U.S.S. Discovery XD-1 - not quite a sub but similar

[DrSchmidt]

I continued working on the tiny cockpit of the Discovery, again an addition kit by Greenstrawberry. In contrast to the hangar deck, which is mostly constructed out of resin parts, the cockpit is made by folding and gluing allot of PE parts. The main compartment starts with a flat sheet of etched metal that was primed, airbrushed white, and then the stickers of the control panels were applied. Then the part was carefully folded and glued together using superglue (no color chipping...).









The pilot seats are PE origami as well. Folded, glued and the strengthened using 2 component glue. Again the seats were primed and then the body airbrushed in white ad the seats black. After everything was dry, I attached the seats to the sides of the cockpit. Starts to look like something....












Next will be the side pannels of the cockpit and the raear corridor. But that's for the next post....

[He Who Shall Not Be Named]

This is the most interesting, informative, and just plain fun thread I've seen here in many a moon. Crack On, sir!

David
Alfa Nerd

[DrSchmidt]

Thank you David. It's also an enjoyable build on my side of the screen...

On with the cockpit. The side panels are again PE origami. Fold, glue, base coat, white airbrushing, gloss coat and then the switchboard stickers. Voila...



The panels are then glued to the sides of the cockpit assembly. Here's a view with the right panel attached.





The back corridor, that also contains the access hatch of the HAL 9000 computer core again is a folded PE part. As theer are now decals or stickers, the switches were painted by hand.







Then the corridor is glued to the cockpit assembly and everything is strengthened using styrene sheet material and L-profiles. Gaps that remain are then closed using white Valljeo putty.





The rsult looks like a dirty lump of brass and styrene from the outside, but the inner values are what counts here, and those are quite nice:





Next I'll have to construct a light proof box around the cockpit, that will house the LEDs for lighting. Gonna be tricky....

[Das Boot]

I heard a metal rod has to be used with the spine.

[DrSchmidt]

Yes, they are included in the kit. I'll have a look at it and if its too flimsy I might replace it by a carbon fiber rod. We'll see. I have a steel H-beam supporting the ceiling in my apartment. I plan to make a display, that fits into the beam with a side support of the spaceship so that it looks like floating in zero gravity in the beam. And I think about applying Black 3.0 in the inside of the display, to give it a real space look. Will be challenging....

[DrSchmidt]

After a while a little update. After the cockpit assembly was done, I had to to the cockpit windows. That involved some very fine PE frames, bending, gluing.......dropping, searching swearing......more bending....bending back....more swearing. Then I had to modify the plastic part of the kit and glue the assembled window frames into the part. Painting and then finally inserting the windows that were cut from transparent sheet material. I glued them into place sing micro Kristal Klear, which basically is a clear drying PVAC glue.





After that was done, the cockpit was attached which fits into a slot in the frame. Fixed it with super glue and sealed the seams with Vallejo elastic putty.







This assembly then went into the upper half of the command module sphere. For lighting I decided to build an illuminated box around the cockpit. The box holds the LEDs in space and allows me to block off light, as I don't want to illuminate the whole sphere.







Aluminum foil acts as reflector and as a light blocker.


I didn't succeed completely in blocking all the unwanted light. So I'll go for a black base coat before I paint the sphere white. Hope that will do the job.

[He Who Shall Not Be Named]

Yeah. As to the light-leaking through the command sphere: Your eventual fix of painting the sphere black to prevent your violet light from projecting through the semi-opaque plastic is the same fix I employed on this vacuformed secondary hull of a scratch-built TOS ENTERPRICE model, in spite of it containing unshielded, very bright source-lamps. No light leakage occurred, even when displayed in a dark room.

[DrSchmidt]

Good to hear that this approach has a chance of success....

[jphatton]

Thanks again for posting this very interesting build log which I've enjoyed following. Indeed there are some parallels between submarines and spaceships :-)

The Spaceship Handbook by Jack Hagerty and Jon Rogers has a long section dedicated to the spacecraft in 2001 A Space Odyseey, including details of the design concept and drawings. The book is a good read as it also covers a large number of spaceship concepts through the 20th century from the early theoreticians (Tsiolkovsky, Oberth, Ley, Bonestell), Von Braun's Colliers and Disney series, various fiction and film and television series , as well as some of spacecraft designs which were never built (eg. X-20 Dynasoar).

Incidently, the large rotating film set of the artificial gravity centrifuge section of Discovery was built by Vickers-Armstrong.

[He Who Shall Not Be Named]

Thanks again for posting this very interesting build log which I've enjoyed following. Indeed there are some parallels between submarines and spaceships :-)

The Spaceship Handbook by Jack Hagerty and Jon Rogers has a long section dedicated to the spacecraft in 2001 A Space Odyseey, including details of the design concept and drawings. The book is a good read as it also covers a large number of spaceship concepts through the 20th century from the early theoreticians (Tsiolkovsky, Oberth, Ley, Bonestell), Von Braun's Colliers and Disney series, various fiction and film and television series , as well as some of spacecraft designs which were never built (eg. X-20 Dynasoar).

Incidently, the large rotating film set of the artificial gravity centrifuge section of Discovery was built by Vickers-Armstrong.

Many of the illustrations in that book are flawed. However, the narrative is insightful and most informative.

David

[Das Boot]

Is this the model about the size of a golf ball bridge?

[Das Boot]

Yeah. As to the light-leaking through the command sphere: Your eventual fix of painting the sphere black to prevent your violet light from projecting through the semi-opaque plastic is the same fix I employed on this vacuformed secondary hull of a scratch-built TOS ENTERPRICE model, in spite of it containing unshielded, very bright source-lamps. No light leakage occurred, even when displayed in a dark room.

Who has this model now?

[He Who Shall Not Be Named]

Who has this model now?

Some guy out of NY. Made his money in the food flavoring game.

David

[DrSchmidt]

I glued the hangar bay into the lower haf of the command module. Again big praise to Greenstrawberry....an excellent fit. I opened two of the three hangar doors. The middle one will host an extended EVA pod that will be illuminated.





For displaying the Discovery I will not support the ship from below but from the side. I'll employ four 4 x 4 mm carbon fiber square rods to do so. For anchoring the rods, I habe to create internal support structures. For the command module I did this by creating a bulkhead made out of 2 mm thick grp sheet. It was epoxied into place and will supprt a 5 x 5 mm^2 square brass tube, that will receive the front squre rod....

[Das Boot]

Okay. This is the big one.