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Greetings!

 

This is the resin and photo etch Space Station V kit from Fantastic Plastic.  One of the many intriguing designs from 2001: A Space Odyssey, I waited decades for a styrene kit to come out and am still patiently waiting.  Finally, after seeing the superb results that others have achieved with this kit, especially the excellent work of Dr. Hutchison, I decided to wait no longer and give this my best effort.  Overall this model is a well designed mixture of resin and photo etch, but perhaps overly complex in a few areas and lacking detail in some places.  Unfortunately my kit suffered from some poorly formed resin parts which required scratch building of replacement parts.  Certainly this is one of the most challenging kits I have ever attempted.  


The scale of the kit is described as being either 1/1400, 1/2100 or 1/2800 depending upon the interpretation of the filming model and accordingly three scaled Orion space clippers are included.  I decided upon the 1/1400 scale as that was the only Orion that was usable in my kit - the other two were very poorly formed and beyond repair.  Most of the resin parts are finely detailed and well done with the exception of the spoke arms and one of hub parts that was missing a small section of detail along the edge.  The main rim sections are curved slightly inward, but can be corrected after placing them in very hot water.  All of the resin spoke arms were badly formed and twisted.  There is also an odd surface texture to these parts.  I quickly abandoned the kit spokes and scratch built replacements.


I decided to add LED lighting to the docking bays in the hub sections.  This required carefully drilling holes to accommodate wiring and a brass tube.  The station rim parts are solid resin and I could not think of a way to hollow them out for lighting.  No stand is included in the kit, so I made a display base that will support the finished model on the brass tube with a 9 volt battery contained inside the base with a switch.  The Orion will be mounted on a thin wire attached to the base.


Many thanks for having a look.  Questions and comments are always welcome

 

Bill

 

The parts:

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Typical resin part from kit:

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Inside of hub part:

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Small clear red LEGO tile used to provide colour and light diffusion.  This tile fits exactly into square space at rear of docking bay:

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Hub parts and lights.  The LED lights have been attached to the tiles with epoxy:

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More images . . .

 

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Proper alignment is critical with this kit.  The LEGO alignment jig helped a great deal:

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Once all of the spoke arms were in place, I drilled a hole in a piece of plywood to hold the hub and keep the assembly flat:

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The kit instructions call for these photo etch ring spacers to be attached between the rim sections when they are glued together.  I found this to be overly complex and nearly impossible to keep everything properly aligned so I glued the rim sections first and then used a razor saw to cut an opening for the spacers:

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The kit lacks surface detail on the surfaces where the windows are located.  I added various small panels from thin styrene sheet and some spare photo etch parts to give these flat surfaces some details:

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The kit includes tiny photo etch triangles for the spoke arm supports.  These did not fit my replacement scratch built spoke arms so I cut triangles from thin styrene sheet which worked well:

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Edited by Jeddahbill
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Ah, you've done some nice stuff there. Wish I'd thought of adding the "ring spacer" flanges in the way you've done---they were a real faff to add while the quadrants and spokes were being brought together, and I was never satisfied with the final positions as a result.

 

Also: I'm going out immediately to steal my nephew's Lego for future jig-making purposes.

 

Dragging up a chair to see the girder-work going in ...

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My vast horde of classic LEGO goes back well over 20 years ago when my son (now 30) was fascinated with them.  He eventually lost interest, but I kept them when he left home to seek his fortune.  Over the years these LEGO have proved to be extremely helpful in my scale modelling endeavors.  I can't remember exactly, but I believe many of the more exotic LEGO shapes came with large adventure sets we purchased for his birthdays and Christmas.  The gears and round posts probably came with one of these sets.

 

So here I am, 63 years old and still playing with LEGO . . . .   don't tell my son!

 

Cheers,

Bill

Edited by Jeddahbill
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Work on the tiny Orion space clipper.  The kit comes with three differently scaled resin space clippers - all of them are very small and needed work.  I selected the largest as it required the least amount of clean up and was about the right size to work with some decals I had in my spares bin.

 

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The largest and best of the three that come with the kit.

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Stinger things added to the rear. 

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The clipper will be mounted on music wire attached to the display base.  Decals are not exact size, but close enough and are the smallest I could find.  No decals or details for the clipper are included in the kit.

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Thanks for having a look!

 

Bill

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A few images of the ring being constructed in orbit.  The kit includes very nice steel photo etch details which look great, but I wanted some more details.  The photos show the kit steel parts along with various photo etch brass spare parts, styrene rod, steel wire, and small details made from styrene strip.  Overall these additions give a more detailed appearance to the construction areas of the ring.  At this point, everything is ready for primer.  Many thanks for having a look.

 

Cheers,

Bill

 

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Nice detailing! You've done a lot of fine work there.

 

The partially built section was visually very satisfying in the movie, but on reflection it never seemed like a good idea for them to be trying to build the thing while it was rotating, and even less so (from a mass-balance point of view) to have the construction of some quadrants more advanced than others.

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17 hours ago, Hamiltonian said:

Nice detailing! You've done a lot of fine work there.

