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Shores of Ligeia

Beads of methane slowly fell from the thick orange sky in marble-sized blobs, coating the ground in glistening puddles. The drops pooled on the soft tar-covered sand and flowed over ice boulders down into a massive network of drainage channels, where they finally merged with the great sea of hydrocarbons below; Ligeia Mare. It was the second largest body of methane on Titan, stretching across one hundred thousand square kilometers of the moon's northern polar region. Its vast surface was wrinkled with bulbous waves which gently ebbed on the distant shores, soaking the grimy sand. Scattered across the surface of the sea were brilliant mag

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#EpicStarships

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Submitted: January 26
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Discoveryby ~SMPritchard

Digital Art / 3-Dimensional Art / Vehicles / Futuristic

Another fusion-powered spacecraft out-bound for Saturn (I seem to have a thing for that). The two offset toruses are where the crew spend most of their time. The rings rotate to provide 0.5 gees of acceleration for the crew.

~Sagittarius-A-star Apr 22, 2013 Student Traditional Artist

Ha ha, nice ship, reminds me of the novel version of 2001: A Space Odyssey (I thought it was a pity that Kubrick sent the Discovery 1 to Jupiter instead of Saturn- he missed out on some interesting visuals there). You been spending time at Winchell D. Chung jr.'s Atomic Rockets, right?

~TerranAbassador May 16, 2013 Student Digital Artist

Actually, he WANTED to go to Saturn, but he and his model-makers, even though they tried going for a perfectly realistic model, thought all their attempts looked fake ("this looks tin foil held up by plexiglass...we can't use this!!!").

Of course, they didn't have photos from the voyager probes that showed that Saturn's rings look EXACTLY like all their model attempts.

~Sagittarius-A-star May 16, 2013 Student Traditional Artist

So they thought that they couldn't make a realistic SFX model of Saturn's rings? Lol, it is too bad they thought that- Saturn and Iapetus would have looked REALLY cool in 2001. Funny thing is, Saturn looks more or less like a yellow ball with a tinfoil ring held up by plexiglass if you are looking through a small refractor telescope... XD

Very often space places don't look like what space art and movie SFX lead us to expect. When the first Viking lander sent back its first images of Mars, the researchers expected a reddish desert with a clear blue sky (like in all the SF magazine covers) and adjusted the pictures accordingly to show this and released them to the press. And, upon later checking the data, realized that the brownish-red dirt with a salmon sky were in fact the correct colors and had to amend this the next day! This makes it all the more ironic that the Saturn model Kubrick and his model-makers considered "unrealistic" in fact resembled the real thing as revealed by the Voyager spacecraft...

~TerranAbassador May 16, 2013 Student Digital Artist

Yup. Discovery was also going to have its radiators from the book as well, but he didn't want moviegoers asking why it needed wings when it was in space. Reality is unrealistic.

~Sagittarius-A-star Jun 1, 2013 Student Traditional Artist

Yeah, I remember that, they didn't add heat radiators 'cause Kubrick didn't want people to ask why a deep space ship has wings.

It is funny that rockets got wings when people think only unrealistic ships need wings, ha ha...

~SMPritchard May 9, 2013 Hobbyist Digital Artist

Indeed I have. It's a terrific resource for aspiring Hard SF writers like me.

~beltminer Feb 11, 2013

wonderful inspiring work man. top shelf.
g

~SMPritchard Feb 12, 2013 Hobbyist Digital Artist

Thank you!

~kiml42 Jan 28, 2013 Hobbyist Digital Artist

Very practical looking design.
Why are the two rotating crew sections at suchan odd angle?

~SMPritchard Feb 12, 2013 Hobbyist Digital Artist

Thanks!
There really isn't any good justification other than "Hey, this looks cool". I'm not too proud of that...

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