starboard side aft of the cockpit; one can assume that this is the same size as on a airliner, and go from there.
2.) In shots of the passenger compartment, size can be estimated by the number of seats that it has from one side to the other, as well as making a pretty close guess as to the total width of the passenger compartment and extrapolating the size by comparing that to the model. Size of the passenger windows could also help, as well as the scenes in the cockpit.
http://www.starshipmodeler.com/2001/md_orion.htm
> It’s 1,836 feet in diameter …
Based on what?
Aren’t there images of the Orion with a space-suited human? What can be determined from the sizes of the human in the cockpit? (I have two images of the cockpit crew, and in neither of them are there headrests on the seats.)
I think 1800 feet across is a little small.
I’ve been looking for plans to the Orion — just the nose section forward of the passenger compartment. Has anyone worked up frames and that sort of thing, maybe for a balsa model?
The film http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpvOUnz4T7Q&feature=related pretty clearly shows a 1 rpm rotation which bounds the size between ~500 (1/6g) and ~3000 feet (1g). Not much help but it contradicts the David Darling figures which imply a 2 rpm rotation.
As I recall from the novel, the station rotates to generate 1/6g.
Recently I snagged both a U.S. Shuttle and a Buran in 1/700 scale. It’s the Takara Wings of the World series, one of which can be seen here:
http://www.tankzone.co.uk/cart/takara_wotw_1.htm
If I could add a Spacestation V and Orion in the same scale, I’d be thrilled!
The general plan at this time is to have a SSV than can be built in finished and unfinished condistions, with a to-scale orion and Ares, possible also a to-scale Discovery. They’ll be really, really small though.
As to Darling’s size data, maybe you should email him and find out where he got the figure from. It sounds very precise (560 meters), like he had gotten it from a authoritative source rather than estimating it.
As far as the Orion cockpit goes, photos of the cockpit would let one estimate the distance between the forward window frames and compare that to the distance shown on the model.
This won’t be precise, but would get one in the ballpark as far as size goes, especially if it was close to the size estimated by the passenger cabin width and side door height.
Seating layout on Orion is apparently four across (two seats on either side of the central aisle). According to Clarke, it could carry 30 passengers, so either he’s a bit off, or one row of seats has only one seat per side of the aisle.
The cabin is a bit strange in that there is a fairly substantial distance between the outer seat and the side window, the lower half of which is covered with some sort of padded structure:
http://vimeo.com/8272073
I checked up on some images of airliner side doors; and they look to be around 6 1/2 feet high…based on that, and the side and top view plans of the Orion showing the door in the book “Filming The Future” overall fuselage length is around 145-150 feet (minus the tail spines), with a wingspan of 75-80 feet. Distance between the cockpit window frames would be around 2 feet 2 inches to 2 feet 6 inches, and that looks very close to what’s shown in the film also.
This would make the passenger cabin area around 15 feet wide on its exterior, though the cabin windows are inset into the fuselage, so actual interior width is probably something like 12-13 feet wall-to-wall.
That also looks about right when compared to the movie.
Another thing that video shows is that Space Station V has three deck levels in its ring, the “bottom” two of which have windows.
If you could figure out how high the deck levels were supposed to be, you could gauge the size from that.
The scene where Floyd is meeting with the Russians seems to indicate a deck height of around eight feet, just like a standard room. One can assuming wiring and plumbing space between the floor levels, so each level should be around 9-10 feet thick.
That makes the outer ring around 30-35 feet thick, and based on the end-on photo from the book of it seen from the approaching Orion, that makes the overall diameter around 375 feet, which seems way too small.
The Orion’s wings would run into the hanger walls if it was that small, as the hanger would only be around 50-60 feet wide.
McCall’s painting makes it look around 125-150 feet wide assuming the size data on the Orion is right.
Plug that into the end-on photo in the book and you end up with a diameter of 900 – 1,100 feet.
