by Greg Shuey

Originally concieved and configured as a purpose-built ship to deal with the ever-increasing quantity of obsolete satellites and orbital debris, Sisyphus was built in earth orbit from an off-the-shelf collection of existing scientific and industrial modules into a robust working ship.

Twenty years after the original commission, the ship was extensively reconfigured and refitted for lunar service, mostly hauling oxygen maunfactured on the moon to orbital depots. The design is meant to represent a 'plausible' idea of a well-kept working industrail spacecraft of the mid 21st century.

From bow to stern, ship consists of command module, with crew quarters, interconnect module, control cupola and airlock. Aft of that (between fuel tanks) is the crew radiation shelter. Above that is the cargo handling deck (including robot arm and satellite maintenance / launch platform. The rest of the ship is fuel tanks and engines.

The command module is a plastic cup, cut away for windows. Cockpit from sheet styrene. Airlock, control cupola and crew shelter are plastic lamp insulation sleeves, and fuel / oxydizer tanks are 1.5" PVC pipe with sheet styrene ends. Other details are sheet and strip from Evergreen, and the spherical pressure tanks and auxiliary engine bells are 'ball in a cup' games and 'mini-maracas' (cut in the right places) respectively, 99 cents for twelve from a local 99 cent store. The main engine is the pointy end of a plastic easter egg. The whole thing is glued together (mostly) with CA and liberally coated with floquil 'reefer yellow' and some brushed-on 'SP orange', and testors 'exhaust' metalizer for the seven engine bells. Decals are from the spares box, and the whole mess is coated with future.

I intended to finish with a flat coat and a very little weathering (not much weather in space) to represent the ocassional collision with a cloud of paint chips and the odd lost Hasselblad camera, but ran out of time.

Image: Top view

Image: Front, high

Image: Underneath

Image: With cargo deck removed

Image: Airlock and command module

Image: Above and behind

Image: With cargo