Artifacts - Extrapolated Worlds

Warpship Endeavour

Doug February 7, 2024

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

Doug February 6, 2024

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.

Organic Ramjet

Doug February 5, 2024

Artifact: Organic Ramjet (1/1000)

The organic ramjet is a concept model of a deep space lifeform that employs a Bussard ramjet for locomotion. The four arms contain sensors, reaction control systems, and a means to extract elements from the interstellar medium for growth and repair functions. The model was carved in one piece from a block of plaster of paris in 1979. It is approximately 1/1000 scale.

Fluorite Crystal Pyramid

Doug January 16, 2024

Artifact: Fluorite Crystal Pyramid

The Fluorite Crystal Pyramid illuminates a fluorite crystal with four RGB mini neopixels set into a supporting girdle. The neopixels are controlled by an Adafruit Trinket Pro 5V microcontroller. Four pushbuttons around the edges control how the neopixels cycle through different levels of light and color. The switches are colored to match the gates of a the Kalachakra mandala: black, red, yellow, white.

This prototype used free-hand bent wires to connect the electronic elements, after the wooden framework was constructed. If I were to iterate upon it, I would model it in Fusion 360 and 3D print a jig to make it easier to build. This would also allow me to lay out the components in advance and precisely bend the wires in the style of electronics artist Mohit Bhoite. You should check out his exquisite work here on his Instagram page!

I am looking forward to getting back into the Arduino code for this piece to improve its interactivity.

Corsi-Rosenthal Box

Doug January 15, 2024

Artifact: Corsi-Rosenthal Box

Disclaimer: this is not my design! This is the brilliant brain child of Jim Rosenthal and Richard Corsi, who distributed plans across the interwebs shortly after it became apparent that SARS-CoV-2 was an airborne pathogen. I merely fabricated this box of COVID Christmas cheer to minimize the viral load in our house. After valiantly avoiding COVID-19 all the way until Christmas of 2023, my lovely wife got tagged during (we think) a dental cleaning. She went hardcore Plague Mary as soon as she felt symptoms, masking all day long except to eat and drink, sleeping in a different room. The full deal.

And we ran this bad boy 24 hours a day. Here you see it in our humble utility room. It was too loud to bring out into the main house, but we only have about 1200 square feet, and NOBODY ELSE got sick. They only cost about $100 and maybe an hour of time to build. It’s not a big ask of money or time. So if you find yourself in a similar situation, and want to avoid a house full of sick people, bash one of these together and encourage your infectious loved one to mask as much as they can bear.

Visit https://cleanaircrew.org/box-fan-filters/ for full instructions. See teaser from their website below. It’s stupid simple.

Blaster

Doug January 15, 2024

Artifact: Blaster

The Blaster is a semi-portable 20 watt 222 nanometer (nm) Far Ultra Violet C (Far UVC) air sterilizer. This unit can easily sweep a small room of airborne viruses like SARS-CoV-2. It can be powered off a 20W wall transformer or a 24V Cobalt battery for portable use.