I get a sneaking suspicion that when all is said and done, the artists on the film were told to design a space clipper that was 150 feet long with a wingspan of half of that, and a space station that was 1,000 feet in diameter.
in Clarks novel its
Space Station one, a three-hundred-yard-diameter disk.
But that is 900 ft.
on ORION III
several sources give lenght of 117 ft and wingspan of 61 ft
but that base on blueprints by L. Miller in 1984
and there no guarantee because lack of references
but there way to figure out the size: the windows !
with interior scene of Orion III and SS5 show the windows in size to the actors
there also the boarding hatch on side of ORION III
by the way hat happen to movie model after the filming ?
http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/faq/html/spacestation.html
There’s a drawing of the disc-shaped SS-V in the “Filming The Future” book; It’s not all that exciting visually, which is probably why they went with the old “donut” concept instead.
The Orion size estimate is of course related to the door size; if it’s under 6’6″ tall, then everything shifts downwards in size; to get it to the point where the Orion is 117 feet long (and I think they are including the tail spines in this measurement given their wingspan estimate), you end up with a door height of around 5 feet, which means people must stoop down to board it.
Interior cabin width drops down to only around 10 feet, and that is awfully skinny to seat four people side-to-side with a central aisle.
Shouldn’t the question be how big would you like to see the model kit? You can do a poll in the Yahoo Space Group, ask for feedback on CollectSpace, since you’re building the model in Full scale, all that matters is getting the exterior correct unless you’re planning to do a cutaway.
How well has the BSG Spacepark done? That would seem to me to be something to campare size/interest level too.
> Shouldn’t the question be how big would you like to see the model kit?
Allen of FP wants something in the 6-10 inch range that would be (by resin kit standards) affordable. And it would be best to have it at some recognizable scale, rather than “handwave scale.” So if the dimensions of the full-size SSV can be determined – and it’s looking unlikely – then a proper scale that fits within that approximate diameter band would be
chosen. For example, if the station is 1550 feet in diameter, 1/2400 scale turns out to be 7.75 inches, nicely in the middle of the band.
If no definite diameter is agreed upon, that’s probably what we’ll go with.
Will the part of SS-V that’s under construction be done via photoetch?
that would sound like the easiest way to do it.
Also, is here going to be another hanger on that end? They never did show how the Ares picks up people from the station to carry them to the Moon, and it might well be too large in diameter to fit in the rectangular space clipper hanger.
> via photoetch
Probably not for the basic release. Working on a less expensive approach to that, but this will result in a CAD file that would be useful for some PE company that might want to release a secondary kit.
> might well be too large in diameter
At the larger sizes discussed, the ares, which is reasonably well established at about 40 feet diameter, fits comfortably within the rectangular bays.
Assuming the bay is 40 feet high, which it may be if that McCall painting is in scale, and the space clipper is around 150 feet long, like my measurements suggest. The painting makes the bay look around 150-200 feet wide and the end-on photo shows it has a height that’s 1/5 of its width. or 40 feet high at most.
Anything larger than around 200 feet for bay width and you end up with the decks of the space station outer ring being very high – which the interior scenes don’t back up, and the windows being huge, which also doesn’t agree with the movie.
You are going to have a field day trying to make that framework on the part under construction out of resin…either it will be too thick to look scale, or it’s going to be very fragile and difficult to cast without bubbles screwing it up, making it hard to ship intact. Injection molding could help, but that would probably cost more than photoetching it, which would kill both the scale look and fragility problems with one stone.
I didn’t realize that YouTube has a good quality video of the whole movie (cut into 13 parts) on it. The station/clipper stuff is towards the end of part 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVMPlIQAz5E&feature=related
This let me time the rotation rate of the station, which is one rotation every 47-49 seconds, at least when you first see it.
(Anyone notice that the station reverses its direction of rotation during that scene? It starts out going clockwise when you first see, and then its going counter-clockwise by the time the clipper shows up to dock. Being a perfectionist, that probably annoyed the hell out of Kubrick.)
