Thursday 20 May 2010

German Satellite winging its way


What with the Vulcan Shuttle and Luna Diver nearing completion, a real simple paintjob on Louie about to start and me being stumped for parts for the Dragonfly, been looking around for my next project.
Just finished reading 3001 and tonight 2001 will be going on the Blu Ray.
Anticpating getting all fired up on the film, have gone ahead and ordered one of these babies.
As you probabaly know, it's from the sequence that introduces us to 2001 Earth, a montage of orbiting satellite's circling the planet just before we see the Orion.
Its never made clear - although its heavily hinted at in the book - but popular opinion is that they're bombs or weapon platforms.
Although they're barely seen on-screen, that fact has made them rather enigmatic and has proven a real detective case for folk trying to work out just what they look like, what they were made from and what countries they're supposed to be from.
So far, info is:
Kubrick ordered 11 to be built by the model shop and 10 are known to exist in photographic form. 5 made it to the Directors cut, 4 made it to the final cut:
01 - American
02 - unknown
03 - Chinese
04 - German
05 - French
06 - Russian
07 - US Telescope
08 - UK
09 - US Communication array
10 - US Deep Space Probe
11 - unknown.

2 comments:

Andrew Glazebrook said...

It still amazes me that after all these years these designs are so original and fresh !!!

Mangamax said...

... and folk are still riffing on them. The "conning tower" on this one could be off a Star Destroyer.