Projects for rain and off-days
There will be plenty of times where construction may be held
up for any number of reasons. You may find plenty to fill in your time but I
prefer to use that time as constructively as possible. In surfing the net I hit
upon the idea of decorating the inside of my observatory with something
relevant. Model space probes...real NASA and JPL etc. A couple or few of the
real ground breakers would be nice I think, so I chose the following to build.
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Voyager, because It was one of the first to travel outside
the solar system.
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Pioneer for the same reason.
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Cassini, a very high profile probe to Saturn with the
Huygens probe piggy-backing to Titan.
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Galileo, for its ground breaking trip to Jupiter
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The Hubble space telescope, because of its role in bringing
the REAL pictures to the attention of the public.
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The Space Shuttle Columbia, the first of the fleet.
I thought I might attach them close to the inside skin of the
dome via some fishing wire or perhaps some display boxes fitted between the
inside and outside skins of the observatory walls.
I have made a start by downloading a paper model of Cassini from the net and
built it in a day. This one was free. There are others available for mail-order
purchase from spacecraftkits.com, but they are really quite cheap! From the
experience I can tell you it was well worth the effort! Very relaxing,
interesting, fun and very satisfying in the end! It looks so good, even without
painting. As I already had some wood glue in the shed, the most expensive thing
to buy was the can of spray adhesive for $10 AU. Apart from the spray and wood
glue, the whole thing cost me about $4 AU.
After completing the Cassini model their way, I cut off a few
bits and replaced them with bits and pieces to make it look more authentic. It's
a good thing the internet has plenty of images of this high-profile spacecraft
to work from. I have done much the same with Galileo, which is also a free one
off the web. Next is Pioneer!
Here's a couple of links for these type of models... you can
go from there.
http://spacecraftkits.com/index.html
http://spacecraftkits.com/free.html
http://www.realspacemodels.com/ (This is a beauty for resin kits.)
I purchased Voyager, the Hubble space telescope and a free Mars Polar Lander
from spacecraft kits. I put them all together in less than a week. They are very
good value for money and I have had heaps of fun putting them together. They
also look very authentic. One satisfied space freak here!