Slowly approaching the finish line... very slowly. The original design has two wimpy cranes that are supposed to take the astronauts from the "observation deck" to the surface, but other than the crane, the kit provides no obvious way down. The Paragraphics PE set adds two nice elevator cages, but I couldn't see a safe way of getting the astronauts (in their cumbersome suits) from the deck to the elevator. The elevator cages then have to swing out far enough to clear the engine base and landing pads. It just didn't seem like a safe operation all around.
I spent way more time than I'm willing to admit designing a platform that would allow the astronauts to safely step into the elevator and not have to swing widely over the surface just to clear the vehicle structure.
I also added an expandable airlock to the base of the cargo/habitation module. I spent some time in my CAD program designing the folds... when I realized that if I printed it on my FDM printer at 0.1mm resolution, the print layer artifacts would be perfect. I also added some internal guide lines and a hatch. Here again, the printer artifacts look like insulation/details.
Both in place. Adding the PE ship railing was a perfect example of CA refusing to work. The CA stuck to everything except the edge of the plastic. It took several attempts (with the help of some accelerator) to get everything to stick. I still have to bend one of the railings back into place. There's a small piece of plastic at the front of the platform (barely visible) that will act as the local controls for the crane. The first crane would be almost directly over the front of the platform:
Here's a closeup of the expandable cargo airlock. I still need to add a smaller platform and the possibly larger cargo crane:
I used some printed 1/350 astronauts to get a scale of this ship. It is just massive; a crew of 50-60 would fit comfortably in the sphere.
