Moebius 1/144 Discovery spacecraft from 2001

[Hamiltonian]

This is the big Moebius styrene kit that probably needs no introduction. Currently I'm at a "proof of concept" stage in trying to decide how to wire this for lights. I've got some other projects on the go, too, so I suspect this will be a sporadic log.

 

The kit is supported by a long steel spine that runs the length of the craft from the base of the centre engine bell at rear to the back of the round command sphere at front. It's actually composed of two separate rods, of equal length, which join in a steel sleeve concealed inside the antenna module.

There's a lot of space inside the kit's hollow engine compartment, so it's an obvious place to stow batteries, and the two steel rods of the spine are actually rather robust tubes, so in principle they could carry wiring from the back to the front of the kit.

 

Here's what the inside of the engine compartment looks like, with the steel rod in place, protruding from the rear to support the rear engine bell:

 

I made some mods to the upper half of the engine compartment to turn it into a lid for this "battery bay":

I've extended the original locating holes for the outer plating into slots, and I've removed the front locating flange, so this piece now works as a removable cover:

 

 

Next task was to prove that I could get some decent wiring through the tubing. With a little fiddling and some mineral oil I eventually managed to screw a twisted pair through both lengths of tubing:

 

Here are the two rods assembled end to end, linked by the central sleeve fitting, to give an impression of how long this assembly is going to be:

 

Next I wanted to trim a short length off the rear rod, so that it finished inside the "battery bay", but I needed to add some sort of structure inside the bay, so that the engine compartment remains supported. It doesn't need to be particularly robust, since there's not much weight at the back of the kit. I came up with this, which is drying in place supported by the full-length rod:

I could actually have made it a little more robust if I'd thought to drill out the plastic case at each end of my brass rods---these holes would have been concealed by the external detail panels. As it is, they're simply epoxied in place.

 

After letting that assembly dry overnight, I measured the length I needed to remove from my rear rod. Here I have the rod in its correct position, with the rear end against a stop inside the central engine bell, and I've marked the point at which it protrudes from the rear of my improvised support structure:

 

On the principle of measuring twice and cutting once, I also assembled the four base units for the rear cargo pods, and made sure that once they were threaded on to the rod, an appropriate length of rod protruded at the front end to engage with the central sleeve. Then I pulled back my wiring and Dremelled off 1¾ inches of steel. Here's the post-lopping assembly, showing I can now get my wires into the bay, with the correct length of steel extending forwards to engage with the central sleeve.

 

There's room for a couple of switched AA 3V boxes---one for the engines and one for the command sphere.

And there's room to glue in a couple of connection blocks at the rear.

 

To get wiring to the engine bells, I can use the original central hole for the steel rod, and I've drilled out the supports for the two lateral engines:

As it stands, this leaves the engines bells relatively unsupported, so I may drill out further and add three styrene tubing sleeves to replace the original supports.

 

At the front end, only one hole needed drilled, in the rear part of the command sphere, just large enough to allow the wiring through while still allowing the structure to serve as a locating stop for the front end of the steel rod.

 

That's it for now.

 

[Mike]

Cool I've got one of these in the stash with all the GreenStrawberry goodies.  Are you going to use any aftermarket on top of the lighting?  Where's my notepad?

[Pete in Lincs]

Someone left the Podbay door open, so I'm now settled in the corner to watch. Nice.

This week we've got the space station, the moon shuttle, the Orion Earth shuttle and this one going. I suspect a plot!

[Hamiltonian]

21 hours ago, Mike said:

Cool I've got one of these in the stash with all the GreenStrawberry goodies.  Are you going to use any aftermarket on top of the lighting?  Where's my notepad?

In the time this one has been in the stash, I've developed a case of SAMBU (Severe After-Market Build-Up), and own some bits and pieces that probably won't now be used.

Plan at present is the Green Strawberry pod bay (lovely thing), the Paragrafix cockpit, and a lightable EVA pod from Falconware via Shapeways. Though I'm tempted to upgrade the one I have to the newer version with a full interior, and relegate the old one to relative obscurity inside the pod bay.

I'm hoping to have an illuminated pod on its extended platform which I can remove (pod+platform), allowing a good view of the illuminated pod bay interior. We'll see how that goes.

[Hamiltonian]

I've now edited the thread title. If it really had been a 1/44 Discovery, I'd have been posting under Walkarounds.

[Jeddahbill]

Excellent start on this build - looking forward to see what magic you can do with this kit! 