It also confirmed the width of the passenger cabin on the Orion as being around 12-14 feet.
The images of the inside of the hanger bay seem to indicate that it’s around 36 to 40 feet high given the size of the people shown in the rooms above and below it.
So if you’re going to squeeze Ares in there, it’s going to be one mighty tight fit. This seems to agree with the McCall painting as far as scale between the bay and Orion goes, and gives a total station diameter of around 1,000 feet.
The detailed side-view painting of the Ares in the “Filming The Future” book shows the passenger door on it also; again assuming a 6’6″ door height, that makes the Ares 52 feet in diameter, and around the same height with the gear up. Drop it down to 40 feet in diameter, and people are going to have to squat down to get through the door again.
So there’s a basic problem here regarding getting the Ares into the SS-V hanger, unless the station gets scaled up some in size. Then the windows and room height end up being too big compared to what’s shown in the film. (They are both already around 1/3 too big assuming a 1,000 foot diameter, but this makes it a lot worse – now the windows would go nearly floor-to-ceiling, and the decks be around 15 feet high…you could say that there are 6, not 3, deck levels on the torus, but the window placement looks like it’s designed for 3 decks, and the exterior construction of the torus structure also make it look like it has 3 deck levels.)
The back-end hanger bay on the station is shown as identical in design to the front one in the YouTube footage, so that doesn’t help either.
Still, this is all pretty darn good by movie standards, where scale comparison between different vehicles that “looks right” is the rule.
Regarding the Orion, everything both internally and externally seems to line up pretty well, indicating both the interior set designers and exterior model builders were working from the same set of plans.
An interesting facet of the movie concerns what exactly SS-V does compared to the Clavius base.
We see the station being used as a stop-over point on the voyage to-and-from the Moon to change types of spacecraft; there’s also a hotel aboard – I presume for tourists who want to enjoy the view and the low G gravity. Does SS-V have a permanent population…or just workers that commute to and from it for tours of duty*?
Clavius Base on the other hand is a whole other ball of wax; in a scene that never made the final film cut, children were shown at the lunar base doing paintings… in short, Clavius is more than just a science base, it’s a small lunar colony…so unless those kids came with tourists to the Moon (and they are painting in a area that has grass growing in it; hardly something Earth kids would find interesting, but native-born lunar children would find exotic) there is an effort going on to establish a permanent lunar civilization on the part of at least the US in the year 2001.
* And from where? From both an energy needed to get them around and gravity field point of view, workers from the Moon would be a lot better choice than ones from Earth.
Is there any way to use the curvature of the floor in the hotel scene to estmate the diameter? OTOH, I suppose the dimensions of the as-constructed interior set could be incongruent with the model as photographed. That would be strangely un-Kubrick but entirely possible.
Don’t know if Fredrick Ordway or Douglas Trumbull are still around, but either of them could be considered definitive sources.
> It also confirmed the width of the passenger cabin on the Orion as being around 12-14 feet.
18 feet.
Looking at this picture. I kind think you are screwed. I haven’t a number for the diameter, or desire to count pixels to get it. But that image seems to show a 2 floor ring, and if those are in scale then the station just can’t be that big.
Here is the picture.
http://www.palantir.net/2001/tma1/pics/danube06.jpg
Regarding the passenger compartment photo griding; the flight attendant can get through the door walking fully upright with a couple of inches to spare despite the fact that she is wearing the big spherical padded helmet in the YouTube footage.
Door height is around 6′ 6″ again, unless Pan-Am decided to only employ short people as flight attendants to save weight.
To get that to work as shown in the YouTube footage, she would be around 5′ 3″ tall max, as the helmet goes at least 2-3 inches over the top of her head and she still clears the top of the door by another couple on inches when she comes in.
Extrapolating back from that, the side passenger entry hatch on the Orion now ends up being around 8′ high, which seems excessive.
