My good friend Graham Gazzard has done some renders of my Daedalus mesh, and the results are really impressive, as I think you can see!
Some day I hope to get the hang of the ‘firework smoke in space’ look.
Nick
Category: Technology
Daedalus Update
Two new images showing the BIS Daedalus interstellar design. These will be used in a book by Michael Carroll, to be published later this year.
One image shows the immense size of the unmanned craft, with the two stages separated, and a Saturn V rocket beside it for comparison. This is in the header.
The second shows the whole thing assembled, below, against a backdrop of stars. Click for a larger view.
Hedrick Fusion Rocket
Here’s a design for a seriously large fusion rocket.
I started with information for on the always excellent Project Rho site, by Winchell Chung. This refers to an earlier NASA paper.
Cosmonauts exhibition at the London Science Museum
Various photos…
Here’s a selection of photos from the “Cosmonauts” exhibition at the London Science Museum.
Laika
This shows the arrangement used for for the ‘space dog’ Laika. Laika (meaning “little woofer”), was a stray found on the streets of Moscow. The scientists later said that what they learned was not worth the life of a dog.
Spacesuits
On the left is the suit proposed for exploring Mars, and on the right the “Orlan” EVA space suit. Continue reading “Cosmonauts exhibition at the London Science Museum”
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.
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.
Here you see the right side of the lander. Note the blue hatch, and the ladder underneath it. Continue reading “Soviet LK Moon lander”
HD Test animation of the Ariane rocket WIP
Just checking how things are coming along, from all angles. Textures still need some work I think!
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.
Daedalus – A serious starship design
Daedalus was a serious design by the British Interplanetary Society, for an interstellar flyby mission that would reach Barnard’s Star in 50 years.
There’s some more info in this video I made:
Here’s a BIS page on the project:
http://www.bis-space.com/what-we-do/projects/project-daedalus
And another nice article by David Darling.
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!
The Lovell Radio Telescope at Jodrell Bank
Whjen I decided to try and make a mesh of the iconic Lovell Radio Telescope at Jodrell Bank, England, I knew it would be a big task!
I think this is easily the most complex mesh I have ever created. I visited the real radio telescope, and took hundreds, and hundreds of photographs, from every angle I could.
It was really tricky to work out the symmetry of the repeating elements, and it took a bit of trial and error to get it right.
As if that was not demanding enough, I also had to keep the polygon count under control, while trying to include every bolt I could see.
I had a bit of help, the nice people who work their very kindly sent me some basic plans with the key dimensions marked, so I had a firm foundation to build on.
The end result is rigged, so I can rotate the base and tip the dish into any desired position.