2010: A New Dawn at Home

And so Leonov finally comes home, to sights both familiar and brand new. Shown here she's completing her deceleration burn before pulling into Earth orbit.

I think this project took almost as long as the fictional mission that we covered. It was 2010 when Tom Peters (Drell-7) and I talked about modeling the Leonov as described in Clarke's excellent novel. While Syd Mead's design has become something of an SF icon, it did not fit with what Clarke described in his original vision. As both Clarke devotees and aerospace geeks, we just HAD to do this... and the image series followed. My hat's off to Tom, who did the lion's share of the work. Not like we need to find new excuses to collaborate, but this one was a must - a true labor of science fictional love.

So is this really the end? Maybe. Maybe not. We're kicking around the idea of making a mission poster, showing the complete mission profile and how the ship changes through the mission's various phases. Tom's also getting an itch to model the Chinese Jovian explorer, Tsien, featured in the book, so we'll see what the future holds. It's fair to say that we're not out of steam yet.

I reiterate our sadness in taking this project on AFTER Clarke's death. It would have been so much fun to show him this work and send him a full set of prints.