Aries-1B Medical Shuttle
After about a year of work, the Aries-1B scale model is finished. For those not familiar with this subject, it is from the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey. The vehicle depicted in the film transported a Dr. Heywood Floyd from the space station orbiting the Earth to his destination on the Moon. As shown in the film, the vehicle is a bit bland, almost entirely painted gray. As this is a fictional subject, I decided to have a bit of fun.
I like the idea of a medical or rescue ship and felt modifying the Aries-1B accordingly would be a sensible extrapolation. The base kit is 1/48 scale and produced by Moebius. The quality of the kit is fair, not excellent. Still, if you build it straight out of the box the end result will be impressive. I added a lighting system (something like 100 LEDs) using products from Evan Designs. The 3D-printed resin figures are from a vendor at Shapeways and required painting.
I super detailed the main deck and cockpit despite the fact that visibility would be very limited. Both were modified significantly to support a loosely developed backstory. According to the film, the three astronauts killed by HAL9000 aboard the Discovery were apparently transported to the ship while in hibernation. Nothing else is really known about these unfortunate background characters, so I decided to fill in the gap a little. I like to think of Drs. Kaminski, Hunter, and Kimball as having been stationed at Clavius Base, called upon to investigate the TMA-1 anomaly discovered on the Moon. These guys become leading experts on the object. We witness TMA-1 sending a high-pitch signal to Jupiter (where TMA-2 is later discovered). The three experts receive additional training as naturally they are selected to got to Jupiter with Bowman and Poole, the guys in charge of piloting Discovery, along with HAL9000, to Jupiter. Eventually, of course, we learn that HAL9000 kills these three astronauts, as well as Poole, when it determines the human occupants of the ship to be a threat to mission execution. Bowman eventually disables the computer and takes the famous journey into the unknown.
The model was a pleasure to build, but there were fit complications and a few dodged bullets, largely my fault for over-complicating the build process and not fully planning ahead.
