Serenity is unique among the ships of Science Fiction – she’s not slick and high tech like a Star Fleet cruiser, alien and bizarre like a Shadow vessel, razor-edged and menacing like a Cylon raider or even bristling with weapons like a battlestar. She’s a practical ship, the kind regular folk would own and operate. A natural evolution of the space tech we humans use today.
Something her designers told us was foremost in their minds when they created Serenity was that she be as real as they could make her. They didn’t want a ship that might happen in the future. They wanted one that would happen in the future – assuming there are still people around in 500 years.
That’s why we were thrilled when we found out The FX Company had experience in real – as well as imagined – spacecraft replicas. For Example, this 1/100 scale reproduction of the International Space Station they built for the Discovery Science Center in Ocala, Florida:
Wow.
Seeing FX’s other work just makes me more and more excited for the final Serenity model.
wow that is a better models than we have here at JSC including the one we have in Mission Control.
Hi Mike – I’m sure if the Johnson Space Center wants to upgrade, we could twist The FX Company’s arm to make another one
The model looks great. I just hope the real ISS looks like that some day. I can’t wait until the FX Company builds the first Serenity prototype.
jim
I might have to talk to some ISS folks cause I always thought we over paid for the 1:144 version we got from InterMountain Railway Company. I don’t want to distract the FX folks from their shiny work on Serenity:)
Assuming it’s not classified, how much was the IMRC version?
I confirmed with FX today – this was a scratch build they did in 1998.
Don’t worry about them being distracted – I don’t think I’ve ever seen them this excited about a project
not classified, I think we got them from thespacestore.com (unassembled) and we paid $500 per model from IMRC, and I think Mission Ops bought at least 4 of them. (the MCC has one as well as several of the divisions have one)
Actually, that’s not a bad price at all for a simple build, unless the quality of the build is really poor. Even with a kit, to get, say, a film quality build will typically cost several thousand dollars on a one-off basis.
when I put together the model for our division I didn’t think the model was any better than a hobby shop model only bigger.