Laser weapons

The first time I saw  Luke Campbell's designs for laser weapons I knew I had to model them. It was an interesting exercise translating 2D sketches to 3D, with a few serious perspective issues! Seemed to work out OK in the end though.

240Z

240Z is available in a variety of fruit flavours!

Blue Mustang

One day I might get this on a shirt or something.

Battleship Orion

Battleship Orion in Earth orbit

Battleship Orion under fire in cis-lunar space

This large Orion vehicle was a General Atomic proposal to the USAF for a 4000 ton spacecraft, armed to the teeth with 5-inch naval guns, nuclear missiles, multiple 20mm point defence weapons and 'Casaba Howitzer', a kind of atomic-bomb powered particle beam weapon. It fits the description of a space-battleship pretty well, and was intended to hang out between the moon and the Earth, performing ABM duties and providing a completely unassailable nuclear launch platform. Of course it was never built for a multitude of reasons, not the least being unnecessary due to the Soviets' lack of anything remotely comparable as a space based weapons system.

Acknowledgements to Scott Lowther for doing all the hard work in piecing together the scarce information on the Orion battleship.

20 metre NASA Orion

Mars arrival

In Mars orbit

This is the 'last chance' Orion nuclear pulse vehicle proposed to NASA in the 1960s. A larger design with a 20 metre pusher plate, as opposed to the 10 metre plate of the 'baseline' design. This vehicle can deliver 50 people to Mars for a 450 day mission. Performance of the vehicle was nominally 16 Meganewtons of thrust, with a specific impulse of 3150 seconds. Ultimately it was never built, due to the changing climate in NASA at the time. This was a fun exercise in modeling, tricky sometimes due to the scarcity of good diagrams and references.

SSTO Spaceplane

SSTO spaceplane inspired by HOTOL. Seen here just before liftoff, the dawn sun low in the Eastern sky.