Procyon Planetary Research Hovercraft

This ultra lightweight craft is built to evaluate new worlds for potential colonization. It is deposited on the surface by a larger landing craft before venturing off on its own, kept aloft by its three electric engines. It can fly in any direction without turning by varying the engine power to tilt into the direction of flight, which makes it highly adept at outmaneuvering any unforeseen threats from the native fauna. The engines are powered by a small onboard fusion reactor. As long as there is adequate atmospheric hydrogen, the craft can remain airborne much longer than any human pilot.

I named this craft after one of the stars in the Winter Triangle, because it is both spacey and rather triangular. The pedantic viewer may note that it is technically a hexagon, but with three sides being much longer than the others, and the three way symmetry to most of the main features, I see it as a triangle with the tips clipped off. But regardless, the Winter Hexagon is a thing too, and it also contains Procyon.

This build is very much inspired by the recent first flight of an aircraft on another planet. While that craft looked nothing like this one, it had the idea of drones on other planets on my mind, and excluding the fact that there’s a cockpit, this does have a rather drone-like shape.

I built this over the course of a rather intense week of building. I missed some work due to temporary vision trouble that reduced glowing objects such as my screen to giant blurs. I could still see well enough to build in normal indoor lighting with the blinds shut, which gave me quite a lot of time to work on this. I had to wait a bit before I could edit the photos, though.

As is my usual, I used a heavily-doctored NASA photo as the backdrop. They're both plentiful and public domain. While it might be hard to guess from the editing, this one is Mars.

Fun fact: this is my second build to feature a "structural minifig" by which I mean that, due to space constraints in/around the cockpit, part of the model is attached only to the minifig's legs. In this case it's just the control yoke, but in the previous one, it's the entire nose.

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Taken on: May 24, 2021

Tags:

lego

space

AFOL

hovercraft

spaceship

Lego:scale=minifig

Lego:theme=space

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Sets appears in: • Showcase • Procyon Planetary Research Hovercraft

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Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark IV, f/18.0, 0.8 sec, 70mm, ISO 100 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Canon EOS 5D Mark IV
Lens:	EF24-70mm f/2.8L II USM
Aperture:	f/18.0
Exposure Time:	0.8
Focal Length:	70mm
ISO:	100
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Manual
Exposure Mode:	Manual
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Manual
Color Space:	sRGB
Software:	Adobe Photoshop CC 2018 (Windows)
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