 

Bill

[Hamiltonian]

Not much work needed on the engine bells---just a few seconds with a rat-tail file to open a wire run.

 

There's room to place a couple of LEDs in each engine bell, behind the two nozzles.

 

So I got these soldered up and tested:

 

There are a couple of options for the engines. I have some translucent resin replacement parts from Yay! Monsters, which would require some fairly fiddly masking and painting. But the Paragrafix PE for the cockpit includes some engine grills that could be placed over the drilled-out engine nozzles:

(Yay! Monsters part on the left, kit part on the right, above.)

 

My problem is with the back of the Yay! Monsters part, contrasted below with the kit part:

It'll need a fair bit of work to get it to sit nicely.

 

So I've gone with the Paragrafix grills, as a late decision:

 

The bells themselves should be easy to light-proof, since they have outer detailed parts that fit over the seams of the inner parts---I'll layer in some black into that assembly, too.

The nozzle parts above will be a little tricky, though, with the potential for light to leak all around the hexagons, and really very little room for manoeuvre where the engine nozzles reach the sides of the hexagon, top and bottom---too much sealant there, and it could squeeze out into the light path behind the grill; too little and there's an access problem for adding any additional sealant once these parts are recessed into the engine bells.

 

And I need to fit some kind of diffuser behind the grills.

[Jeddahbill]

Enjoying your build very much, looking great so far.  I had a struggle with light leaks on the engines.  Finally went with placing the LED inside a aluminum tube with a coloured lens cap on the end of the tube.  Eliminated the leaks and focused light to the grills.  Let me know and I can post a photo.

 

Bill

 

 

Edited October 9, 2022 by Jeddahbill

[Hamiltonian]

7 hours ago, Jeddahbill said:

Enjoying your build very much, looking great so far.  I had a struggle with light leaks on the engines.  Finally went with placing the LED inside a aluminum tube with a coloured lens cap on the end of the tube.  Eliminated the leaks and focused light to the grills.  Let me know and I can post a photo.

 

That would be interesting to see, thanks.

I do have a slightly strange experimental plan of my own, which will let me use my current LED set up, but it could all go terribly wrong!

[Hamiltonian]

OK, success with the engine lighting.

Three layers of black paint in the engine bells---interior, between layers, outer---and some aluminium foil in the interior.

In a darkened room, bells down, I found a couple of little light leaks along seams around the hexagonal opening, and a couple of faint leaks associated with the locating flanges for the outer detail panels, which extend through to the interior---a couple of them had pierced the foil lining a were creating light channels. All easily addressed with a little filler and black paint.

 

Next was the matter of getting a seal around the hexagonal inserts for the paired engine nozzles. I'd come up with the idea of using my diffuser as a light seal. I didn't want my diffuser to show up as a pale colour behind the engine grills, so I decided to use a bit of plastic packaging that had originally contained some of my wiring.

 

Dark side of the plastic sheet at left, stretched into place on hexagonal engine part at centre, and showing the dark appearance behind the engine grills at right.

 

Getting my light seal involved leaving a rim of plastic sheet around the hexagon, just wide enough to fold up around its edges when it was inserted into the engine bell, but without protruding visibly once the part was in place. Then, just before gluing the part in place, I spread a little fine filler all around this plastic rim.

This then auto-filled the gap around the hexagon as it was pushed into place. What little extruded was easily removed with a damp cotton bud, or a damp fold of tissue eased through the confined space behind the engine nozzles, which was the tricky area I doubted I'd be able to fill after the event.

Once everything was dry, I just had to run a fine paintbrush loaded with grey paint along the filler line.

And the final light test in the dark:

So that seems to have worked fine.

 

I'm pleased with the slightly bluish tinge that remains after the diffuser has done its work. We didn't see the engines alight in 2001, but there are a couple of glimpses in 2010, and this appearance is more or less what I was after.

 

[Hamiltonian]

A key component arrived today - the HDA Modelworx decals to complement the photoetch Discovery cockpit from Paragrafix.

By all accounts these are fairly delicate items, and I think I'll give them a good coat of decal film before using them---robustness perhaps being more of a virtue than precise surface conformity on this occasion.

There's an almost distressing number of lighting apertures in the photoetch cockpit and corridor, so a fairly large number of lightboxes to be built while ensuring it all fits inside the upper dome of the kit. The decals will, I hope, provide suitable light filters (another reason to make them fairly stiff). I'm really not sure at this stage how much of the forward instrument lights will be worth illuminating---I'll need to do a dry assembly and crane my neck to see what's visible through the windows.

