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Shooting Star Starfighter

By Karim Nassar

The Shooting Star is a realistic near-future, orbital, or supra-orbital fighter that I designed for the SSM Starfighters contest. Unfortunately, I missed the deadline for the contest.

Space on any spacecraft is precious. If you've got a ship carrying lots of fighters, the last thing you want is a big carrier deck with fighters spread out all over. You want them to stack, to fill space as efficiently as possible. This, combined with the utter uselessness of swoopy, streamlined shapes in space dictates a hull in the shape of a rectangular solid.

Because my design required a solid external mass with few projections at rest, I knew I wanted to have some panels, hatches, and covers open in the model to depict the subject in flight. To do this, I needed the internal structure to be detailed and believable where it was exposed. The most expedient approach, I thought, was to build the ship from it's structural frame up. In areas where I knew there would be openings, I made sure to apply a double-hull technique, to enhance the illusion of depth and structure.

The markings on this clunky, mass-produced fighter include a "tail number" of 11024, and a flight-line assignment to the IAS Shi Lang.

This model won a Bronze at Wonderfest 2012. You can see a more detailed write-up and more pictures of the Shooting Star on my website

Image: Fuel Cells

Image: Rear

Image: U/C Frame

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