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Cozmo makes a nice 10 centimeter (4 inch) resin model of the Leif Ericson. He also makes a nice 10 cm resin model of the Landmaster from the movie Damnation Alley. Craig York suggested that the Leif Ericson would carry a Landmaster or two. I started my attempt at making a mesh of the Landmaster, but was hampered by the lack of any good blueprints or good photos. Lucky for me I stumbled over a mesh created by Imagiro (Rigel D. Chiokis) in Lightwave. And as it turns out Blender can import Lightwave files. Certainly Imagiro's mesh is far better than anything I'm likely to make. The Landmaster will just barely fit sideways in the lower neck of the Leif, but I see I'm going to have to make the cargo hatch just a tad taller. As it is, the Landmaster is too tall to fit through the hatch. There are other vehicles that would be appropriate, but I do not have models of them yet. |
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Well, after some debate, it looks like the neck transfer bay is a poor choice for huge items like a Landmaster. The hatch is too low, the neck has limited cargo space, the Landmaster would have trouble turning to align itself with the ramp, etc. Now we are looking at the aft section as the cargo area. Which is good for me, since I had already sort of staked out the center area forwards of the hangar bay for the fusion reactor. Perhaps the neck transfer bay is a boat dock, used when the ship is floating in the water. U.S. Naval officer pointed out that if the glowy orange rectangles are supposed to be heat radiators, it is counterproductive to locate them downwind of the engine exhaust. Oops. I guess I better stipulate that they are some sort of auxiliary rocket propulsion system. There is a trapazoidal feature on the aft of the ship, looks like a large transfer bay to me. I made a ramp that had a more reasonable twenty degree slope, it turned out to be short enough to stow in the ship between the aft end of the hangar bay and the aft end of the ship. Or we could always use cranes. |
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The neck transfer bay as a boat dock. brings up the fact that landing in the water opens up the thorny problem of seawater corrosion. Not to mention the dangerous thermal stresses encountered when the belly of the Leif Ericson, red-hot from atmospheric re-entry, smacks down on all that cold water. These images are done quick and dirty, since making a convincing ocean surface in Blender is quite difficult. Yes, I know that the ship is not casting a shadow into the wave highlights. |
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Here's a quick pass at making the Leif into the MacArthur. |
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And here is a heavy-handed attempt to put exhaust dirt stains on the wings. |