SANDSTORM

Posted on Nov 12, 2014 in Illustration, Science Fiction | No Comments
A lone Astronaut confronts the fierce winds and fine sands of a major Martian dust storm. I seem to return to this theme regularly- I have no idea why, other than its a very visual embodyment of the "man against nature" theme present in all tales of exploration....  The landscape and astronaut were modeled and rendered in Lightwave 7.5. The sandstorm and depth of field effect were executed in Photoshop CS. Thanks for looking!

A lone Astronaut confronts the fierce winds and fine sands of a major Martian dust storm. I seem to return to this theme regularly- I have no idea why, other than its a very visual embodyment of the “man against nature” theme present in all tales of exploration…. The landscape and astronaut were modeled and rendered in Lightwave 7.5. The sandstorm and depth of field effect were executed in Photoshop CS. Thanks for looking!

 

 

 

The Argosy Project

Posted on Nov 5, 2014 in Illustration | No Comments

After Apollo 11 and Apollo 12, NASA used the momentum of those triumphs to launch their proposal to develop several pieces of hardware, the Nuclear Ferry or Primary Propulsion Module, (which could provide regular transportation to Geosynchronous orbit and the Moon), and the Standard Mission Module, (which could serve as a planetary surface base or orbital station.) These, with a Science Mission Module specific for the destination, could be combined to form Project Argosy spacecraft, capable of missions to Mars, Venus, asteroids and comets. For these deep-space missions, the Argosy spacecraft would launch from Earth orbit, with two PPMs boosting the main craft into its transfer orbit, then separating, to decelerate themselves to return to Earth orbit for reuse. The lone remaining PPM would provide power and propulsion for the rest of the mission. In this way, a robust compatible collection of manned craft would be available for standard missions, in a flexible architecture to meet varieties of mission needs. I’ve attached the name Argosy, or treasure fleet, to the project.

The final refinement of this flexible infrastructure approach was realized in Werner von Braun’s plan, released in 1969, for a series of  manned Mars missions using the components. This is the plan I have chosen to illustrate here.

 

Argosy One over Earth

Argosy One over Earth