 

The partially built section was visually very satisfying in the movie, but on reflection it never seemed like a good idea for them to be trying to build the thing while it was rotating, and even less so (from a mass-balance point of view) to have the construction of some quadrants more advanced than others.

Thanks!  Not sure what Mr. Kubrick was thinking when he decided on the space station under construction, perhaps just for effects.  It does look very good!

Bill

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17 hours ago, Hamiltonian said:

Nice detailing! You've done a lot of fine work there.

 

The partially built section was visually very satisfying in the movie, but on reflection it never seemed like a good idea for them to be trying to build the thing while it was rotating, and even less so (from a mass-balance point of view) to have the construction of some quadrants more advanced than others.

As long as they were broadly building each section in sequence, it would have been ok I guess. I could imagine that there would be mass damping units in place to stabilize weight distribution.

 

 

The model looks really good!

How big is this thing?

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2 hours ago, Jeddahbill said:

Thanks!  Not sure what Mr. Kubrick was thinking when he decided on the space station under construction, perhaps just for effects.  It does look very good!

Bill

 

1 hour ago, SprueMan said:

As long as they were broadly building each section in sequence, it would have been ok I guess. I could imagine that there would be mass damping units in place to stabilize weight distribution.

 

 

The model looks really good!

How big is this thing?

Fair old moment arm on all that structural steel. But I guess all the construction material would need to come in through the hub and then be transported outwards inside the spokes, so they could adjust the CoG by regulating that movement. Wouldn't want to be a "high girder" worker on the open framework, though!

 

I'm thinking it was very much an interesting look, cinematographically, but it was also a very neat establishing shot---just by showing us a space station with new-build construction going on, he's orientating us to the fact that we're in the early days of human expansion into space, but that it's going well.

 

(On a similar "looks neat but would it work" note, I always wondered how the pilots got out of the flightdeck of the Ares 1B, once they'd landed on the moon. Low gravity, certainly, but they'd end up lying on their backs looking at the sky, with the door behind them now part of the floor, and some distance below them.)

 

Having built one of these myself (though not as well as this one's going), I can report that the model is about eight-and-a-half inches across.

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Fantastic job, well done!!  Love the extra detailing on those parts of the rings that are under construction, and on the other parts.  I might follow your example (if I may) and add some extra detailing to mine, which is at the priming stage at the moment (and has been for a while).

 

Pete

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On 9/16/2022 at 7:59 AM, SprueMan said:

As long as they were broadly building each section in sequence, it would have been ok I guess. I could imagine that there would be mass damping units in place to stabilize weight distribution.

 

 

The model looks really good!

How big is this thing?

Many thanks!  As mentioned the completed model is about 8.5 inches in diameter.  I think a larger scale, about 12 inch diameter, would be better.

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5 hours ago, glueman said:

Fantastic job, well done!!  Love the extra detailing on those parts of the rings that are under construction, and on the other parts.  I might follow your example (if I may) and add some extra detailing to mine, which is at the priming stage at the moment (and has been for a while).

 

Pete

Thanks Pete!  Very small styrene rod and spare photo etch worked well for me.  I did use some music wire, but it was more difficult to bend the curve I needed- the styrene rod works much better.   Good luck with your build.

 

Bill

Edited by Jeddahbill
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20 minutes ago, Neil Lambess said:

I've always wondered what happened to stations I to IV 😀

 

1-3 were abandoned early in construction, and IV was pinched by Commander Sinclair for the first Shadow War...

 

Superb work on a tough kit. Almost worth the terrible crime of glueing lego.

 

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1 hour ago, Neil Lambess said:

I've always wondered what happened to stations I to IV 😀

Inflation. It's "Space Station One" in the novel, but mutated into "Space Station-5" in the screenplay.

 

(Clarke's novel also has the hub of the station contra-rotating, to make docking easier---Kubrick made the right decision, cinematographically, I think, to go for the Orion III having to rotate into synchrony with the station instead.)

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That looks like a lovely build of a very difficult kit! I'm in a 2001 groove at the moment having built the Moebius Space Clipper and now working on the Aries 1B kit. I ought to tackle the Moon Bus next :)

 

On 9/21/2022 at 10:28 PM, Neil Lambess said:

I've always wondered what happened to stations I to IV 😀

 

Well IV went back in time to take Sinclair back to become Valen... oh hang on, thats Babylon 5 :D

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On 9/24/2022 at 4:13 AM, Kallisti said:

That looks like a lovely build of a very difficult kit! I'm in a 2001 groove at the moment having built the Moebius Space Clipper and now working on the Aries 1B kit. I ought to tackle the Moon Bus next :)

 

 

Well IV went back in time to take Sinclair back to become Valen... oh hang on, thats Babylon 5 :D

Thank you! 

 

This is a challenging build.  I made it even more difficult by scratch building the spokes, adding lighting and smaller details.  Painting delayed - I need to find a hose fitting before I can get the airbrush back in action.

 

Good luck on your Aries - keep posting images.

 

Bill

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