Here's a kind of screwing around I wouldn't mind being able to make a little time for every now and again these days.
What I've got here are a couple pictures of some “bash-kit” style models I did going on 20 years ago now out of pretty much just random stuff I happened to have around or repurpose from goings-on from my day-to-day life. The pictures are more than a little grainy because I was still using a film camera and a flatbed scanner at the time. Like I said, though, this was pretty much 20 years ago, so I didn't have a smartphone yet.
A good chunk of my inspiration for doing these is that I've always kind of liked the aesthetic of Apollo era spacecraft in spite of having grown up in the Space Shuttle era. I'm not entirely sure why, but I'm sure the relative simplicity of the design likely has something to do with it, as I'm sure the first picture, at least. I'll also put in links to the originals on my deviantArt just so folks who want to see those don't have to dig through the more-or-less 20 years worth of my other shit to see them.
This first one is my go at the Apollo Command and Service Module. It's made from a cylindrical salt package, a little margarine tub, two of those single-serve ice cream cups and the nozzle from a mustard bottle:
Here's the link to the original. I think I had this one on my computer desk for a while after it was finished, but it got knocked off and broke apart at some point, if I recall. The fact that this one worked as well as it did made me feel maybe a little too confident about my abilities in this regard, so I went ahead with something that was a good deal more complex: a version of Skylab in the same style.
What put the idea in my head for this one was that we'd just come up with that style of large plastic drink cups at my day job, which was the main body of the station. This was a fun one to work on, even if it ultimately failed. I managed to get all the solar panels done with spray paint on paper, attached to plastic drinking straws with superglue, if memory serves. I really started having trouble finishing it, and eventually had to abandon the project because once I got that first solar wing on there, it seemed like there was nothing I could do to get the other wing or the telescope mount to stay put. The engine bell on the end is another single-serve ice cream cup. I think at some point, I even had the makeshift parasol/meteor shield planned, if not made, but that may have been after I took this shot. Here's the link to the original.
Especially back then, I'd always intended to do more like that, and I still kind of would, if I could ever figure out what to have a go at with what I've got on hand. Maybe I'll get to that at some point, but in the meantime, I've got a couple other projects I need to get done first, so I'm going to wrap this up here, by sharing this playlist for a short documentary by a guy called Kevin Gustafson on YouTube. He's got some interesting stuff on his channel, so it might be worth checking out.
Until next time.
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