The Hooded Swan

[KevinD]

Here is my scratchbuild of the starship Hooded Swan, which featured in a series of novels by Brian Stableford in the 70's. Each bore (in the uk), a cover illustration by Angus Mckie. The novels are excellent but it was the covers that attracted me to them.
The ship also featured as the Interstellar Queen in the Terran Trade Authority books.
My model is made of plasticard mainly and is about 20 inches long.

 

[division 6]

Cool.
I remember it from the TTA book.

 

[BattleEnsign]

Excellent rendition of one of my favourite ships in the book. Wondering if you did the engines as depicted in the technical drawing. I just did this ship in Lego but had to change the engine arrangement a little. Regards, mark.

 

[Aku]

Chris Foss painted the covers, surely. That looks exactly like his style

 

[KevinD]

I put two lit engines side by side in the rear.
The cover artist was Angus Mckie.

 

[KevinD]

Oh, forgot to say, would like to see the Lego version!

 

[srspicer]

Looks great! I would like to see some close-up images pls.

 

[KevinD]

Thanks. This is the only other picture of it I have to hand.

 

[srspicer]

Thanx much!
Just want to see more of the painting details.

 

[publiusr]

Here is something that may be of interest to those of you who want to see ships from novels:

A model to generate artistic images based on text descriptions

Artificial intelligence (AI) tools have proved to be highly valuable for completing a wide range of tasks. While they are primarily used to increase productivity or simplify everyday processes, they have also shown promise for automatically generating creative texts and artistic images.

techxplore.com

Researchers at University of Waterloo and New York University Courant Institute have recently created an AI tool that can automatically generate unique artistic images based on text descriptions. Their method, introduced in a paper pre-published on arXiv, is based on a dynamic memory generative adversarial network (DM-GAN), a model based on two artificial neural networks that work together to generate increasingly convincing images.

"We create an end-to-end solution that can generate artistic images from text descriptions," Qinghe Tian and Pr. Jean-Claude Franchitti wrote in their paper.

 

[BattleEnsign]

Oh, forgot to say, would like to see the Lego version!

Hi Kevin, this is my Lego version.
regards, mark

 

[KevinD]

I like that a lot. The detail is great and the landing gear is really effective.

 

[BattleEnsign]

I like that a lot. The detail is great and the landing gear is really effective.

Thank you kindly. I guess it does look a lot like landing gear, but I designed the black structures to be some sort of docking clamps in a spaceport setting. I actually did try landing gear at first, but the model proved to be too heavy and was unstable. I have since reworked the stand and now they look more like clamps holding the ship in place.

 

[KevinD]

Ah, I see what you mean. My model always wants to peck the floor. In the end, I made a small, wedge shaped support that plugs into the bottom and holds it up, just about!

 

[BattleEnsign]

Thanks. This is the only other picture of it I have to hand.
View attachment 1588876

I really like the Swan in this setting; so down to earth. I’ve always wondered how these ships ever got airborne. Steward Cowley in his TTA book mentioned something about a ‘Gravity Resist’ system used by a number of ships. I suppose some sort of anti gravity drive system would do the trick. Regards, mark.

 

[KevinD]

The Hooded Swan in the novels from which the paintings come was powered by a 'Mass Relaxation Drive', in which a field was generated by the Drive which served to counteract the relativistic mass increase as the Swan gained speed. Lift off though was probably not achieved that way.

 

[BattleEnsign]

The Hooded Swan in the novels from which the paintings come was powered by a 'Mass Relaxation Drive', in which a field was generated by the Drive which served to counteract the relativistic mass increase as the Swan gained speed. Lift off though was probably not achieved that way.

Interesting.

 

[publiusr]

I remember something about “deVasse” generators