BUILDING THE SPACESHIP 'DISCOVERY' FROM 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY

 

A TOTAL OF MORE THAN 500 PARTS distinguishes this 1:144 scale Moebius kit. The subject is the Discovery, spacecraft star of the classic science fiction movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.

‘2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY’ IN DETAIL - GREAT DETAIL

MAT IRVINE REPORTS

Ask any film enthusiast, and probably many non-enthusiasts, to name the best science-fiction movie of all time, and you will probably get 9 out of 10 voting for Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. For all those fans - and for space modellers too - comes the new book, 2001: The Lost Science by Adam K. Johnson.

SCIENCE-FICTION CLASSIC MOVIE ‘2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY’ REVISITED 40 YEARS ON

SMN report
Here’s a mouthwatering taste of things to come for science-fiction enthusiasts - Douglas Trumbull, the special-effects supervisor for the 1968 movie 2001: A Space Odyssey is working on a ‘making of’ docu-movie 2001: Beyond the Infinite, which will include heaps of never-seen-before material, plus dozens of star interviews. His interesting video seems to have been pulled from the internet, perhaps for copyright reasons, but Trumbull's own site is packed with interesting stuff that anyone with an interest in the genre should have a look at. The address is shown below.

Orion spacecraft kits
In the model world, the movie has been served less well, especially by the mainstream kit manufacturers. About the only injection kits to be freely available have been of the elegant Orion passenger shuttle, with models from both Airfix and Aurora. Neither kit is perfect, but each will assemble into a reasonably handsome spacecraft model.

Orion Cargoship from Stargazer Models
Still, there are people with fresh ideas and angles out there, including Ian Walsh of Stargazer Models, who came up a while ago with a very nifty concept, the Orion Cargoship, complete with wide-opening Space Shuttle-style bay doors. Inside, there’s the orbital satellite as seen in the movie, plus a single one-man space pod. The included decals depict a military craft sporting US Air Force markings - the movie’s Orion was a civil spaceliner in Pan American livery.

Not for beginners
This is a resin kit and not suitable for beginners, but for anyone with a little skill and patience, there’s a fine model waiting to be built. It’s to 1:144 scale, with an overall length of some 445 mm (17.5 in) plus the twin tail antennas.

Visit Stargazer Models here.

SMN reports on other 2001 stuff are here and here.

The excellent Starship Modeler website has a rundown on available kits here.

Visit Douglas Trumbull here.

The pictures show, top to bottom:
1  Poster, painted by famed US artist Robert McCall - who sadly died in February this year - shows an Orion leaving the vast space station that also features in the movie.
2-4 Views of the Stargazer Models Orion Cargoship.

SO, JUST WHAT IS A 'BOILERPLATE'?

The term ‘boilerplate’ came up in the recent post about the reissued Airfix Lunar Module, and the fact that early test spacecraft and mockups are usually called boilerplate versions. It's a bit of an odd word, so we asked ourselves: “Why are they called that?”

The name stems from the earliest US crewed spacecraft, the single-seat Mercury capsule. Although flight versions were built by what was then the McDonnell Aircraft Company (later McDonnell-Douglas, now part of Boeing), early mockups were built at Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, (currently NASA’s Langley Research Center). The ‘boilerplate’ moniker appears to stem from the very first of these, when a Mercury capsule’s conical section was made at the Norfolk Navy Shipyard, from the type of steel plate used for ship-building, or for that matter, pressurized engine boilers.

This first boilerplate did fly a short distance on top of a Little Joe rocket, and the name has stuck, whatever materials have been used. Note though, it can be written as ‘boilerplate’, ‘boiler plate’, even ‘boiler-plate’!

Since that first boilerplate Mercury, the word has been used to describe all US test spacecraft, especially the capsule designs used for Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and the latest Orion. In theory, the prototype Space Shuttle Orbiter Enterprise could be called a boilerplate, though it is rarely referred to as such.

The pictures show, top to bottom:

Little Joe rocket and Mercury boilerplate at Wallops Island.
Mercury boilerplate at the Air Power Park, Hampton, Virginia.
The delightfully named Gemini El Kabong boilerplate at the Air Zoo, Michigan.
Apollo boilerplate 29 on display at Meteor Crater, Arizona.

Little Joe picture courtesy NASA, others by Mat Irvine