 

You'll see there are also pieces for the infamous airlock. I won't be using those, because there's a space conflict with the pod bay, and in any case it wouldn't make much narrative sense to have both the pod bay and the airlock open. Anyone who wants to model the airlock will be welcome to what's left after I've removed the cockpit parts and decals.

[Hamiltonian]

On 10/10/2022 at 2:13 AM, Hamiltonian said:

That would be interesting to see, thanks.

I do have a slightly strange experimental plan of my own, which will let me use my current LED set up, but it could all go terribly wrong!

Well, my experiment worked out OK, and in the meantime I've found your very impressive WiP thread, so no need to trouble yourself posting the pictures again on my account, thanks. 🙂

[Uncle Monty]

Lovely work on this. Looks like this kit can be modded in any number of ways. I'll be watching with interest.

[Hamiltonian]

I've been using Aztek Dummy paint masks for a bit of preshading.

The idea here is to produce a fine mottle that should all but disappear under my final blending coat. At the front of the engine compartment I've masked off various panels with successive coats of lighter grey.

Unfortunately, my lightest grey has a more yellow white point than the other greys I've been using, despite looking like it was a neutral-to-blue grey in the jar. Sigh.

This is also visible on my engine bells, which I've pre-shaded with some LifeColor Smoke.

My plan is to eventually mix up a big pot of very pale grey with a tiny bit of blue in it, and go over the whole pre-shaded model with a blending coat. The tonal and shading variations visible here mean I'll probably need to apply more of the final coat to the engine bells than to the engine compartment, just because of the different approaches to preshading I've used, and it's beginning to look like I'll need to keep the model in sub-assemblies until after it's been finally painted.

To that end, the engine bells are held only lightly in position with some Krystal-Klear, so they can be popped off later. There's an issue with the kit's engine bells---in the "real thing", the three hexagons should butt against each other edge to edge, but the kit parts want to sit a millimetre or so apart. They can be easily persuaded into the correct position, at the expense of a small amount of tilt that's really only demonstrable if you press all three hexagons against a flat surface. I wanted to take a preliminary look at the situation (and test my wiring run), to decide whether to insert a sliver of styrene spacer, or put up with the slight and largely unnoticeable tilt.

 

Here they are, edge to edge, showing that my dark plastic diffuser produces a good visual effect when the engines are off.

For the final blender coat I'll mask the engine nozzles---I use a suitably sized hole punch to cut circles out of masking tape, temporarily attached to a bit of scrap styrene.

 

And I got my engine wires trimmed and tested:

(Pretty rubbish photograph of the lit engines, sorry. And I see I have a tiny nick in a corner of the leftmost hexagon, as you look at the photo, that'll need to be addressed at some point.)

[Jeddahbill]

On 10/12/2022 at 3:59 PM, Hamiltonian said:

Well, my experiment worked out OK, and in the meantime I've found your very impressive WiP thread, so no need to trouble yourself posting the pictures again on my account, thanks. 🙂

Apologies for the delay!  Just got my internet service back after five days.  Looks like you did a splendid job with the engines! 

Bill

[Hamiltonian]

Progress on the Paragrafix cockpit with HDA Modelworx decals.

 

Here are the bits, with the photoetch primed and glossed ready for the decals.

The couches are plain brass, whereas the real things had strips of white padding around them, so I added a little detail:

I'd actually intended to print the padding pattern as a decal, but quite liked the "padded" effect produced by merely wrapping the paper pattern around the brass.

 

I created the pattern by scanning one of the brass couch patterns before folding, and then sketching the padding using that scan as a template.

And a reference frame from the film:

 

Here's the cockpit corridor decaled up, with a bit of back-lighting to show where I'll be adding my lights behind the door and wall. There's a little HAL panel at left, which I've filled with a blob of clear red paint and will illuminated separately.

And assembled:

The roof will get a thin layer of styrene sheet as a diffuser, and a big lightbox.

 

I'd been toying with the idea of omitting the transparent part for the cockpit windows, just so that we could get a better view inside, and then I discovered a big through-and-through flaw in the kit's transparent part, just next to where it joined the sprue. So that decided that. Here's the kit window part, with Paragrafix's frame added.

I've added some styrene strip, top and bottom, to fill the slots that would have been occupied by the transparent part.

 

I also did a bit of movie research to check the extent of the black paint around the window. I've seen kits in which the entire recess is painted black, but in the film the black paint was confined to just the lower "shelf".

