My Jupiter 2 Upper Deck Sketches

[starseeker2]

If you are looking for my upper deck drawings and they are no longer attached to the messages below, please PM me (Starseeker) and I can email them to you. There are occasional long periods where I'm not active here but I do lurk and eventually I do check my messages. The thirty-some files posted here are 60-90k each or the original approx 11" x 17" drawings 600-900k each. So you would need reasonably high speed internet.


As a little kid, I was a huge Lost in Space fan. As an older kid, I still loved the hardware, the first season stuff, and of course the Jupiter 2. My Grail kit was always a 1/24 scale model of my beloved saucer. As Supersnipe, I sent endless letters to Fox begging for the blueprints of the ships on their shows. I must have finally driven someone insane, as one day two two inch thick packages arrived in my mailbox. On another thread I’ve posted my conversion of the original Fox blueprints of the early Seaview into its series incarnations, as well as copies of the original control room and sail and flying sub. But it is the Jupiter 2 that I most loved. Some of the blueprints were for the pilot version, some for details of the 2nd season version. Our winters are really long and cold this far north. Twenty plus years ago I spent a lot of time copying, tracing, and drawing and not only made plans for my own 1/24 scale J2 but drew every single detail of the exterior and interior upper and lower decks that I could find.

Season 2 cross is a bit of a hybrid diagram. It shows the dimensions and angle of the 2nd season control panel, plus the curved crash doors of the 4' miniature.
The walls behind the ladder and the glide tube are vertical to the ceiling. They would not fit inside the straight sided set, and the locker room wouldn’t fit into any Jupiter 2.

Astrogator shades are way too dark. But they show do the contrasting panels that lasted throughout the series. The tops and sides of the top fins, as well as a band around the edge of the last ring outside the glass dome are polished metal.

Attachments moved to:
http://s1004.photobucket.com/home/jkirkphotos/allalbums

[starseeker2]

Those were the days of imperial measurement idiocy, so all the drawings here are in scales divisible by 12. I had finished the Jupiter 2, Chariot (posted in another thread) and all the 1st season equipment, and was just beginning two very large pages stacking the upper and lower decks on top of each other when the Alpha Control Technical Manual was announced. Since I had a vague idea of printing and selling these sheets (and no doubt spring came), I lost wind in finishing the last few pages. I did send some of this stuff to Phillip Lubin and we corresponded briefly. The Alpha Control Technical Manual is the single best resource on the Jupiter 2 produced and if it’s still available, it’s a must have.

[starseeker2]

Whenever a measurement is stated on the attachments, it is from a Fox blueprint. None of the measurements are made up.
Everyone reading this knows that there were 3 main versions of the interior of the J2. The first was the pilot, which had a 5" step in the centre of floor and instead of the glide tube and ladder, the side panels from the galley formed the back walls of the upper deck. My drawings are all on 11x14" sheets, so some of them continue across attachments. The 1st season upper deck was continuous with the straight sided exterior set, straight sided because its impossible to bend arborite into a compound curve. The 5" step was removed with the addition of the Robot, and the ceiling/wall girders, walls, control panels, etc, gained a 5" toe. Control panels were added under the main viewports and the angle of the under-window desk changed slightly. In the 2nd season, the exterior set gained curved walls, the main controls and viewports were changed, upper deck instruments were redressed slightly, the ceiling gained new high vertical panels, and we got to play Where’s the Astrogator? In the 3d season, well, the changes got too absurd to bother with. Won't go there.

[starseeker2]

So I've cleaned these drawing up a bit from my previous postings, adjusted the brightness and contrast a bit, and made a couple more small corrections. And a biggie: the side view of the main control panel computer in a post above - I've meant to angle its top for decades, only now just remembered.

[starseeker2]

The circuitry board is a real bear to try to scan and copy at any resolution. It's a photoshopped amalgam from all the decent photos and screen grabs I could find.

[starseeker2]

Hope I have enough space to post all this.

[starseeker2]

And this is the last of them. Again.
As always, if you find any errors (tho I do leave a tiny, tiny error in one every once in a while as a sort of signature, nothing that would ever effect a model, just a light or a switch or a letter), please let me know.
Hope these will be of some use. And I'll try to leave them here as long as I have space.

[starseeker2]

A couple color phots from the first season that (except the first) I've not seen anywhere else. Even when their clothes were the same color (blues for tops and bottoms, say) they were contrasting shades.

[starseeker2]

Trying to reproduce color accurately is impossible, but despite the poor quality, these should give you a very general idea of the mostly gray color scheme of the first season J2. The costumes and sets on the other hand were brilliantly colored.
Note the polished steel panel inset into the top of the sliding platform under the hatch. And at least the flat portion of the floor inside the airlock also has a polished steel panel almost as wide as the airlock floor. I suspect they used steel here instead of plywood to give strength to the very thin floors in both areas.

[starseeker2]

Deleted post

[starseeker2]

Deleted post

[starseeker2]

Deleted post

[fernieo]

Wow! That was a lot of work!

[toyroy]

Good photos of the original J2 hero:

http://www.lostintoys.com/museum/j2prop.html

Good photos of the original launch pad and gantries:

http://members.aol.com/IDICPage/Jupiter2.html

[toyroy]

Full size Gemini 12, and the J2 mock-up.