The Art and Graphics of Nick Stevens. Available for hire.I specialise in unbuilt space projects, and the spacecraft of the Soviet Union.
This is not the Hyperion by Phil Bono, (which you can read about here), but an earlier design from Krafft Ehricke, dating all the way back to the 1950’s. It’s for a manned mission to Mars, (no landing), and a fleet of 3 or 4 ships would be sent for mutual support. I got the information on this project from the always excellent “Atomic Rockets” site, including this plan, which is the basis for my mesh:
Continue reading “Krafft Ehricke’s Hyperion, a manned nuclear Mars mission”
I’m still experiementing with Vue, and I’m begining to feel like I am getting somewhere. And somewhere a bit more interesting than just a bunch of CGI sunsets!
Mind you, this one started as a sunset with an interesting terrain. It was when I figured the scene was rather Mars-like, that I got the idea for what else to include beyond the terrain and the sky.
So I dug out my old “Mars Habitat” and “Mars Explorer” from Daz, and loaded them in.Now the habitat had some odd rendering issues in Lightwave, but seems OK in Vue, at least once I had turned off glare.
It’s also become clear that Vue does a MUCH better job of preserving halfway decent surface settings when importing from OBJ format than from an LWO format. (For some reason Lightwave 3d surfaces only seem to respond to ambient light, the diffuse does nothing?!)
This was based on an image I found, taken from the cover of the March 1961 episode of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
A really unusual shape, making the whole thing look like a cross between a lightbulb and a thermos flask. I suspect it’s meant to be nuclear , which makes standing around the engine area somewhat adventurous.
I recently realised that I hadn’t blogged this design, which I did a few years ago. I realised this after seeing an image I had provided of it for a board game had been bodged onto a new background, and looked awful. So I figured I should get my version online ASAP!
This is a serious NASA design for a nuclear craft capable of reaching Mars.
Some finished renders of the flying wing design. See previous posts for the work in progress, and sample reference images.
The sky was the most difficult part here. I was compositing onto panoramic photos, and had to make my own sky. I really liked the dark greyish green, but it’s not very realistic.
Continue reading “NASA PRANDTL Flying Wing – finished renders”
This concept is a flying wing, or bodyless plane, currently being tested for a possible flight to prove the concept. It is intended to work well in the thin atmosphere of the planet Mars, and would be tested at very high altitude on Earth, where the pressure is similar.
You can find out more about the project here:
https://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstrong/features/mars_airplane.html
Here’s the current state of my quickie project, I’m still very unsure on what to do on the bottom of the craft.
Here’s a selection of photos from the “Cosmonauts” exhibition at the London Science Museum.
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.
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”