 

Back in the interior, there's a problem at the rear of the cockpit. The decal sheet and photoetch have a sort of corrugated fan arrangement in black and white in this area, but in the film it was smooth and dark grey with just a few pale panel lines:

In 2010, even the panel pattern has disappeared ...

 

You'll also see that Paragrafix's couches are actually shaped like those in 2010 - the couches in 2001 were quite asymmetrical and hosted a small control panel - but I decided I couldn't face trying to scratch build them.

 

So I printed up some replacement marking for the rear bulkhead:

And here they are in place on the partially folded cockpit:

The window section is just a trial fit - I'll get the interior painted up before I fix it permanently and fold over the cockpit roof.

 

I used Paragrafix's photoetch astronaut, and an HDA Modelworx decal to add Frank Poole to the left seat.

 

He's a bit flat, obviously, and may look a little strange when viewed from the side windows, but there seems to be a significant gap in the aftermarket material here. I considered ordering up a set of 1/144 naval figures, clad in dungarees, and adapting one to depict a flight-suited astronaut, but I wasn't confident that such a thing would be a fit for Moebius's "1/144 scale" in this kit.

 

As you can see from the photos and movie stills above, there's a considerable expanse of empty floor in front of the kit couches, where the real thing had quite a complicated instrument panel. Experimenting with my dry-fitted windows, I figure I should be able to see the edge of the control panel directly in front of each couch. I'd also like to get some light into that area, because at present all the light is behind the couches, and the Poole figure will be silhouetted. So I'm going to botch together a low flat light box to provide some diffuse light, as if from the forward TV screens, and use a couple of the spare decals from the HDA Modelworx sheet to provide some representation of the two control panels. (You'll see I've amputated poor Poole's lower legs in anticipation of snugging the light box up towards his lap.)

 

I'll report back once that's in place and the cockpit has been folded into its final shape.

[Jeddahbill]

Coming together very nicely and looking superb.  Sharp eye on the upper ledge of the cockpit window!  Despite many, many hours staring at photographs I missed this entirely and painted it black!.   Very much want to see how the added detail to the forward cockpit looks when you get it complete.  So hard to see any detail through the window, the added control panels should look impressive.

 

Bill

[Theb]

Jeeeeeez!
 

thinking I need to pick brains when it comes to the electronics and lighting stuff.

 

2001 has been a profound part of my life for many a year. I used to have an original Moonbus and still have someplace (although broken and earmarked for restoration) the shuttle. The best thing about Kubrick’s classic is that it will never nor could it ever be deemed unworthy of a ‘re-imagining’ as the re-make fraternity like to call the process of making better which in reality equates to a free range chicken being sold as having a better life than those that are couped up in a box before annihilation. Doomed! No matter what!
 

non interesting story which may act as a spoiler for not reading further.

 

I went to a party way back in the 80’s where all the guys (after the ladies went to sleep) watched porn on the video player. I then had to wait for all the guys to fall asleep so I could watch 2001 on the player. It was a party of one from then on. Would’ve been Star Wars but the pirate copy I bought was crap. So glad it was!
 

Brian.

 

 

 

 

[phillip1]

Hamiltonian-You are making great progress on this build.  Your techniques and detailing are very impressive.

 

Phillip1

[Hamiltonian]

Some lighting progress. I botched together a little lighting box for that big space at the front of the Paragrafix cockpit. I'm increasingly dubious about the proportions of the Paragrafix part, compared to the "real thing". There's certainly no room to reproduce the large central instrument panel below the windows in anything like the correct proportions. I contented myself with a low box, pierced to allow a (pretty random) glimmer of instrument lights through a pair of lap panels, created from the spare HDA Modelworx decals, and a central shaded light source that should push some light into the front of the cockpit, as if coming from the large central instrument panels and screens.

The back of the box (and the wiring) slide under the kit window part neatly, and the wire run should emerge through a handy little gap between the photoetch and the kit parts.. The central light has a little reflective shade, partly to push the light where I want it to go, and partly to stop it illuminating the upper window frame.

 

For the overhead lighting in the cockpit corridor, I used thin styrene sheet as a diffuser, and constructed a monstrous reflective lightbox (yes, it will fit inside the dome!) in an effort to get a uniform lighting effect without a visible hotspot.

 

Then three more lightboxes---one for the door windows and control button at rear, one for the computer panel at right as you look into the corridor, and one for the "HAL eye" on the left wall.