Assume the external photo of it is correct in relation to the 3 deck level height interior as shown in the scene where Floyd meets the Russians, and the whole station gets a lot smaller in diameter, ending up at around 400 feet across – which doesn’t jive with even the small size estimate for the Orion, as it will no longer fit into the hanger bay opening.
Something went weird here when they were building the models for the movie. SS-V started out being a lot smaller in diameter than how it was shown in the film in relation to its hanger bay and deck level height.
Given the rotation rate of 48 seconds, and the 1/6 G gravity environment on the outside edge, what would be the diameter to get that to line up?
This sounds awfully close to your estimate of 500′ diameter at 1 RPM when the faster rotation is taken into account.
By “you” I meant Joe’s estimate BTW.
This is going to be a complete mess in regards to scaling the model, as now you have a whole range of different diameters, with the biggest being over three times as large as the smallest one.
It’s sort of like the Death Star – early on, Lucas’ description of it had it being 200 miles in diameter, although present conceptions of its size probably top off at 20 miles in diameter, if even that.
My hat is still off to whoever did this cutaway art of it for the patience it must have taken:
http://www.stardestroyer.net/tlc/Power/dsgun.jpg
_God-Damn_, is that thing big!
You got a super laser cannon that’s around ten miles long, and you probably _can_ blow up whole planets with it. 🙂
George Allegrezza wrote:
“Is there any way to use the curvature of the floor in the hotel scene to estimate the diameter?”
I thought of that one too; but without knowing how big the set is front-to-back you can’t figure out what the curvature equals as to overall diameter.
A few years ago — well, maybe about 35, by now — boat designer Phil Bolger decided to draw the plans for the ship in “Treasure Island.” From page 264 of “Boats with an Open Mind”: “But I found that Stevenson hadn’t made the inside of his vessel match the outside.” And: “if I were making a film of ‘Treasure Island,’ I’d do what Stevenson did: have a flush-decked schooner … for exterior and sailing scenes, and mock up the inside of a great cabin in a set ashore the interior.” I suspect all the sets were built to fit the sound stage spaces available. It does not have to be coherent internally and externally in order to tell a story on the screen.
I looked in IMDB to get the height of the girl in the Orion sequence; there’s not much listed for her. There were heights on any of the young women. Many of the cast never appeared in anything else, and some in not much more than the one movie
Are there firm dimensions from the studio on *any* vehicle in the movie?
Being a somewhat lazy bastard, I’d assume the internal door is two meters high, and go from there.
The two meter door measurement is about what I figured also.
AFAIK, no “official” size info exists on anything in the movie other than the Space Pod and the Monolith, which were of course full-size.
I did find a nice shot of the interior of the Space Station Hilton set yesterday:
http://emcdaily.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/2001e28093space-station-furniture.jpg?w=450&h=212
Though this still doesn’t let the curvature of the floor to be estimated very well, it does show three of the windows, so maybe figuring out their size and spacing and comparing that to the windows on the model might help.
If nothing else, everything in the Orion interior sets scaled well with the exterior of the model, so maybe the same applies to the space station.
If the Orion interior scaled well, is it possible that the Orion was designed around an aircraft? Might Orion be an offshoot of the “Swallow,” for example, at least where its interior matches the size of the exterior? Could it be that the Orion passenger cabin is a truncated SST cabin — something we might never connect with the movie?
Orion model: http://www.martinbowersmodelworld.co.uk/orion.html
Michal Holt wrote:
“If the Orion interior scaled well, is it possible that the Orion was designed around an aircraft?”
It might well have had some design input from a small jet airliner of the time as regards internal passenger cabin layout, though the seats are apparently more spacious than you find on most current airliners from the photos.
If it only carries 30 passengers per trip as Clarke indicated, then tickets on it can’t be cheap no matter how efficient they have gotten the launch method to be.
Reference is made to this in the book, where carrying Floyd to SS-V as the sole passenger is supposed to have cost a small fortune.
