Why We Need NASA
I want to first start by saying that I have done some difficult things in my life before. I have been playing baseball for a majority of life, which is no slouch of a sport, high school has offered me a variety of AP courses to challenge myself with, and generally I enjoy exploring new ideas and trying new things. With that being said, attempting to build this scale model was one of the most difficult school projects I have ever charged myself with. I say that because I literally was the one who offered myself up for it. It was an open-ended ceramics project and my reaction was “I want to build a scale model, how hard can it possibly be?” Low and behold I gravely underestimated the challenge at hand, and in the coming paragraphs I will attempt to detail some of the troubles I ran into along the way with the building of this model, and show some photos of the different aspects that I completed in order to finish off the model. However, it must be duly noted that in the end, I enjoyed the work that I committed to the piece and it has been one of the most eye opening endeavors I have had the chance to commit to.
The first step was mocking up designs. I knew I wanted to keep the “blueprints” as accurate as possible, as clay tends to become less and less uniform the more you mold it, so as a starting point it is smart to begin as precise as possible. I made use out of a NASA drawing that offered me baseline information about the dimensions, shape, detailing, and other general know-how.
With the new Blended-Wing Body design, the wings of the aircraft feed directly into what would previously be called the fuselage, so I needed to make sure the wings connection into the main compartment looked and went as smooth as possible. Another thing about the wings is the general shape if you were to take a cross section of the wing. Aircraft wings in general when looked at in a vertical cross section closely resemble a teardrop.
This meant taking a sponge and smoothing over or adding clay where there were divots or pockets in the main body, ensuring the wings had a nice sloping action to them especially at the front and rear exit of the wings, and cleaning up any clay shavings that had worked their way into the crevasses of the connecting pieces. Once this was achieved and I was able to look back at my final work, I was sincerely pleased with what I observed, and I could honestly say that all the hard work was worth it.
The first step was mocking up designs. I knew I wanted to keep the “blueprints” as accurate as possible, as clay tends to become less and less uniform the more you mold it, so as a starting point it is smart to begin as precise as possible. I made use out of a NASA drawing that offered me baseline information about the dimensions, shape, detailing, and other general know-how.