[Starship Modeler's 9th on-line modeling contest: The Other Guys]

Entries Page
Contest Rules

Passenger Liner SS Enterprise



Sponsored By:


DaVeK Ventures








by Joe Brown

(as seen in Star Trek: The Motion Picture)

Scale: 1/1000

The passenger starliner SS Enterprise was in operation throughout the 22nd century and early into the 23rd century. It featured a ring-configured warp drive and passenger accommodations for 129 people, with a crew of 50. The ship was capable of warp 4.8 travel, it and routinely made trips to the Terran, Vulcan, and Andorian colonies, with two trips a year to the vacation world of Risa.

Construction

Building this ship in scale with the Polar Lights Enterprise was a project that I had planned for some time, and the Other Guys Contest gave me the excuse I needed to get it completed. The design is one of the early Matt Jefferies sketches for the original series Enterprise that was never used. In the film Star Trek: The Motion Picture, it is featured in the wall paintings in the Recreation Room as part of the linage of vessels that had been named Enterprise, or so we hear Decker telling Illya. Scarce and few decent illustrations of this ship are available, so I could use my chosen interpretation of the design without fearing the wrath of the dedicated Trek nay-sayers.

I started with a piece of five-inch PVC conduit and sliced off two hoops to make the rings. An old, badly made Stargate Deathglider toy contributed a missile launcher, which became the engine section that holds the aft end of the long boom.

I made the boom from a section of brass curtain rod, and the forward pod that holds the crew and passengers came from two refrigerator magnets shaped like liquor bottles that I glued back to back. The communications tower array came from an Action Fleet Republic Cruiser, and the two protuberances on the bow were from acrylic plastic “findings” that my mom gave me years ago. I glued all of these together with CA glue. The pod, engine, and boom assembly were attached to the hoops with a slab of styrene plastic sheet. I drilled holes in the hoops for spacers that I made from finishing nails, and then I slid simple styrene tubes over those. A brass tube stand was bent into shape with a tubing bender, and a hole was drilled for that at the bottom of the aft hoop. Painting the tube and stand black keeps attention focused on the ship.

I primed the ship and painted it off-white. Gold paint was used on the various dishes and antennas, and the windows were painted with a finepoint Sharpie, which were aligned by using a scrap of window screen material. I used blue paint on the grilles in the engine body section, and I used Krylon acrylic silver to add a metallic look to the other engine parts. Apple Barrel Concrete Gray was used to accent various areas and to paint the thin strip of styrene that runs along the top of the boom.

I whined and complained about getting the 'SS Enterprise' markings for the ship to look right until my friend Gordon from work suggested using the markings from a Polar Lights Enterprise kit (well, duh). The finishing touch was to add two thin pieces of red styrene to the leading edge of the engine hoop as the Bussard collectors. I coated the ship with two passes of dull coat, and it was done. This was a very fast, pleasant scratchbuild job that I completed in just less than a week; and it's an obscure, sufficiently oddball-looking ship that it really grabs people's attention.

Image: Starboard side

Image: Bow

Image: Parts

Image: Primed




Go back up | Starship Modeler Home | Site Map | Feedback

This page was last updated 19 January 2004