Star Trek Phase II inspired Orbital Office

Way back when I first started building all my Constitution class starships (based on Rawen's files,) I started kicking around ideas for how to display them. My first idea was to recreate the docking bay from Franz Joseph's StarFleet Technical Manual and use it as a flat background. It looks good, but I wanted something unique and more like a diorama. I always like to see things from those lost corners of Star Trek (concept art, study models, etc.) come to life.

So I've started what is basically my first attempt at building a model. I am making a display stand based off of Mike Minor's painting of the Orbital Office (pic attached). It's tubular design is simple enough for me to design in Illustrator without worrying about unfolding. I don't have any of the design programs most of you use, or any of the skills. I do have some ideas and material that I think will make this a sturdy build. I was going to wait until it was completely finished and then just post a pic, but what fun is that. So, I'm posting thumbnails of my first two parts.

The first is the cylindrical office that comes off the main "trunk." This will be the main design for all 16 office areas. Each one will have slightly altered markings.

The second piece is the office end that faces out into space and where the ships will dock. Each will be slightly altered as well.

I'm using Mike's paintings as the base for the features, but I'm adding things that fit what I want to see (registries, tractor beam mounting points, phasers, lifeboats, etc...) as I go. Also, I'm altering things for scale. Mike's scale would not be in scale with my ships. So, I'm scaling it up and showing that by adding windows and details that match the scale on my ships.

I still have a lot to work out, including whether or not I'm going to try and add lights to this thing . Stay tuned.

Well, it's been awhile but I finally made some progress. I've further refined the look of the office bodies. The final look includes Tractor Beam "mounting" points for positioning the office during construction, color-coded airlocks with a mixed style of Phase 2 and TMP Enterprise airlocks, and individually numbered lifeboats based on the ones in "Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise."

I've also designed the back of the office cylinders. Since you won't see much of it I've kept it simple; just running lights and emergency thrusters for separating from the main office body. This is my take on the original idea that the orbiting office would be a bunch of individual pieces held together into one complex. That way, each office could function as a lifeboat if the main body was damaged. Hence, the thrusters.

Finally, I've replicated each piece in the corresponding blue, yellow and green colors. I've approximated them from Minor's painting. I've changed the colors around a little because some appear twice on a side. Now, each vertical side will have each of the four colors. That should cut down on docking confusion.

Well, here's the latest on the Orbital Office. I've laid down all the basic details for the center column. I've taken to calling it the "Trunk." I've added as much of the style of Minor's painting I can. I'm trying to strike a balance between the "clean" TOS style of Jefferies and the "aztec" TMP style of Probert since this is Phase 2. I've added large panel lines to break up the space but stopped short of aztecing. The gray hull is shaded for some depth.

Truth be told, the painting really doesn't show much detail, so I've again added elements I think make sense.

• Navigation/Marker lights are at the top of each horizontal section.
• Reaction control thrusters below that on a 4-point axis.
• Below that are "vents" that are visible on Minor's painting in a more staggered fashion.
• Since my station also serves as a dockyard, I've added 3 cargo bays to each horizontal section. 1 large for heavy machinery and cargo, 2 for normal items. The 3 bays is also a nod to the 3 shuttlebays on the Enterprise-D.
  
  They can also be used for docking old-style shuttlecraft.
• I added 3 regular airlocks for every 1 office module. I figure there's a lot of traffic going in and out of this thing so it make sense to be able to dock all over it as needed.
• I added 2 rows of 10 lifeboats for every horizontal section. Any more at this size and they really start to look like rivets!
  
  Besides, my theory is the "Trunk" contains a lot of machinery and engineering space. 25% of the top of each section is thrusters and station engineering, 25% of the bottom of each section is devoted to cargo and storage. More equipment and few crew = fewer lifeboats. All the administrative and visiting personnel facilities are in the office modules, which are capable of becoming lifeboats if the "Trunk" is destroyed or damaged.
• The black circles are placeholders for the office modules.
• The black horizontal lines are where I'm going to divide this thing into 4 sections for printing on 8.5x11 paper.

How's that for over-thinking a model. Lo-rez jpeg attached for viewing. More to come.

Here's the first test of the office module. The parts are taped to a bath tissue cardboard roll. It's been the plan all along to use these as the core of each module. They are strong and uniformly round, and I plan to fill them with expanding foam.

The parts don't quite fit as currently scaled, so more tweeking is necessary. I'll likely make some circle templates that can be used to create formers for the final model, in case anyone else wants to try this.

Looks pretty good for a first pass. Added a couple of pics of the module with Enterprise to get an idea how she'll look "docked" with the final display.