You'll see I've also added a styrene flange to help with getting a good solid bond between the corridor and the cockpit---I really don't want that to fall apart once the whole thing's assembled! And a fair bit of work chasing light leaks from my botched boxes, but I'd rather lightproof the boxes than try to lightproof the whole command sphere.

 

Here's what it looks like inside:

(I'll need to give the corridor floor a bit of a hoover before final assembly.) The overhead lighting came out OK, I think, though it gets a little dark towards the front of the corridor. Then again, strip light panels often do the same thing; and then again, that part of the overhead will probably be unobservable in the assembled model. The window lights at rear needed revised after initial assembly. At first I relied on the decal film to filter the light, but they turned out glaringly bright. So that lightbox came off, and another little bit of styrene sheet went into place to tone down the brightness. There's also a little blob of clear glue over the door control button, just to take the edge off it a bit.

 

With the cockpit all folded up, and found that I needed to carve a little out of the kit's window part to get it snugged home properly.

Having learned the lesson of the rear windows, I've added styrene diffusers to the little ring of side lights within the cockpit, as well as to the overhead at rear. There are so many major light sources in this assembly that getting a balanced illumination is going to be tricky. My plan is to use warm white lights for the illumination here, in contrast, to the cold white of the corridor, but I'd also like it to be a little more subdued.

You'll see the rear of the cockpit has also acquired a step, built of styrene and detailed with an offcut from the spare HDA Modelworx decals---this padded structure was fairly prominent in the movie scenes, and I think will be visible through the windows.

Getting light to the front overhead instrument panel will be awkward, since there's very little clearance between the photoetch and the kit dome. Above, you can see I've made a start on a reflective "light channel", which should eventually take light into this area from another monster lightbox on the roof of the cockpit.

 

Then I'll glue the kit window part in place and build the complicated lightboxes I'll need for the side panels.

 

Talking of the windows, I took a photograph from the outside with everything dry-fitted, just to demonstrate that the lightboxes didn't create a problem, and that my surgery to get the photoetch snugged up wasn't visible from the outside.

I've extended the window frames with styrene strip to better match the appearance in my reference photo earlier in this thread. It's not perfect (the rear part of the frame shouldn't be vertical), and I may yet tear out the Paragrafix photoetch frame and replace the whole caboodle with styrene sheet.

 

 

 

 

[Jeddahbill]

This looks very good so far.  I like the convincing look of the HAL900 eye in the corridor - it should just be visible through the front window opening.  The work on the window frame detail is nicely done and a big improvement over the photo etch.  I should have spent more time on this area during my build of the kit.  If I do this kit again I will certainly refer to the enhancements you are making to improve the kit and aftermarket items.  Looking forward to further progress on this build.

 

Regards,

 

Bill

[Hamiltonian]

Cockpit lighting now done. One light box on the roof, and then a pair of lightboxes, each with two LEDs, on either side.

With the top lightbox in place, here's the complicated construction for one of the side boxes:

And a little later, with some of the reflective interior in place:

 

Once completed, I checked that everything was working OK by peering in the "rear door" - that is, the hole where the illuminated corridor attaches.

Here's the ceiling panel:

And the side lights:

 

Then I placed the rear tunnel and sealed everything up:

 

The final effect is difficult to photograph (for me, at least!). There's a contrast between the warm and relatively dim lighting of the cockpit itself, the blue glow of my simulated monitors (lighting up the pilot figure), and the bright, cold light of the rear corridor - but in photographs it looks either as if the corridor is painted blue or the cockpit painted yellow, or both, according to the background illuminant. And the coloured lights tend to blow towards white if the interior is suitably exposed.

With my excuses in place, here it is. The ambient illuminant is sunlight. The Tamiya paint pot lid gives you a feel for the size.

 

I'm in a quandary about when to fit this inside the command sphere. Without the transparent windows, it'll be difficult to mask, and I'd be more than a little vexed if I got a paint leak into the interior. At present I'm thinking I'll keep the sphere halves separate right up to final painting, and brush-paint the window frame on this assembly before fitting it into the painted sphere. I'll probably do the same with the pod bay, the open door of which will also be difficult to mask reliably.

 

On to the Green Strawberry pod bay next, starting with checking how best to illuminate my Falconware pod, and how to get electricity to it in a manner which will allow me to remove the extended pod pad so that the pod bay interior can be inspected through the open door.

