[Starship Modeler's fourth on-line modeling contest: starships & vehicles from written sci-fi.]

By Michael Dentzer

Cosmos





Scale: Not Stated
Source: 2061: Odyssey Three by Arthur C. Clarke

"Cosmos, first of the Tsung fleet, had been designed to carry freight and passengers on the Earth-Moon-Mars run--and as a test vehicle, through complex deals with a dozen organizations and governments, of the still-experimental muon drive. Built at the Imbrium shipyards, she had sufficient thrust to lift off from the Moon with zero payload; operating from orbit to orbit, she would never again touch the surface of any world."

Thus was the description given of this vessel from Clarke's novel. With further descriptions of her sister ships, Galaxy and Universe later in the book, I deduced a basic configuration as being cylindrical in shape with large fuel tanks of Lunar water used for the reaction mass in the fusion engine, and large stateroom windows in the passenger section. The details were left up to the imagination.

The model I came up with was built primarily from a kitbashed MPC Pilgrim Observer spacecraft kit, with a second-to-third stage connecting cowling from a 1:144 scale Saturn five, to connect the cylindrical 12 deck passenger module to the #1 freight module, and then added a lot of detail parts from the parts box. Painted overall with Testors MM light gray, and detailed with several other shades of gray, and insignia red for the Helium 3 cargo tanks, which have a checkered decal round the middle. The cargo pods were numbered with dry transfer decals. I used reflective tape in the windows to create the passive lighting effect on the passenger pod, which gives an illusion of depth that I am quite pleased with. A final touch of weathering was done with a wash of Humbrol flat black and alcohol.

Image: Starboard side

Image: Passenger cabin "lights"

Image: Cargo section

Image: Cargo section from the other side

Image: Front

Image: Engine details

Image: Overhead




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This page was last updated 28 November 2000