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Paper models, photos and musings of a Paper Kosmonaut
Some time ago, SpaceX redesigned its successful rocket, the Falcon 9 to be more versatile. It got a new engine section and some legs. The squared three-by-three structure of the engines was changed into what SpaceX calls the Octaweb; one engine in the middle and eight placed evenly around it. This made the bottom section round instead of square and thus more streamlined. The lowest part of the first stage also was equipped with four extendible landing legs. These are folded up against the hull in flight and are deployed when the stage returns to the surface, balancing on its centre engine like a broomstick on a hand. The purpose of it all is to make the rocket eventually land on the launch site. for now, two more or less successful efforts have been made to land the rocket on the surface of the ocean. It of course toppled after settling down but that was intended.
The older version now is awaiting display in the National Space Museum in Lelystad, so I had room to build a new one.
The only available v.1.1 of the Falcon is the free downloadable one from AXM and it happens to be a very nicely detailed and well designed one, too. Enough left to superdetail and always a good fit.
Hopefully this will be a project I will finish, something I haven't been able to do since winter last year. Herschel, Planck, parts of a GeeBee race plane and the ill-fated 1/96 Saturn V are all boxed and shelved and waiting for a continuation. This one might see the display shelf first, I think. Here's where I am now.
More after the jump.
Heat wave hitting Grunnen at the moment.
Spent days in the tiny office trying to master a DVD of the new film that looked "great", then going for "acceptable" and after that didn't seem to work out, almost giving up. So far for "pro" applications in FCP7. Why it looked so bad on the consumer set we have in the office I still don't know but at home everything looked better. And finally got something more than acceptable.
This all to show that the post-post production almost never goes smooth either. Luckily all we have to do now is just wait for the première next week. Hopefully with some audience attending. It still will be hot, according to the forecasts.
As for the modelling stuff, I have tried to start something earlier this month, but I couldn't get myself to do anything papery at the moment. It is something that should not be obligatory anyway. I guess it is hard for me to be building models when all my creativity has to be used to work on post production.
Let me end with telling you there are a lot of projects simmering in the big creativity cooking pot in my head, There will be - amongst other stuff, in random order and subject to change - a new Falcon 9 V. 1.1 (AXM) 1:100, I'll try my skills on Johan Scherft's hummingbird 1:1, and an addition to the shuttle fleet with Challenger STS 61A.
Really, I regret there hasn't been a lot of new model stuff going on here right now but one only has one brain and a limited amount of creativity to spend. I still am reloading from this monster job the last months. I truly hope the efforts pay off in the response we get from the audience.
See you soon!
--PK
