I really like this ship design -- clean and elegant and interesting. It's not stupid busy with all sorts of bits and pieces like a lot of designs I've seen.

Thanks. Yeah, I grew up in a time when folks were inspired by Movies such as "2001 a Space Odyssey," Star Wars, and every other Special Effects flick where the propmen would slather plastic model tank part kits on plywood forms to liven up the surface details and create a sense of scale. Personally, I feel that a ship which is capable of performing in a planet's atmosphere as well as in outer space should have clean and elegant lines.

I would think that Spaceball One would have discouraged this sort of "stick fiddly crap all over" silliness, but apparently not nearly enough.

At a "Special Effects" display at the Museum of Science in Los Angeles, about ten years ago, I got to see the "Spaceball One" head and arm. The forms were mainly posterboard. with most of the detail drawn on with a 000 technical pen. The Special Effects Wizards added other details after filming.

I was referring to the full Spaceball One model used for that parody unending establishing shot flyby(flyover?). IIRC, it was by far the largest and most stupidly detailed such physical model ever done for the movies at that time - some 16 feet long I think. The later transformed versions and pieces I didn't know about.

"We Brake For No One." Oh yeah... I forgot about that.

All kinds of natural shapes -- including crustaceans and insects -- make very interesting vehicle concepts.

I steal your ship and run away with my dancing slave girls. he he he he heeeeee

I think it should be chrome, just for that extra appeal, but then I think spaceships just look better chrome. As to fiddly bits all over, well, I like to see the thrusters, and maybe some instrumentation, but I agree, Star Wars' ships are REALLY busy. Star Trek's seem to fit your tastes a bit better. Admittedly, I prefer my designs with smooth lines and fiddly bits in certain spots, I've got an old sketch I did of some starship ideas, just a side view on graph paper, I'm not an especially talented artist like yourself. Smooth angular sides, big engine pylons in the rear, and some antenna clusters off the bow. One in particular, a ship meant to be a espionage type craft, complete with state of the art cloaking device & over-sized engines for quick get aways. Had bigger instrument clusters sprouted all over the bow, particularly the ventral portion, as it wasn't built for atmospheric entry and has permanent artificial gravity... I'm not exactly sure why I went on like that... Cool ship.

Personally, I like the idea of "Chrome" finished spacecraft. After seeing that Disney film, "Flight of the Navigator," it occurred to me that a space ship would probably benefit from a surface that either reflected all forms of energy, or was able to renew it's outer hull from microsecond to microsecond. To us the ship might look like it was highly polished metal, but in reality could be made up of billions upon billions of tiny platelets, all controlled by the ship's central processor. Of course it's really a challenge to render those reflective surfaces, but they still look great.

Heh, I liked that movie too. I have it around here somewhere, and I agree, it probably has perfect aerodynamics when it needs them. In space, it probably doesn't need the SR-71 style shapes. I like a malleable spacecraft too, but that's REALLY high technology. It would also be ridiculously expensive to build the earliest iterations of such a craft.

I agree. But did that stop Otto Lowenthal from jumping off the Eiffel Tower hanging from his experimental glider? We have to learn from our mistakes I figure, but first we have to be brave enough to try.

Hmm, interesting.

VERY very nice design indeed, I appreciate :3 :3