Wednesday, November 26, 2008

miniseries: SPACE SHIP TIME

hi readers! (umm, hi mom and dad) today i am assembling parts to build a space ship. This task seemed daunting at first. Do you have to go to a fancy geeky model store and purchase some babylon star wars crap? Nope.
First off, major shout out to NASA for putting their entire image library online and copyright free. You can even download OBJ files of some of their spacecrafts. So there is plenty of scientific reference to use.
Now, Any NASA scientist will tell you that there are really only two parts to any space craft: the smooth outer metal shell, and the wiry, coggy electrical inside part.

I went to home depot to find some shiny outer shell parts.



Now for the innards. We happened to have a VCR player that doesn't work in our house, (but yet we still leave it near the TV) so i got a screwdriver and starting taking things apart.


At times this can be frustrating, but try and resist the urge take a hammer and smash things open because you will most likely break something that could have been interesting looking. It had to be put together by an assembly machine, so chances are there is a relatively logical way to take it apart.
And the deeper you go the more treasure you find. Here are the cogs:
and here are the weird plastic shapes

open the VCR, and here's all the JUNK

Now enjoy the fruits of your labor! Taking apart things is fun, especially when you don't need them to work. I also opened up a remote control because the plastic shell might make some great wings. But I'll save that for next time.
ps. if anyone has a working vcr, let me know cause i have this vcr tape i've been meaning to watch. thanks!

5 comments:

goooooood girl said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
stephen said...

I am excited to see what happens.

J.D. Amato said...

right now your spaceship looks more like an asteroid field of home electronics.

hairy said...

touche JD, I should have just gone with an air balloon.

ben oviatt said...

Mmmmmm, mints...