Logo: Mars crossed by stylized torchship.

Home of science fiction author Doug Franklin

Starship Vega

Artifact: Starship Vega (1/160)

Starship Vega on snowy field.

Semroc’s clone of the Estes Starship Vega, one of my very favorite model rockets. Done up pretty much out-of-the-box, plus a removable nozzle for verisimilitude. I figure is about 1/160 scale. I was getting into Larry Niven about the time I built my last Starship Vega (before my Born Again Rocketeer era, anyway), and I remember puzzling over its design, trying to rationalize it as having some kind of hyperdrive. This was a common pattern for me; give me Star Trek’s Enterprise, and I try to reverse-engineer it into something that somehow makes sense (the warp drive must induce some kind of gravitational field at right angles to the direction of motion, and so forth). 

But this design really does some innate promise; put a hyperdrive node in each of the 3 nacelles, and another in the core, and you’ve got a tetrahedron, which is what you’d need to define a vector in 4-space. And use the fins as radiators for the fusion reactor. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Flown on a B6-4 – snapped the shock cord such that the nose cone came down under the parachute whilst the rest fell. Oddly enough, it settled into a nearly perfect backwards glide. No damage done!

Atom Heart Mother

Artifact: Atom Heart Mother (1/100)

Super Big Bertha in snowy field.

Heavily customized, scratch-built “SFX” version of the Estes Super Big Bertha, done up as the Mars-based, fission-powered freighter Atom Heart Mother. 1.6x upscale of the classic Estes Big Bertha at 2.6″  diameter. Approximately 1/100 scale. Drop tanks are removable. Flies great without drop tanks on a 24mm E9-4. 

This model needs some more greeblies and/or markings; it’s missing its portholes and hatches, at the least.

Starfire

Artifact: Starfire (1/100)

Starfire rocketship in front of mountains

Enhanced “SFX” version of the Estes Super Vega – custom balsa nose cone with the proper conical shape, warp-nacelle landing jacks capped by novelty machine capsules, radiators from Star Trek Enterprise kits, card stock applique, and more. She’s done up as the United Colonies of Mars UCM Starfire in 1/100 scale. The Super Vega is a 1.6x upscale of the classic Starship Vega, though the Estes designers took a lot of liberties with the cones. 

As yet unflown – set up stock 24mm motor mount.

Hyperglider Sparrow

Artifact: Hyperglider Sparrow (1/144)

Sparrow is one of the “hero ships” of The Extrapolated Man. A hyperglider operates in a manner analogous to an atmospheric glider, albeit in four dimensions rather than three. The blue elements are “hypervane” that can be rotated into the fourth dimension, much as a wing is rotated away from the horizontal plane to provide an angle of attack that generates lift. The hyperglider employs a large pentachoral wing to aft, and a smaller stabilizer forward, like the Wright brother’s canard design. Not rendered in the model are three small pentachoral stabilizers that would attach to the outboard tips of the wing. 

In the gallery below I’ve included a Bandai 1/144 X-Wing fighter as well as a pre-built Apollo Command Module from Bandai’s amazing Tamashii Nations Apollo 13 set. These give a good sense of scale. The hyperglider’s capsule is roughly the same size as Apollo’s.

Shown below are some of the build photos. The first iteration of the reaction mass tanks for the NERVA-style rocket motor were spherical, whereas they are toroidal in the final version. 

Warpship Endeavour

Artifact: Warpship Endeavour (1/500)

Way way back when the Star Trek Enterprise series was announced – 2007? – I had this wild idea: what if they took the opportunity to rationalize the starship, at least as much as it could be, considering? Make no mistake, I love the TOS NCC-1701 Enterprise. The Great Bird of the Galaxy has a special place in my heart. But it makes no effing sense at all. So how about something where impulse engine thrust is you know, orthogonal to the decks, and hey why not the warp engines too? And instead of only two warp engines, how about three so the force is somewhat balanced? And no transporters, but instead a big honking detachable shuttle. My intention was to build a fairly big model, but along the way I figured I’d prototype it in 1/500 and see what it looked like. 

So here you have the Warpship Endeavour, in 1/500 scale. I’ve included a 1/500 Space Shuttle Orbiter in the gallery below for scale. I never got around to the big one, but I’ve got a bunch of parts stashed…

The model is illuminated with a variety of LEDs. There is a yellow blinker in the bow deflector with its circuitry in the detachable, spherical shuttle, along with another white LED to illuminate the portholes. Each warp drive engine has a red LED in the front and small white LED to stern. The central drive has a blue LED, which is not lighting at present… possibly a power supply issue. It runs off an ancient Nokia wall wart, and I’ve been meaning to convert it to USB with a voltage booster forever, so this failure may be the motivation. 

Occam’s Razor

Artifact: Occam's Razor (1/500)

Occam’s Razor is a 1980s-era concept model of an interplanetary turbojet. The octagonal core generates an involuting toroidal electromagnetic impeller field that pulls in hydrogen ions and fuses them for power and thrust. Above is a bow-on view.

The model was a kit-bash of one of the original Star Wars B-Wing models, augmented with a high-voltage relaxation oscillator flasher circuit. The slabs surrounding the core are capacitors, and small cylinders to aft are resistors. Neon bulbs are located in the core, as well as the large laser at the left as pictured above. The laser is on a swivel. The model uses a small external power source, not pictured.