Category: Real Spacecraft

Real spacecraft that were made and flown

Soviet LK Moon lander

The London Science Museum “Cosmonauts” exhibition had some truly amazing original space hardware from the dawn of the space age. For me the clear highlight was the LK Lander, their equivalent of the Apollo LEM.

The lighting was coloured which made getting the colour right a bit tricky!

This was a one man craft, and the cosmonaut (probably Alexei Leonov), would have had to stay in his pace suit the whole time.

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This view is from directly in front, and you can see the window the cosmonaut would use to see where his craft was headed as it came in to land. On the right is the round antenna, (with a star on), used to communicate.

lk2

Here you see the right side of the lander. Note the blue hatch, and the ladder underneath it. Continue reading “Soviet LK Moon lander”

Mercury capsule, texturing and clean-up

I’m currently sorting out surfaces for this Mercury capsule. But even so I thought it was good enough for a first shot at a finished render…

For those who don’t know, (is there anyone?) the Mercury program was the USA’s first manned spaceflight project, with a capsule capable of holding a single astronaut. The first few launches were sub-orbital. Astronaut control was limited, leading to Chuck Yaeger’s famous remark that the pilots were more like “spam in a can”.

It was a difficult time, as the US struggled to catch up with the early lead set by the Soviet Union.

And here are some more basic renders too.

Mercury Capsule
Mercury Capsule

Continue reading “Mercury capsule, texturing and clean-up”

Ariane 1, texturing continues.

I’ve been working on surfacing the Ariane 1 rocket, and  I think it’s nearly there. I found a few problems where the textures were rotated with reference to the geometry,

Some of the rings on the payload fairing are not quite right, but I am finding it hard to work out how to correct them.

araina-ortho-setx

Above is an orthographic set. (Perspective free) Continue reading “Ariane 1, texturing continues.”

Ariane 1 Rocket

My new work in progress.

This is the Ariane 1 rocket. I’m using a bought mesh for the geometry. It was converted from 3D studio, and is VERY heavy on the polygon count. But the good news is that the detail is superb, even the internal structure of the stringers is modeled.

Surfaces did not come in very clean, so I’m working through them to get them a bit more realistic. Still a long way to go with that.

ariane_ortho-set ariane_rgb0120 Continue reading “Ariane 1 Rocket”

Pioneer 11

Pioneer 11 was the first probe to reach Jupiter and Saturn. It is not often remembered, I think because of Voyager 1 and 2 followed on relatively quickly, and these probes delivered much superior imagery.

But Pioneer 11 was important, not least because it established if it would be safe to send the voyagers very close to the giant planets – the amount  of radiation and debris near them was not clear before the encounters.

saturn-approach-compositex pioneer-polar-jupiter2x

Continue reading “Pioneer 11”

British Rocket – Black Arrow

This is a (very) short documentary I made on the British rocket, the Black Arrow. The UK remains the only country ion the world to develop a successful satellite program, and then shut it down.

The model I built for the video was based on personal photographs taken at the London Science Museum.

I am gradually moving my videos over to Vimeo, they get less views there than at YouTube, but the quality is higher, and you won’t get interrupted by crappy adverts!