That may account for the luxury of the seats; total Earth-to-orbit passenger numbers may not be that great (at least via Orion), and it may be considered something of a “prestige” spacecraft, like a Grumman Gulfstream business jet.
The most luxurious airliner I ever flew on was a Aeroflot Il-62; total passengers from NYC to Moscow and back wasn’t great, and one of the main uses of the planes was to carry diplomates, bussinesmen, and VIPs back and forth between the US and USSR.
Not only did you get big seats with a lot of leg room, you also got caviar with your in-flight meal!
Since no one else in our tourist group wanted anything to do with the damned fish eggs, I got all of their portions also, and ended up downing around 1/2 pound of the stuff.
Unlike the Space Station, Ares, and Discovery, apparently the Orion stayed very close to the original design conception right from the beginning of coming up with spacecraft for the movie; the only big change being that the fuselage section from the mid-wing back was supposed to detach from it during ascent and return to Earth as the front continued on to the space station in the original conception.
I always thought Orion’s inspiration as far as shape went was the Sanger Antipodal Bomber of WWII, with also had the flat-bottomed-curved-top fuselage shape:
http://www.thelivingmoon.com/47john_lear/01archives/NAZI_Sanger_Amerika_Bomber.html
Apparently, the Orion was also supposed to take off from some sort of launch track in the original conception.
Michael Holt wrote:
“Orion model: http://www.martinbowersmodelworld.co.uk/orion.html ”
The design is extremely attractive, although there are a lot of things on it I could never make heads-or-tails of:
1.) What the hell is the nose air intake all about?
2.) What exactly are the ovoid things on the leading edges of the wings that also look like small air intakes? Has it got some sort of lenticular ramjets inside the wing that exhaust over the back half through the slot that runs down the top mid-wing? That’s where it was originally supposed to stage at BTW.
3.) Those are mighty weird shaped rocket exhaust nozzles on the tail; are they supposed to use some sort of plug-nozzle concept where the outside of the nozzle is formed by the supersonic shockwave over the fuselage?
4.) What are the two spines sticking out of the tail all about? They got some sort of energy extraction from the rocket exhaust going on here via MHD techniques?
I have the same questions you have, Pat.
And I have a question. There are clamshells in two rows on the fuselage. One row is on the bottom, just forward of the engine hump, and the open side faces aft. There’s a second row, on the top, with the open side facing forward. Some sort of scoops or exhausts? I have no idea.
I’ve read somewhere that the nose had a “retro-rocket” in it. I have no idea what inspired that. The Aurora kit (which I built at the time; I still have it and the instructions) has the nose as a wide and flat version of a Q-ball nose.
My feeling about those scallopings on the leading edge was that they were unexplained aerodynamic magic. Perhaps they did something to correct the air flow over the wings that were two “levels (one being the thick wing forward and the other being the thinner wing aft, where you ask about ramjets).
Perhaps those two spines sticking out behind everything are antenna that extent outside the plasma field on re-entry.
The rocket nozzles? I kinda thought that was just from the styling office.
more stuff on 2001 sizing from the guy who does the stargazer brand of 2001 items
http://www.planet3earth.co.uk/2001_a_space_odyssey.htm
and here
http://www.planet3earth.co.uk/2001%20Aries%201B.htm
Michael Holt wrote:
“And I have a question. There are clamshells in two rows on the fuselage. One row is on the bottom, just forward of the engine hump, and the open side faces aft. There’s a second row, on the top, with the open side facing forward. Some sort of scoops or exhausts? I have no idea.”
The front row of those (the ones on top of the vehicle) appear to be related in some way to the original idea where the clipper’s tail detaches and returns to Earth as the rest continues into orbit; although they look like retrorockets that would push the tail module away on seperation, the drawing in the “Filming The Future” book shows that they are mounted on the rear end of the forward part of the vehicle, not the part with the main engines in it.
