Of course, my objective in building the models was
purely altruistic - with no thought for myself ...
Anyway, I last saw most of the first batch of builds at (of all things) the local Junior League's "Spring Science Explosion." Despite a really nasty day (heavy rain and T-storms) and a last minute move across town, we had about 500 total folks drop by. About 300 kids, and they all stopped in. Had 'em standing in line to shoot rockets into a bucket. Even passed out cards with the URLs for the models - along with our usual literature.
bait
catch (it's well after closing time, had to run him off)
Delivered the models to the various schools, then continued building. Next theme - tour of the solar system in 1:48. I'll take them in order, though I actually started with Ton's Pioneer 10/11 and some of the simpler NASA/JPL/ESA offerings.
No visits to the sun yet, but I did find ESA's SOHO model. I was disappointed with its accuracy - box and a cylinder. So, I redid it. It wasn't too difficult as spacecraft are generally not complex shapes. Boxes, cones, and the occaisional cylinder. With the SOHO done, I found a NASA site about the Solar Probe Plus scheduled for a 2015 launch. No engineering drawings, but lots of good pix in their latest engineering report. Another design task.
SOHO - available at LHVCC (jleslie48.com)
Solar Probe Plus
Mercury is being visited, soon to be orbited, by the MESSENGER probe so that was next. Had quite a bit of information on that one - one of the teachers I work with is a MESSENGER Fellow, part of the NASA education and outreach program. Unfortunately, the model they've put out is another box - no detail at all. So, I did another scratch design. It's desk-model level detail, certainly not museum quality but better than a box.
To be continued ...