I came across a 1/48 scale Testor's model of the ME-163 Komet rocket plane at a local hobby store. It wasn't saying anything interesting to me when I bought it, so it landed in the closet. When I watched the initial flight of the sub-orbital Spaceship One on tv in June 2004 I got the idea of "what if the ME-163 was developed into a personal, orbital rocket plane" and went to work on this fantasy spacecraft. For some reason the shape of Spaceship One reminded me of the ME-163's fuselage shape.

This kit received some rather radical surgery -- well it was for me since this was the first time I'd done this sort of work. The portions of the wings outboard of the flaps were cut off, reducing the wingspan by half. The new wingtips were squared off, filled and shaped to match the remainder of the wing. The top of the fin was cut square. All of the atmospheric flight do-dads were cut off the fuselage and then it was sanded smooth. The little windows behind the main canopy were filled and sanded flush with the fuselage. The paint job was made similar to the color layout of the space shuttle orbiter's thermal tile pattern. This would probably be a very tough plane to fly during re-entry - if it could fly at all ! - but it was fun to build.