Yesterday I began looking at the geometry of the Moonbus with a eye towards doing some model building plans of it and I wanted to share some initial results and observations with everyone.
Reference Material & the Web
As many of you probably already know, there is precious little information about the either the interior or exterior of the Moonbus. It only appears in a few scenes in the movie and even then from only a few angles, so even screen cap images are of limited use. The rear wall of the main cabin for example is never seen at all. This lack of information means that we are forced to guess about many things, there just is no way to be exact. As a result, each attempt to define the details of this ship will vary with each effort, no one can say that theirs is "the ultimate" (me included).
I have 8X10 copies of most of the main shots seen in the film and I made frame grabs from the DVD. I even eliminated the actors from the one main shot of the passenger cabin by combining the open areas of different frames as the actors move around (the camera in that scene is locked down). This is about the best one can do for reference material without having the studio blueprints or additional shots of the filming miniatures (there were at least two). This material in hand, I began by trying to establish the outline of the crossection. After studying the available images I decided that the low-angle nose view was my best hope for this because it is close to a true front view, shows the side wall angles and both the left and right outer edges of the side mounted RCS clusters which allowed me to find the center of the ship and thus the line of symmetry. I then used that above mentioned view of the main cabin to create a crossection of the interior. This is a bit trickier because there is a fair amount of spherical distortion from the lens that was used to film that scene. I made a base assumption that the cabin ceiling height is six feet and scaled accordingly. The resulting full scale dimensions were startling close to the logical dimensions that a designer might use so I was sure that I was very close to correct.
Interiors & Exteriors
Movies never design vehicles where the interior fits inside the exterior and 2001 is no exception. When I tried to combine the interior and exterior crossections I discovered several things. No matter how the two sections are scaled to each other, the interior passenger windows do not match the exterior ones (the windows are the obvious point of alignment between the two sections). The exterior windows as shown are about half-again as large as the interior ones and if you look at the shots in the film, you will see that, when viewed from the outside, the windows suddenly lose the interior portion of the framming. Look at the interior shots and the windows are set back, well inside some tunnels which curiously are not seen from the outside. The cabin could be scaled down to allow the space to add the interior tunnels but then the overall ship becomes obviously too large in comparison to the figures inside. Or you simply change the proportions of the main cabin (this is what most of the models so far have done I think) to get the details to fit but then the cabin doesn't look right. For the moment I have dropped the interior tunnels and gone with the larger exterior style windows because I feel that the exterior look is more important than the interior. This also allows me to keep the overall proportions of the passenger cabin the same and it even allows a reasonable ceiling thickness (4 inches).
Exterior Details & the Aurora Kit
I was suprised to read kit reviews on the web which stated that the "USAA" marking which was included as a decal in the Aurora kit never appeared on the movie miniature. This is funny because that marking is clearly visible (OK, partially visible, "AA" can be seen) in my stills. These same reviews also claim that the Aurora kit is too long, additional length having been added behind the cockpit. This too appears to be incorrect. When I compare my independently arrived at side elevation view (I'm getting to how this was done) to the kit photo from the box art, it matches nearly exactly in general heights and lengths for the entire distance of the constant-section portion of the ship. This tells me that the Aurora kit is indeed useful as a guide. Although some details are demonstrably wrong on this old kit, generally it seems to be correct. This also leads me to conclude that Aurora probably did not have blueprints to work from (because some structural details are actually incorrect, more to follow on this) but probably had a more complete photo survey of one of the models than we have ever seen.
End Part 1
Reference Material & the Web
As many of you probably already know, there is precious little information about the either the interior or exterior of the Moonbus. It only appears in a few scenes in the movie and even then from only a few angles, so even screen cap images are of limited use. The rear wall of the main cabin for example is never seen at all. This lack of information means that we are forced to guess about many things, there just is no way to be exact. As a result, each attempt to define the details of this ship will vary with each effort, no one can say that theirs is "the ultimate" (me included).
I have 8X10 copies of most of the main shots seen in the film and I made frame grabs from the DVD. I even eliminated the actors from the one main shot of the passenger cabin by combining the open areas of different frames as the actors move around (the camera in that scene is locked down). This is about the best one can do for reference material without having the studio blueprints or additional shots of the filming miniatures (there were at least two). This material in hand, I began by trying to establish the outline of the crossection. After studying the available images I decided that the low-angle nose view was my best hope for this because it is close to a true front view, shows the side wall angles and both the left and right outer edges of the side mounted RCS clusters which allowed me to find the center of the ship and thus the line of symmetry. I then used that above mentioned view of the main cabin to create a crossection of the interior. This is a bit trickier because there is a fair amount of spherical distortion from the lens that was used to film that scene. I made a base assumption that the cabin ceiling height is six feet and scaled accordingly. The resulting full scale dimensions were startling close to the logical dimensions that a designer might use so I was sure that I was very close to correct.
Interiors & Exteriors
Movies never design vehicles where the interior fits inside the exterior and 2001 is no exception. When I tried to combine the interior and exterior crossections I discovered several things. No matter how the two sections are scaled to each other, the interior passenger windows do not match the exterior ones (the windows are the obvious point of alignment between the two sections). The exterior windows as shown are about half-again as large as the interior ones and if you look at the shots in the film, you will see that, when viewed from the outside, the windows suddenly lose the interior portion of the framming. Look at the interior shots and the windows are set back, well inside some tunnels which curiously are not seen from the outside. The cabin could be scaled down to allow the space to add the interior tunnels but then the overall ship becomes obviously too large in comparison to the figures inside. Or you simply change the proportions of the main cabin (this is what most of the models so far have done I think) to get the details to fit but then the cabin doesn't look right. For the moment I have dropped the interior tunnels and gone with the larger exterior style windows because I feel that the exterior look is more important than the interior. This also allows me to keep the overall proportions of the passenger cabin the same and it even allows a reasonable ceiling thickness (4 inches).
Exterior Details & the Aurora Kit
I was suprised to read kit reviews on the web which stated that the "USAA" marking which was included as a decal in the Aurora kit never appeared on the movie miniature. This is funny because that marking is clearly visible (OK, partially visible, "AA" can be seen) in my stills. These same reviews also claim that the Aurora kit is too long, additional length having been added behind the cockpit. This too appears to be incorrect. When I compare my independently arrived at side elevation view (I'm getting to how this was done) to the kit photo from the box art, it matches nearly exactly in general heights and lengths for the entire distance of the constant-section portion of the ship. This tells me that the Aurora kit is indeed useful as a guide. Although some details are demonstrably wrong on this old kit, generally it seems to be correct. This also leads me to conclude that Aurora probably did not have blueprints to work from (because some structural details are actually incorrect, more to follow on this) but probably had a more complete photo survey of one of the models than we have ever seen.
End Part 1