The Art and Graphics of Nick Stevens. Available for hire.I specialise in unbuilt space projects, and the spacecraft of the Soviet Union.
Kuck’s Mosquito is a design for a craft that would mine water from asteroids, comets, or maybe the moons of Mars. The delta-V required is MUCH less than hauling it up from Earth to orbit.
It would work by drilling down into ice, melting it, then sucking up the liquid. The water can then be used for drinking, or could be split into Hydrogen and Oxygen.
Today I received my pre-ordered copy of The 2001 File, the Harry Lange design archive. This is a review of it.
Initial impressions are good, the book is heavy, with lots of pages. I was a bit surprised at the lack of a slip cover though.
But the meat of it is, of course, the illustrations. It is VERY heavily illustrated, and the vast majority of the pictures are new to me. The pictures main focus on the design history of all the major elements in the film, with many, many alternate designs that never made it into the finished film.
In many cases there are quite literally dozens and dozens of alternate designs, and it it genuinely fascinating to see how some fairly crude early attempts evolved into the iconic finished versions.
The illustrations are mainly line drawings or plans – there are some colour photographs, but these are not at all well presented, being more than a bit blurry in most cases.
The plans and diagrams make this an essential purchase for someone like me, and astronomical artist. I;m less show about the value to a more general audience, but if you love the design of the film, you will likely find it very satisfying.
I’ve not yet had a chance to read the text properly, but I did notice one mistake – an Ion Spaceship design by Erst Stuhlinger is described as a “Cruciform Space Station”. But speaking for myself, I am very happy to have it, and I am already twitching to turn some of the deigns into fully realised CGI!
A small project, the parts storage area from the “Discovery” in “2001”.
Modelled and rendered in Lightwave 3d, I released the mesh for free to members of the “Foundation 3d” forums.
Her’s my take on an unused concept for the Aliens in “2001”, as found in the excellent book by Piers Bizony.
Continue reading “Unused alien concept from “2001 A Space Odyssey””
A quickie project, the Canadian Arrow!
This was a seriously oddball design, basically take a World War 2 V2 rocket, and stick a modern engine in it. The idea being that the aerodynamics are proven, so you save development effort.
You what?!
On my last visit to Moldova, I was lucky enough to go to the Cosmos Museum. Not a conventional museum, this is set in a scheel, where children are encouraged to make accurate models of rockets, (at ;least the older ones!)
The lady who runs it, Mrs Lubov, is extremely knowledgeable and helpful, and was kind enough to show me the collection of photographs of cosmonauts visiting the city.
They have a pressure suit, lots of samples of space food, and full size detailed plans of Korolov’s “GIRD09” liquid fueled rocket!
I sent them a large print of a set of N-1 rockets, in the hope it will help inspire the next generation.
I think the children are very lucky to have such an enthusiastic and well informed expert they rto encourage and help them!
My latest project, Robert Goddard’s movable casing rocket – the lowest part of the hull can swivel by a few degrees for steering.
I used plans from “Rockets of the World” by ARA Press as the basis for this cgi project.
Here’s a graphic image for testing an image post.
Scientists recently predicted that Phobos will break up and form a ring as it spirals in towards Mars. The ring will be about as dense as Saturn’s, which may seem surprising given that Phobos is so small.
