Yearly Archive 2020

Shuttle Alpha is Getting a Makeover

Whilst procrastinating work on Starship V, I decided to revisit the good old shuttle Alpha. This was the very first ship in the fleet, and my design work has come a long way since then.

The simple version of the shuttle does not have the modifications for the interior. This is something I need to address, and also there is no version of the detail version of the shuttle with the landing gear retracted.

So what did I do? Ignore these issues and start detailing the interior! There is a lot of wasted space in the interior of the shuttle. Especially once the standard layout tiles are in place. While it seemed a good idea to have seating, showing the inside of the walls, it used up almost an inch of interior space by itself. So I will probably revisit the interior tiles as well.

In all, the planned changes include the following:

• Restructuring the folders to have the detail version be default
• Only adding detail to the lower section of the fuselage – with the top on, you can’t see the extra details anyway
• Updating the low detail version forward fuselage to have the correct groove for supporting cockpit tiles
• Detail version of the shuttle to get a version with landing gear retracted

If I have time, I am also looking at:

• Doing a print in place hinged version of the shuttle ramp
• Making new tiles for the cargo bay, removing the internal wall structure