[Jeddahbill]

Very good WIP photos.  Frustrating how so much of the wonderful cockpit detail becomes impossible to see once the command sphere is completed!  Looking forward to the pod bay - how many of the pod bay doors are you planning to open?

 

Bill 

[Hamiltonian]

2 hours ago, Jeddahbill said:

Very good WIP photos.  Frustrating how so much of the wonderful cockpit detail becomes impossible to see once the command sphere is completed!  Looking forward to the pod bay - how many of the pod bay doors are you planning to open?

 

Bill 

I'm strongly suppressing the urge to report that "I'm afraid I can't do that" ...

At present the plan is to have just the centre door open, with a pod deployed on its platform, headlights on, but with the platform removable to allow inspection of the pod bay through the open door. If for some reason I can't get that to work, I'll open a second door, because the deployed pod will block the interior view. However, preliminary work last night on wiring the Green Strawberry stuff suggests I'll be able to go ahead with Plan A - I'll post some photos soon.

 

Yes, there's a certain amount of frustration in sealing all that cockpit stuff away and looking at it through a slot. I might try to make a small video, since the detail is better appreciated from a continuously varying viewpoint, as you rotate the assembly in your hand.

My little illuminated lap consoles are currently visible from a steeply downward viewpoint, but very difficult to photograph. I suspect they'll become invisible once the kit is full assembled, with the additional overhang above the windows. But I'm in any case glad I added the extra light at the front of the cockpit, which does have a visible effect on the Frank Poole figure--though no-one will notice but me!

[Hamiltonian]

Preliminary wiring of the Green Strawberry pod-bay. I have a couple of square-section brass tubes of the right gauge to replace the pod platform support arms---the smaller slides inside the larger.

With a bit of chisel work I made space for the larger brass tubing on the underside of the resin pod-bay floor. The smaller tube is a neat press-fit into the underside of the pod platform. I dry-assembled the pod platform and a couple of short lengths of brass tubing as a gauge on which to align the larger tubing, before soldering on wires and epoxying in place:

You can see I've also drilled a small hole through the centre of the pod platform, and excavated away a little resin so that I can run wires from the pod through the platform, and attach to the brass support arms.

 

Here's the top view, with the pierced photoetch part in place on the platform:

 

I don't plan on running the platform in and out---I just intend to have the illuminated pod sitting in the "extended" position, but with the option to remove it to allow an uninterrupted view into the pod-bay through the open central door. The breakable electrical connection will be via the metal-to-metal contact between the two sections of brass tubing.

 

In a fit of ridiculous profligacy, I replaced the solid resin Green Strawberry pod-bay console with the photoetch version from the Paragrafix pod-bay. I'd have struggled to light the Green Strawberry version, but the Paragrafix lights up nicely:

 

Here it is in place on the detailed pod-bay floor, with a "proof-of-concept" LED lit via the nested brass tubes.

To improve the electrical contact, I tamped a couple of tiny balls of kitchen foil into the larger brass tubes, so that the inner tubes slide in and then make contact against a conductive stop. It all seems to work pretty well---I can wave the assembly around without breaking the electrical contact.

 

The Green Strawberry decals behaved as if they were about thirty years old---quite adherent to the backing, but also pretty fragile---there's a little patching and one recalcitrant wrinkle visible above, but I don't think it'll be a huge issue once the thing is lit from directly above by the ceiling lights.

 

As you can see, Green Strawberry provide parts for three support structures under the stowed pod platforms. They're pretty fiddly---one fragile resin part and five photoetch struts each---and mine required a little modification to sit at the right height. They're also going to be largely invisible in the assembled kit, and I have yet to glimpse any such structures when reviewing the film, though I may have missed something. I'm not sure they were worth the bother, but they're there now.

 

I started work on lighting the little "lab area" to one side of the pod-bay, through which the astronauts move using a ladder which is pointless in free fall and orientated wrongly for acceleration (but then, the whole pod bay would be stood on end under acceleration).

The whole area is dimly lit by the downlight on the ladder, the light from the pod-bay coming through the window, and some computer screens glimpsed at left of frame above.

 

Green Strawberry provide a solid resin part for this wall of the lab, detailed with a photoetch part and a decal, so I dug out the resin behind the photoetch "screens" so I can light them.

The part on the left, above, is the outside wall of the lab, visible in this view from the film:

 

I've drilled a little hole in the door control panel so that I can reproduce the noticeable red light visible in the film. Realistically, I should glaze the window and have the airlock door closed while the pod-bay door is open---I'll fiddle around and see how it all looks once assembled.