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Old 06-17-2009, 05:48 PM
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To baldly go ... (works either way for me)

Always happy to oblige Chris.

So, other significant Mercury probes would include the first, Mariner 10, and the next, ESA's Beppi-Colombo mission. Found a few pix, but not enough to do a quick design so I passed on (maybe do later).

Venus is currently orbitted by the ESA Venus Express, another box but the spacecraft itself is a box. Some decent graphics and nice detail on the ESA model. Missing is the Magellan, first probe to map the surface of Venus in detail. I found a commercial model, but was unimpressed with the detail and the fidelity (just looked wrong). So, Magellan ended up being another scratch build (posted at the LHVCC).

Venus Express
Yogi's builds - to boldy glue, where ...-p3250028.jpg
Magellan
Yogi's builds - to boldy glue, where ...-p4180001.jpg

Of course, the various Mariner Venus and Venera probes are missing - I haven't found any models or good (full) sets of drawings (another to do later...)

On to the Pale Blue Dot! Had no clue as to which of the hundreds of significant satellites to do - so I didn't. Passed right on to:

Mars. This was easy. Did a Ton/E te Groen Rover (1:15) with a few detail mods (and had a redo as the first was immediately hijacked by one of my teachers). Followed that with a Polar Lander (1:24) modified to a (close to) Phoenix configuration - had to do another (at 1:12 to better match the Rover) for the same reason as the Rover. Of the three orbiters, the Reconnaissance orbiter has the highest profile. Unfortunately, it's also the one without a published model - so I did (posted also with LHVCC). Slightly wiser this time, I made three MRO models (counting the prototype) so I have one left for the Solar System tour set.

Rover at 1:15
Yogi's builds - to boldy glue, where ...-p3200008.jpg
1:12 Polar Lander/Phoenix
Yogi's builds - to boldy glue, where ...-p5110005.jpg
MRO 1:48
Yogi's builds - to boldy glue, where ...-p4240005.jpg

Both the ESA Mars Express (ESA puts out a fairly good model, graphics not quite as good as the Venus Express) and the Mars Odyssey are in orbit now (NASA aerobox model is all that's available); and ESA/Russia is preparing a landing on Phobos - the Phobos Grunt mission (with a name like that I gotta build it eventually, alas no model yet and sparse info). However, I was getting funny looks from "she who's opinion matters most" so I decided to move on.

Things might be getting sparse out here - but there's cool stuff ahead: asteroids, comets, gas giants, and beyond ...
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