Meanwhile, back at the space station:
Although there is group of three windows on the space station model’s “front” that are as widely and evenly spaced as those shown in the Hilton set shot, to gauge station size from, the photos of Floyd and the Russians standing near a window on that set do let one make a pretty good guess at their height. Window height is 3.5 to 4 feet based on that, and as we want it to be as big in diameter as possible so the Orion and Ares will fit in the hanger bay, I’ll go with 4 feet when comparing it to the window size shown on the station model’s exterior.
The results of that comparison indicate that from the outside of the station’s torus to its inside edge is around 56 feet maximum. Taking the 56 foot size and comparing it to the end on view from the approaching Orion, and we end up with a station diameter of 56′ x 10.25 = 574 feet maximum, with the hanger bay being around 80 feet wide and 25 feet high…this is a real problem, as the Orion is going to be a tight squeeze, and even the small Ares estimate of 40 feet diameter won’t fit.
eurostar99 wrote:
“more stuff on 2001 sizing from the guy who does the stargazer brand of 2001 items”
Well, he sure is excited, isn’t he?!!!!
The people getting on the Orion are going to be really impressed when they go through that giant door on its side if it really is as big as he thinks it is.
Maybe the Orion is really scaled to seat chimps.
Thanks for explaining the clamshell things, Pat. That makes a lot of sense, given the background of the thing. I’ll agree that you’re correct.
We should be able to measure the size of those windows with a great degree of accuracy.
To me, it looks like they screwed up somewhere in scaling the SS-V model to the size of the Ares and Orion.
There was no reason that SS-V couldn’t be any diameter they wanted, and given the size of the hanger at Clavius base, you wouldn’t expect it to be as small as the windows indicate.
It also makes one wonder about just how many rooms the Hilton hotel has, as with a station that small the total total crew/visitor capacity can’t be all that large.
Keep in mind that scaling the SSV by using the windows is inexact at best, since the windows are very likely much bigger on the outside than they are on the inside (which turns out true for most of the vehicles in the movie).
No, everything on the Orion works out just great internally and externally regarding the model.
I haven’t check out the innards and exterior of the Ares yet, but would be surprised to find if it doesn’t work out every bit as well.
But to get the station to work out right in relation to the size of the windows and hanger bay doesn’t stretch things a bit, it completely destroys them.
It should have six or nine, not three, deck levels on the torus.
You double or triple its size and everything makes sense; total diameter, hanger bay size, speed of rotation, and total habitation space aboard.
So why they built that model to represent something so undersized in comparison to what the sets and models of the Orion and Ares show baffles me.
Even if it was the first model built for the movie, it would seem to be way too small for the station in the book, or to store the other spacecraft shown in the movie in its hanger bay.
There’s some story we aren’t getting here regarding the model’s construction.
Of course the real problem is trying to shoehorn everything in the movie into one consistent logical reality – like it’s something real, and not a work of fantasy.
This makes about as much sense as figuring out how big Noah’s Ark would have to be to fit all the animals in, or why X-Wings have air intakes on their engines while Y-Wings don’t. 😀
>To me, it looks like they screwed up somewhere in scaling the SS-V
>model to the size of the Ares and Orion.
bingo.
I remember reading that when Kubrick saw the Orion near the station in prints; he didn’t like the look, so optically reduced it to be MUCH smaller, to make the station look much bigger and more majestic compared to the shuttle.
So the station as seen in the movie never was to the same scale as the Orion.
Oh, Stargazer’s research for the Orions size true seems very well done. I’ld take his scale on that to be as good as your going to get.
But looking at them next to the station… http://www.planet3earth.co.uk/page%203/2003b.jpg
The stations are looking like only every 3rd or 4th floor has windows, and they look big enough to drive a truck through – not the small windows seen in the interior set in the movie.
> not the small windows seen in the interior set in the movie.
Once again: the windows are probably bigger – by some unknown amount – on the outside than they are on the inside.